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Gospel Music Channel Nears 45 Million Subscribers, Posts Huge VOD Usage Gains, Becomes Fastest-Growing Gospel/Christian Music Web Site

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 13:21 CDT

ATLANTA, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Gospel Music Channel (GMC) announced today that upcoming and recent system launches continued the network's accelerated growth and will push GMC to the 45 million household mark. GMC's accelerated expansion extends to Video-On-Demand (VOD) and Online as well: GMC's VOD viewership more than doubled in 2008 culminating with two million views in the fourth quarter while gospelmusicchannel.com has become the world's fastest-growing web site for Gospel/Christian music fans.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090401/CL92971LOGO)

Continued Subscriber Gains -- GMC will begin the second quarter by gaining nearly 1.4 million subscribers as Time Warner Cable will launch the channel in Milwaukee and Green Bay WI and in two Ohio cities - Dayton and Columbus. Other new and recent GMC launches include: BrightHouse Central Florida Division; Comcast systems in: Florida (Fort Myers and Naples); Missouri (Independence); Kansas (Olathe); Maryland and Virginia (Prince William and Rockville; Calvert County, Annapolis, Charles County/Waldorf, Anne Arundel, Reston, Alexandria and Arlington), and New Mexico (Las Cruces); two Knology systems in Florida (Panama City and Clearwater) and Catawba Services in South Carolina (Rock Hill). Gospel Music Channel has more than doubled its distribution in the past 15 months, having begun 2008 with approximately 22 million subscribers. GMC's on-going distribution gains continue to make it one of the fastest-growing networks in the industry. GMC is now distributed in all of the country's 210 DMAs.

VOD Growth - GMC more than doubled its VOD views in 2008 with nearly two million views in the fourth quarter, and one million views in December alone as GMC became "America's Christmas Channel." VOD views were spread across multiple programs and genres, reflecting the broad interests of GMC's audience. (Rentrak & Co. data)

Web Site Growth -- GospelMusicChannel.com more than doubled unique visitors during 2008 and has grown an additional 57% for Q1 2009. (Source: Google) This growth, which now places GospelMusicChannel.com among the largest Christian and Gospel music sites in the world, is unmatched among similar sites (Source: compete.com). During 2008, gospelmusicchannel.com created and launched a new mobile website (WAP) specially optimized to deliver promotional content to mobile phones. This new service, available by going to www.gmcmobile.tv from any web/WAP capable mobile phone, provides many of the features from GospelMusicChannel.com, including news, reviews, exclusive articles and daily programming schedules. In addition, users with phones that support video streaming can access news and music videos right from their handsets. GMC also launched SMS (TXT message) voting for their annual Gospel Video Music Awards in 2008.

Gospel Music Channel (http://www.gospelmusicchannel.com) is the first and only advertiser-supported television network dedicated to the rich history and contemporary sounds of gospel music, its many styles and artists. GMC is the fastest-growing network in television and can be seen in 45 million homes on various cable systems around the country and on DIRECTV on channel 338.

SOURCE Gospel Music Channel

Source: PR Newswire

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