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Yes, Soror Jali, Johnson is still associated with BET.
I also found this commentary on BET that mentions the COP. It came from the Boston Globe:
LIFE IN THE POP LANE
A black eye for black television
By Renee Graham, Globe Staff, 12/4/2001
Once, it was enough that something called Black Entertainment Television even existed.
It didn't matter that the channel aired only for a few hours each Friday night, and showed an old movie or a basketball game between two black colleges. No one complained that the broadcast was so raw it looked as if it were airing from somebody's mama's house. In BET's fledgling years, all viewers cared about was having a station to call their own - a cable channel dedicated, at least in theory, to programming specifically targeted to African-Americans.
When BET was born, any morsel of attention paid to underserved black viewers was worthy of applause. We watched because it was important to support the community, believing our loyalty would be rewarded with intelligent, entertaining programming by and for African-Americans.
Two decades later, there is little more to BET than faded good intentions and broken promises. Year after year, the cable channel has failed to become the major creative outlet many African-Americans once envisioned. Instead of innovative, socially significant programming, BET's schedule is laden with lousy rump-shaker rap videos and an endless parade of infomercials.
This is a standard BET moment: On Saturday, the network logo in the lower right-hand corner was adorned with a red ribbon for World AIDS Day; but dominating the screen was a bevy of gyrating women in Mr. Cheeks's ''Lights, Camera, Action'' video. A day later, the channel wasted more than eight hours of broadcast time with 30-minute and 60-minute paid commercials hawking unwanted-hair removers, ab-sculpting contraptions, get-rich-quick schemes, and snake-oil cure-alls.
Unlike the early days, it's no longer a matter of money and resources. BET is now part of Viacom, which also owns (among other entities) CBS, MTV, VH1, UPN, and Showtime. The station is now available in 70 million households - 31 million more than in 1993 - and is considered one of the cable industry's richest franchises. With the Viacom deal, BET founder Robert L. Johnson became America's first black billionaire.
But as the channel has prospered financially, its programming has become insignificant. Prominent African-Americans including the Rev. Al Sharpton and influential national radio show host Tom Joyner have been openly critical of BET for betraying its core audience. In his comic strip, ''Boondocks,'' cartoonist Aaron McGruder has taken numerous swipes at the station's weak programming. And the Council of Presidents, a coalition of leaders from national black fraternities and sororities, is scheduled to meet to discuss how best to address BET's shortcomings, especially its reliance on bootylicious videos in programs such as ''Rap City'' and ''Cita's World.'' They will not, however, call for a boycott.
Why not? Johnson has tuned out the complaints for years, and with little resistance, he and his BET cronies have sold out the very community they claim to serve by offering the most narrow, unchallenging programming imaginable.
It's especially aggravating since BET has all-too-brief flashes of the kind of channel it could and should be. In commemoration of World AIDS Day, there were several worthy programs examining the effects of the disease on the African-American community, as well as in Africa. Each Sunday, there's spritual uplift with ''Bobby Jones Gospel'' and ''Lift Every Voice,'' and Saturday's ''Teen Summit'' provides a forum for young people to discuss pertinent issues.
But these programs are more the exception than the rule - though such complaints irritate Johnson, who started the company in 1979 with a $15,000 loan. ''We are the only black network in town, so everybody has poured their burdens and obligations on BET, but we can't solve everybody's desires for BET,'' he said in a Forbes interview earlier this year. ''We have to be focused on running this as a profit-maximization business.''
In other words, it's all about the Benjamins. If you want substance, you'll have to go elsewhere. But if you're looking for concoctions to straighten hair, or videos filled with jingling, jangling women in tourniquet-tight clothing, then, man, has Robert Johnson got a cable channel for you.
If Johnson's main focus is running a ''profit-maximization'' business, then perhaps a BET boycott is the only viable answer. BET must be made to fulfill its potential with quality films to rival those produced by HBO, documentaries on historical and current events, and public-affairs programming as prominently displayed as the latest Jay-Z video.
After 20 years of dashed expectations, it's no longer good enough just to have a black cable channel. We're long overdue for an intellectually stimulating, culturally substantial cable channel that deserves to call itself Black Entertainment Television.
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