Comcast and Time Warner Cable’s proposed merger is putting a chill on the growth plans of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Revolt TV, The Post has learned.
The music channel, which will celebrate its first year in operation next month, is having trouble expanding its reach beyond its original 25 million household base because the consolidation in the cable industry has made it a lot harder to convince other cable companies to pick the channel up.
The lack of growth has put Revolt in a severe cash crunch, several TV industry executives told The Post.
Cable channels typically cost around $100 million to get launched. Without additional carriage, Revolt TV is finding it challenging to bring in a wider swath of advertisers.
“Like most start-ups, you have challenges of growing the business,” CEO Keith Clinkscales said in an interview on Thursday.
“The good news is that we had deals in place with Comcast and Time Warner Cable,” Clinkscales said. “They have been excellent partners. However, the merger discussions caused the whole industry to slow down. There’s a general wait and see on a lot of things.”
The move by viewers and content providers to Internet-delivered video isn’t helping either, he said.
On the search for new funding, the CEO said, “We have talks, we are a growing network and independent, and it’s prudent to look for sources of funding and content development. We’re making sure to find the best ways to optimize what we have.”
Ironically, it was an earlier merger — Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal — that led to Comcast voluntarily committing to carrying the channel in 2012 as part of an initiative to carry minority-owned channels. It helped Revolt TV get off the ground — as did Time Warner Cable.
Now, it is a second mega-merger that is slowing Revolt’s growth.
In May, Combs said: “We’re following the footsteps of ESPN and CNN.”
Clinkscales believes that Revolt TV offers something most advertisers and distributors find attractive: young viewers. Having Combs as an owner has helped bring in advertisers such as auto giant Fiat, Clinkscales said.
Revolt TV is owned by Combs Enterprises and Highbridge Principal Strategies, a unit of J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
With the delayed growth, “they’re so off business plan right now,” one source told The Post. “They have to find outside investors.”
Earlier this year, Diddy was part of the bidding for MSG channel, Fuse, which was later sold for $226 million to NuvoTV in a deal that included Diddy’s ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez.
Despite Revolt’s cash squeeze, Diddy remains one of the most successful and wealthiest hip-hop artists, with an interest in Bad Boy Records, which is now part of Universal Music Group’s Interscope, and he is the face of Ciroc vodka.
This week, he bought a $40 million estate in Los Angeles.