Ever sense that something was missing from the streaming-TV experience? The gap has been filled: Black Netflix is here.
Launching Feb. 1, Unify bills itself as “the only premium online video streaming service providing TV and film entertainment geared towards the African-American audience.”
For $5.99 a month, you can enjoy access to an expanding library of entertainment offerings from the 1960s to today. (If you buy a year’s subscription for $70, the company is offering three months free.)
And unlike Netflix, Unify is starting out with its own original programming: It’s airing a 24-part series called “The Legacy: 75 Years of Blacks on Television.” The first four episodes are already up on unifyme.tv.
For now, though, Unify’s offerings seem a bit sparse, though it does offer “The Flip Wilson Show.” (Wilson, dubbed “TV’s first black superstar” by Time in 1972, parlayed his role on the sketch-comedy show “Laugh-In” to his own variety hour, which ran on NBC from 1970 to 1974.)
Unify will also be streaming such other popular (if dated) TV shows as “In Living Color” (1990-94), which gave us the Wayans brothers, Jamie Foxx and Jim Carrey, and “New York Undercover” (1994-98) as well as movies like “The Best Man” (2005).
That may not be a lot to start, but CEO and founder Donahue Tuitt promises much more in the future as the service wins support from customers: “Black shows and movies have made Hollywood billions of dollars,” he says on the streaming service’s website, adding that Unify “is now bringing them to our communities as a means to entertain and empower us. Our service is also serving the people. That is a huge difference.”