Sean “P. Diddy” Combs’ cable revolution is more of an evolution.
After months of negotiations, his yet-to-launch channel, Revolt TV, has reached an agreement with Time Warner Cable to offer the channel to some — but not all — of its roughly 12 million subscribers.
Moreover, Revolt TV will have to pay for the cable carriage, in contrast to more established media players that get fees from pay-TV providers to offer their programming to subscribers, sources said.
Combs told The Post: “It’s rare in this time to be able to get carriage and to get a company as prestigious as Time Warner Cable to believe in you and commit to you. They really believed in us.”
Revolt already has an agreement to launch in around 10 million Comcast homes, as part of a deal Comcast struck with regulators to offer more minority-focused channels.
Still, Revolt’s new distribution deal with TWC is a boost to its efforts to get advertisers on board with the music-themed channel.
Combs, who has a clothing line and vodka brand, hyped Revolt yesterday at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, saying he wants to challenge MTV with a pop-culture channel that covers music like ESPN covers sport.
In pitching the channel to marketers, however, he may have hit a sour note when he let slip that he “hates watching commercials.”
Diddy also suggested that his channel wouldn’t be right for all advertisers.
“It would be almost not right to get in a partnership with somebody when we know we can’t deliver the audience; the message isn’t going to resonate with our audience [of millennials],” he said.
“I think it’s a great idea, but there’s a lot of work to launch,” said Marc Morse, an ad buyer at RJ Palmer, adding that new channels need at least 15 million subscribers to attract interest from Madison Avenue.
A source said Revolt representatives have been reaching out to bankers to drum up additional financial support for the channel. A spokesman for Revolt said the channel was fully funded for launch, which has been pushed from July to October.
catkinson@nypost.com