BIO Channel's BIO.com Celebrates Black History Month

NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Coming off its best month ever with over 5mm unique visitors in January, BIO.com, the official site of the BIO Channel, is celebrating Black History Month with all new mini bio videos of notable African Americans and hundreds of new photos and biographies of fascinating icons from the past and present. For the month of February, BIO and GetGlue.com invite visitors to celebrate these icons by checking-in to "BIO Black History on GetGlue" daily where they can unlock 29 notable icon stickers, a Black History Fact of the Day, mini bio videos and BIO Black History Shop discounts.

Known for its critically acclaimed video biographies, BIO has added a brand new collection of mini-biography videos about famous names in sports bringing its total number of Black History mini biography videos to over 40. New additions such as Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Magic Johnson and Serena Williams join popular mini biographies of a wide array of notables such as Rosa Parks, Jimi Hendrix, Dorothy Dandridge, Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Sidney Poitier and Michelle Obama.

Among the wealth of new additions in honor of Black History Month, BIO has expanded its renowned photo gallery collection with 16 additional galleries of iconic figures such as Billie Holiday and Etta James. Galleries are curated in entertaining and informative groupings such as Famous Lookalikes like Queen Latifah and Zora Neal Hurston, African-American Expats like Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, and Million Dollar Idea Makers like Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jams and Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker.

BIO has included over 500 famous figures in its Black History Groups, a dedicated section of BIO.com that illuminates the connections between notable people based on biographical characteristics such as first name, birth date, college, occupation, and nationality. Some notable African American Groups include famous black activists like Frederick Douglass, Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers, famous black scientists like Mae Jemison and George Washington Carver, black writers such as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin, and famous entertainers.

BIO Classroom, the educational hub of BIO.com http://www.biography.com/tv/classroom offers teachers and students an in depth, free resource for study guides, activities and discussion topics on famous African Americans. Interactive tours invite visitors inside the famous Apollo Theater, while the Interactive Timeline lets users click on images and video of historical events and offers quizzes, and fast facts, to round out the experience. 

Since the BIO.com relaunch in September 2011, traffic to the site has doubled, with a 112% overall increase in unique visitors. In addition to its record-breaking 5mm uniques, January was also BIO.com's best month on record for visits and page views, capturing 6.1 million visits and 7.1 million page views.

About A+E Networks Digital Media

A+E Networks Digital Media, a division of A&E Television Networks, LLC, is a leading provider of digital content for properties including History, Lifetime, A&E, Biography, Lifetime Moms and Roiworld. More than 20 million unique visitors per month engage with the company's digital brands across 14 properties, and millions more consume the content via syndication, social media and mobile.

About BIO.com

BIO.com offers more than 6,000 profiles of notable people through the ages with comprehensive text biographies supplemented by components including Quick Facts, Best Known For, Video, Photos, Quotes and more. Video biographies include more than 150 full episodes of the Emmy® award-winning documentary series on people as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Twain, Barack Obama and Kate Middleton, and more than 200 "mini" video bios. With a highly active and engaged Facebook community of over 245K fans and an ever-growing Twitter presence, BIO is social and shareable.

About BIO

At BIO, we prove that the truth about people is always more entertaining than fiction. BIO is about real people and their real lives: up close and personal, gritty and provocative, always unfiltered.  BIO original series uncover the real drama in people stories: everyday situations with a twist; celebrities going off-script; people-centric crime stories and paranormal events. In addition to being the exclusive home to the Emmy-Award winning "Biography®" series, the dynamic blend of original and acquired series on BIO includes "I Survived…," "Celebrity Ghost Stories," and "Psychic Investigators". The 24-hour network is now available in more than 55 million households. 

SOURCE A+E Networks Digital Media