Urban One Announces Leadership Change At TV One

Michelle Rice Named New Interim General Manager of the Network

Urban One CEO Alfred C. Liggins, today announced the transition of leadership at TV One. Effective immediately, Michelle Rice will be the Interim General Manager with full management oversight of the 13-year-old entertainment and lifestyle network targeting Black adults. She succeeds Brad Siegel, former President of TV One. The announcement was made after Siegel, who served the network for two and a half years, recently informed the company of his departure and announced to the TV One leadership team today that he will be leaving the network. Urban One, Inc., formerly Radio One, is the parent company of TV One.

Rice was one of the inaugural employees of TV One, hired as the Vice President, Distribution Strategy and Operations.  She was later promoted to Senior Vice President and ultimately to Executive Vice President, Content Distribution and Marketing.   In this position, Rice was responsible for approximately 50% of the network's revenue and has successfully negotiated all of the network's affiliate deals and increased its content distribution across all platforms. Rice came to TV One with a wealth of progressive leadership experience in cable television spanning affiliate sales and marketing at BET, NBC Cable Networks and iNDemand.

Rice is a graduate of Temple University with a degree in Journalism and also holds an M.A. degree in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. She is an alumnus of Women in Cable and Telecommunications' (WICT) Betsy Magness Leadership Institute, Senior Executive Summit program at Stanford University and the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications' Executive Leadership Development Program.

Alfred Liggins said, "Michelle is business savvy, understands our demographic and has the energy, vision and discipline to position TV One for the future. She has the respect of our industry and I believe in her ability to provide leadership for our network during this time of intense competition, increased platform availability and growing content targeting the Black viewer."

Reflecting upon Siegel's tenure at TV One, Liggins said, "Brad has made many valuable contributions to the network during his tenure and we're grateful for his work ethic, creativity, professionalism and support of our mission to inform, inspire and entertain the Black community. He's also an all-around good guy and we wish him well in his future endeavors."