Soul Beat TV was never very polished, and the Oakland cable station's cash-flow problems were a fact even casual viewers couldn't miss. The commercials often resembled "Saturday Night Live" skits, ...

OAKLAND (BCN) -- Bay Area residents can take a step back in time Friday evening to celebrate Soul Beat Day in Oakland at an event honoring Soul Beat, the nation's first Black-owned cable TV network.

If you lived in Oakland in the ’80s and ’90s, chances are you turned on your television and witnessed history in the making—even if it was 3am and you’d just switched the channel to a call-in show ...