Ex-SI publisher Manoj Bhargava shuts down TV networks he’d planned to combine with Arena Group

The strangeness around former Sports Illustrated publisher Arena Group and its majority owner (and former interim CEO) Manoj Bhargava continues.

On Friday, as per Nick Manes of Crain’s Business Detroit , Bhargava suddenly announced that the free advertising-supported streaming TV networks NewsNet and SportsNewsHighlights he owned through Bridge Media (which were repeatedly cited as key elements he would combine with Arena) will shut down permanently, with more than 80 people laid off as a result:

Around that news , many of those staffers took to social media platforms to comment on the move. Here’s some of that:

Strangely, both NewsNet and SportsNewsHighlights still had seemingly live feeds on air Sunday afternoon, with the correct time and some current news stories and sports scores displayed on the tickers. However, the actual on-air content seemed to be from several days ago, including a national weather report for Thursday, a business report on Meta earnings (released Wednesday after market close), a news report on a planned plea deal for Khalif Sheik Muhammad (which was revoked Friday night ), and a sports report on Thursday’s USA-Belgium Olympic women’s basketball clash.

NewsNet was founded by Eric Wotila in 2017 , with Bhargava buying a majority stake in it in January 2022 and launching the similarly formatted SportsNewsHighlights later that year. The sudden shutdowns of NewsNet and SportsNews highlights are odd, as Bhargava frequently spoke about their importance to his wider media efforts and his goal of combining them with Arena content and other Bridge Media content. Now, he’s dramatically reversed course, and done so in an unusual way, immediately pulling the plug rather than publicly seeking a buyer or investors. Here’s more from Manes’ story on this at Crain’s Business Detroit :

The company announced Friday that both networks would shut down permanently, resulting in the layoffs of 80 employees. A lack of dedicated audience was the reason for the ceasing of operations, according to Bhargava.

“We believed people would want to watch a clean, non-bias news network, but we were wrong,” Bhargava, owner of parent company Bridge Media, said in a statement sent to Crain’s. “Without a large audience, we just couldn’t continue to lose money. We hired the best people and talent, and we appreciate their hard work and effort. But we just couldn’t continue.”

Both networks, which were part of Bhargava’s Bridge News LLC, were free ad-supported channels that were viewable over the air on 150 U.S. stations and on over 35 digital streaming TV services, according to the release.

At the time the network began ramping up operations more than two years ago, Bhargava cited rising advertising costs for his energy drink brand as the major impetus for acquiring the stations.

“For me, it’s more of a media company than a news company,” Bhargava said at the time.

As noted there, Bhargava is the billionaire founder of 5-Hour Energy. He first announced plans to buy a controlling stake in Arena last summer (back when they still had SI rights), actually took control last fall , and then went through a mess where SI owner Authentic Brands Group revoked Arena’s publishing rights and gave them to Minute Media (amidst alleged sabotage from Arena during the transition ). That’s led to an array of still-pending litigation, including claims Bhargava “ behaved like a gangster .”

It’s unclear how closely Bridge Media is tied to Arena (which Bhargava invested $12 million more in in February ) at this point. Bridge’s corporate page , which has Bhargava as founder and CEO, only mentions these two networks, Bridge News, Travelhost, and Driven. And Arena’s leadership page no longer lists Bhargava, and their brands page doesn’t mention anything on Bridge; it covers the sports titles they do still have (Athlon Sports and The Spun), The Street Finance Media Group, the Parade Lifestyle Media Group, and the Men’s Journal Lifestyle Media Group (which has a number of outdoor sports magazines and websites). But last August’s “ binding letter of intent ” for Bhargava’s initial controlling stake in Arena mentioned a lot of “combining” of Bridge assets:

-The Arena Group Holdings, Inc., a technology platform and media company home to more than 265 brands, including Sports Illustrated, TheStreet, Parade Media (“Parade”), Men’s Journal, and HubPages, today announced that it has signed a binding letter of intent with Simplify Inventions, LLC (“Simplify”) and its founder, Manoj Bhargava, founder of 5-hour ENERGY®, to acquire certain assets of its subsidiary Bridge Media Networks, a dynamic and innovative, privately held media group with two national television networks distributed across more than 100 owned and affiliated Over-The-Air (“OTA”) stations, 35 OTT, CTV agreements, and multiple MVPD and cable agreements, creating a well-capitalized, growing media leader with digital, commerce, print and video capabilities all supported by a unified technology platform.

