In April 1976, the black-owned Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation purchased a 49 percent interest in the Mutual Black Network for a reported $850,000. Three years later, Sheridan bought the rest for $1 million and renamed it the Sheridan Broadcasting Network. When Mutual sold its interest, MBN had 89 affiliates, reaching 17 million black listeners daily – 70 percent of the U.S. black population.
Incidentally, the two black networks which started out as rivals in 1972 eventually became one: Sheridan merged with NBN in 1991 to form American Urban Radio Networks.