TORONTO – Independent broadcaster Channel Zero told staff today it will close down its combat sports channel Fight Now at the end of the month.
“After a great deal of soul searching and the extraordinary efforts of the team on Fight Now, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue this service on June 30, 2014,” Channel Zero president and COO Cal Millar wrote in a memo to all staff today.
Despite securing carriage deals with some U.S. MSOs (most notably on Cablevision and Dish Network), the sports TV environment is getting notably tougher, wrote Millar. “We have been working on this project for more than five years and began broadcasting just over three years ago. Unfortunately the environment has proved more difficult than we could have ever reasonably have expected. There has been more industry consolidation (Comcast/Time Warner and more recently, DirecTV and AT&T), increased retrans fees and declining video margins. As a result, we have not attained sufficient subscriber distribution to make this a viable business in the long term.”
Four employees will be let go and others affected will be redeployed within Channel Zero.
“We should all be very proud of the accomplishments that we did achieve and some of the excellent coverage we have provided to our small, but loyal audiences,” added Millar.
