UP Entertainment Celebrates 20 Years: The Destination For Uplifting Content Continues To Evolve

Uplifting, entertaining and inspiring. Trustworthy and reliable. Passionate and diverse. Authentic, safe and relatable.

This is the “secret sauce,” so to speak, and the intentions of the creative minds at UP Entertainment, which for the audience and the advertising community offers an uplifting environment for family-friendly content. Celebrating 20 years, UP Entertainment has morphed from a singular destination with family in mind to a growing family of brands — all dedicated to an audience referred to as “Upsiders” — across cable, satellite and streaming platforms. And it continues to evolve, this year partnering with Minno, the faith-based children’s streaming service, to offer a family entertainment bundle.

In honor of the two-decade mark, UP Entertainment has designated Wednesday, October 30th as National Uplift Someone Day. In a partnership with the national charity organization, Feeding America, the underlying theme is to spread joy and appreciation by finding a way to uplift at least one person.

“When we launched UP Entertainment with Gospel Music Channel (now UPtv) on October 30, 2004, our mission was to uplift others through quality entertainment,” said Charley Humbard, UP Entertainment Founder and CEO. “Then, and now, people sometimes just need a dependable place to go for content that makes them feel good. That’s the need we started serving, and we now represent ten brands that do just that.”

“Twenty years later, as creators of the category of UPlifting Entertainment, we are ensuring that our purpose reaches beyond the television screen into communities nationwide through National UPlift Someone Day, he said. “Whether it’s opening a door for someone, sending a thank you note or volunteering, I encourage everyone to participate in ways big and small to make a difference for someone else.”

For UP Entertainment, this random act of kindness is nothing new.

From the Beginning

Firmly entrenched as a positive destination and a place families can trust, the seeds for UP Entertainment were planted in the form of Gospel Music Channel as a showcase for Christian-themed music.

“Growing up as the son of Rex Humbard, I traveled the world for the first 20 years of my life with my father, and he had a ministry, but music was always front and center. So, we had the greatest artists at the time. From Johnny and June Carter Cash to a young Amy Grant to Andre Crouch to Mahalia Jackson way back in the early years,” noted Charley Humbard. “And I remember the feeling of joy and unity, and the spirit of community that I felt.”

While working at Discovery Communications on Sept. 11, 2001, Humbard was moved to create a company that uplifts others in response to the tragic events of the day.

“People were hurting; they needed a destination to inspire then and remind them of the value of faith, family and relationships,” he said. “I grew up around music, I had a passion for it. And I understood different audience groups and marketing from my experience at Discovery building fanbase networks, working on their digital networks, and dealing with international. So, I brought those two worlds together and created Gospel Music Channel.”

In 2009, Gospel Music Channel was rebranded as GMC, a platform for general uplifting entertainment. In 2012, it spun-off two platforms: aspireTV, a celebration of black culture through entertainment (in a partnership with NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson); and g-Movies, the pioneer subscription service in faith and entertainment. Flash to 2013 and GMC became UPtv, which coincided with the expansion to a slate of original movies and series.

Moving forward, g-Movies transformed into UP Faith & Family (UPFF) in 2015, which at present has approximately 1.4 million subscribers. In 2016, aspireTV shifted its programming focus to lifestyle. In 2020, Cine Romántico launched as a FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channel dedicated to romance movies. And, in 2023, UP Entertainment entered into a shared services agreement with independent arts and culture-themed network Ovation.

GaitherTV+, meanwhile, was added to the streaming bundle as the destination for country, gospel, Gospel and Christian music concerts, specials and series. The aforementioned partnership with kids-targeted subscription streaming service Minno began this year. Also launched in 2024 is aspireTV+, a new subscription streaming service for Black culture and urban lifestyle entertainment.

“Early on, we saw something missing in the family space, which was to lean more into faith and values and beliefs with stories that we felt were real and relatable. This was not the perfect town or the perfect story. They were often stories of broken people and broken lives that, I think, resonated and really shaped our place and our space in the media landscape.”

“Back when we started, the word uplifting was something you might have heard in church, but not necessarily in mainstream,” he said. “And we wanted to normalize this form of storytelling.”

Over the Years

Family friendly-themed programming, of course, is not necessarily new. From the innocence of yesteryear care of comedies like Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet to the arrival of dramas The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie and eventually Touched by an Angel and 7th Heaven to the more recent – and socially relevant – This is Us, the escape into the fictional world of love and laughter and facing life in a supportive manner has kept us entertained for generations. But the value of its worth, however, has escalated through a brand like UP Entertainment. And, for an advertiser looking for a safe environment, the inherent value is the wide family reach.

“Family viewing has become more import to advertisers for a few reasons,” noted veteran media analyst Steve Sternberg, author of The Sternberg Report, which provides insights on television/video programming and audience behavior and viewing trends, among other subjects. “It helps provide a broader audience. There is less channel switching during commercials. And it is more likely that someone is in the room during ads when there is more co-viewing.”

“Families are looking for entertainment they can watch together,” he said.

Blending Linear and Digital

“Twenty years later, the business of broadcasting has evolved, particularly how we consume content. But I didn’t look at this and think we had to get into streaming just because linear was deteriorating,” noted Charley Humbard. “I accentuated what we had already built with an ecosystem where we can make a show, it can air in linear, it can move to streaming, it can move to FAST channels, and we can move it and serve the cable operators with their VOD platforms. There are now ways to monetize programming differently to help pay for it.”

“Technology will continue to progress the way we experience great entertainment,” he said. “And we will use all available platforms to accentuate our offerings.”

Coming Up at UP Entertainment

Celebrating the “Most Uplifting Christmas Ever,” UPtv Entertainment will offer 50 days of Christmas-themed programming featuring 13 premiere movies, new episodes of the unscripted series Small Town Christmas hosted by Megan Alexander, and the new Gaither music Christmas special, Gaither Vocal Band: New Star Shining. UP Faith & Family, meanwhile, begins Christmas on Nov. 1 with over 200 Christmas titles.

“Christmas is the time of year when families really come together and go out of their way to be kinder and to feel the joy that the season can bring,” said Hector Campos, SVP, content strategy and acquisition at UP Entertainment. “Our curated collection of uplifting movies provides a relaxing escape where not only will viewers see great holiday romances, but also they’ll get so much more as our movies highlight the true meaning of Christmas.”

UPtv will unveil two premiere movies in October – Snapshot of Love (premiered Oct. 6) and Return to Sender (premiering Oct. 27). In the regularly scheduled series department is the recent premiere of drama These Stones and the fifth season of police procedural Hudson & Rex on UP Faith & Family. And the “Power Players” hour of programming, focused on the Black Male lifestyle is now available on aspireTV, which features Style Kings and Cut to It in primetime. AspireTV will also premiere the Lantinx Christmas film Nochebuena on Friday, Dec. 6 at 9 p.m. ET as part of the network’s Holiday Homecoming celebration.

Additionally, and for a third year, UPtv will celebrate the season with a “Most Uplifting Christmas Ever” Sweepstakes. The grand prize winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize and an additional $10,000 will be donated to the charity of their choice by UPtv.

“The thing that you have to do as a brand is to continue to evolve and stay relevant and contemporary in your storytelling without losing the core values that you stand for,” said Charley Humbard. “We’re that light on the hill where people come to us because they know what we stand for. Twenty years later, I am proud of what we accomplished.”