True Black Television readies an all-new TBT Thursdays

At the beginning of this year, True Black Television made the shift from being a reruns wasteland to an original programming powerhouse. The first original programs to air on the network were “Living Lavish,” an animated sitcom and “Agape,” a soap opera. These two programs filled up Thursdays on the network.

Quickly, the two programs became quite popular over the internet television scene. Due to the popularity of the programs, the network marketed the newly-formed programming block as TBT Thursdays. Over the course of the spring of 2009, the network was able to acquire the first-run rights to many other sitcoms.

In the second season of TBT Thursdays, the programming consisted of “Can Life Get Any Worse Than This?,” “The Way We Live,” “Kiki & Claude,” and “Riviera Beach.” Once all of those programs ended, the block went defunct. Since that time, TBT Mondays had a nice run with the Jaleel White sitcom, “Road to the Altar” and “Rundown & McRee.”

Recently, True Black Television reached out to Seaton Smith to acquire the first-run rights to his sitcom, “Annoy Charlie Smith, Inc.” the special pilot episode aired on December 3, 2009. The series will fill the Thursday night lineup, beginning on December 24, 2009. It will be paired with the second season of “Rundown & McRee.”

These will be the first original programs to air on Thursdays since “Can Life Get Any Worse Than This?,” which will now air on Wednesdays on True Black Television, now that its spin-off, “The Amina Wilson Show” will also begin airing. Both the series premiere of “Amina” and the second season of “Can Life…” will begin airing early next year.

The network is also in-talks with some other content creators about them possibly developing some programs for the network. Those programs would probably air on Thursday, too. Currently, there are two sitcoms that are in development for True Black Television and they will probably end up airing on Thursdays, too.