Dr. Phil‘s Merit Street Media may be effectively dead, but his Envoy Media Co. is just beginning.
Just two weeks after Merit Street filed for bankruptcy protection and sued its distribution partner Trinity Broadcasting, TV host Dr. Phil McGraw has launched an entirely new venture called Envoy Media Co. While the new company will share some similarities to what Merit Street delivered, it will have a user-generated content twist.
Envoy Media will include “live, balanced news, original entertainment programming, and immersive viewer experiences,” including library programming and original shows from McGraw and his friend and Merit Street collaborator Steve Harvey, per a news release.
Notably, however, it will also include tech in its app that will “provide an opportunity for citizen journalists to share news and stories from their communities while seamlessly integrating curated user-generated content on a national scale.”
The company says that distribution agreements (Envoy will have a linear component launching later this month in addition to its streaming effort) as well as talent deals will be announced in the coming days and weeks. The company will operate out of a 50,000-square-foot studio and office space in the Dallas area (which was also Merit Street’s home base).
“As always, my commitment and that of the Envoy network team is to focus on real people, facing real challenges, seeking real solutions,” said McGraw in a statement. “By talking about things that matter to people who care, presenting facts, encouraging people to think critically, they can make up their own minds. Our disruptive technology will engage Envoy viewers at an unprecedented level in real time.”
McGraw’s Merit Street filed for Chapter 11 and sued Trinity earlier this month, alleging that the Christian broadcasting company breached its contract with his firm. Merit TV’s linear channel struggled in the year-plus it was producing original programming, averaging under 50,000 viewers in primetime for most of that time. The channel currently is populated by reruns of McGraw’s various shows.
Merit Street is still running reruns, but not new content. Given the proceedings, it will likely be dropped by its distribution partners.
“Trinity Broadcasting Network is being sued by Merit Street Media for failing to provide clearly agreed-upon national distribution and other significant foundational commitments critical to the network’s continuing success and viability,” a Merit Street spokesperson said at the time. “The suit is part of a restructuring proceeding also initiated by MSM.”