“Simultaneously, this proposed transaction will extend the maturity of our debt by three years at a very favorable rate, providing us optionality and a more stable foundation from which to operate.”

The existing assets of The Arena Group will be combined with the video programming, distribution, and production assets of Bridge Media Networks, including its two 24-hour networks, NEWSnet and Sports News Highlights, as well as the automotive and travel properties Driven and TravelHost, further expanding The Arena Group’s vertical business ecosystems.

Another interesting bit comes in a rare in-depth interview Bhargava did with Dale Buss for Detroit business magazine DBusiness . That was published on May 1 this year, so after Minute got control of SI from Arena, but there was likely some print-imposed lag time there, as that piece had Arena still publishing SI (but did have some details on the revoked license, so it probably went to print in the interim period between January revocation and March license transfer). But it had this on the TV networks:

The reticent $5-billion man from Farmington Hills is now running a publicly held company in the high-profile media business after committing a total of $110 million last year to acquire a 65 percent share of Arena Group Holdings, which is home to more than 265 brands including icons such as Sports Illustrated, Men’s Journal, and Parade.

Bhargava is blending Arena’s operations with a TV news network and other media entities he already started, hoping to create synergies among the combined digital, broadcast, and print brands and platforms, and planning to model a new type of relationship with advertisers like his 5-hour Energy brand.

…“We get up every morning, work hard all day, have a lot of fun, do some good in the world, and start over tomorrow,” says Vince Bodiford, a former Gannett newspaper executive who is CEO of Bhargava’s Bridge Media Networks, the company merging with Arena, and serves as his main spokesman.

And there’s more in there on that idea of Bhargava seeing buying media outlets as a cheap way to promote his products, and how he saw Bridge as a key part of that:

“Media companies have become so enamored with the delivery and distribution technology that they’ve forgotten their customers — the advertisers,” Bhargava says. “We buy advertising for 5-hour, and from when we started 15 or 20 years ago, it costs 10 to 20 times as much now. It’s so expensive. And there’s so much noise (in advertising). The noise has doubled. To get through all of that, our media people said it has become cost-prohibitive.”

…Since 2021 Bhargava and Bodiford have been cobbling together a huge TV- and online-news operation in Farmington Hills called Bridge Media Network. At the moment it consists mainly of NewsNet, and the Sports News and the Highlights channels. In large part, the enterprise is aimed at filling a void once occupied by the now-defunct CNN Headline News, but without the ideological liberal twist. NewsNet’s tag line is, “News as it used to be.”

“We thought of news and said why not do something unique?” explains Bhargava. “Everybody says the same thing: We don’t have news anymore, just opinion. It’s not even rational or common-sense opinion.”

…Even with a much bigger cudgel to achieve his advertising aims for 5-hour than he had just a few months ago, Bhargava pledges that adding Arena and its built-out brands and operations to his stable won’t blow up Bridge Media.

“This is good for both companies,” he says. “There are many more win-win opportunities to come.” And his recent moves in media “Are just a start. It’s going to be fun.”

Well, things don’t appear to have worked out well for Bridge Media or the people who worked there. It’s not clear yet how much, if any, of that is about the combination with Arena (and with a now-sans-SI Arena, which dramatically changes that company’s stable and prospects) and how much of this is Bhargava just deciding the TV networks weren’t going to transition to profitable (he told Buss he had three profitable businesses and 11 startups on the go, with these networks presumably in the startup category, so perhaps he’s focusing on other ones).

It’s also not clear if the litigation over the Arena-Authentic breakup and the transfer of SI to Minute played any role here. There’s certainly some potential exposure to damages there. And it’s possible that could be affecting Bhargava’s media plans. It is remarkable that these networks went from a core piece of his publicly discussed strategy to shut down instantly in just a few months, though.

Regardless of exactly what happened here, this certainly wasn’t a fun ending for the people who worked at Bhargava’s TV operations. And a sudden, instant shutoff wasn’t a fun way for them to find out their jobs had suddenly vanished.

[ Crain’s Business Detroit , WCRZ , DBusiness ]

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