[Steeltrap]

A bit of what BET is up to these days.

Black Entertainment Television Moving Out Of Harlem

(New York-AP, March 14, 2002) - Two years after
arriving in Harlem with great fanfare, Black
Entertainment Television announced it was swapping its
uptown digs for a midtown address _ much to the
chagrin of African-American business and political
leaders.

"We were disappointed about the news," Terry Lane,
chief executive of the Upper Manhattan
Empowerment Zone, said Thursday. "Given the culturally
specific programming that BET does, it seemed logical
that Harlem would be its home."

Instead, the black-oriented network was relocating to
the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street after
breaking off negotiations for a bigger space about 20
blocks north of its current Harlem location.

Both CBS and BET are owned by Viacom, which purchased
Black Entertainment Television in November 2000 for
nearly $3 billion.

"Harlem had a great pride in its selection by BET,"
said U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, whose district includes
the neighborhood. "There's no question that we, more
than CBS or downtown, exemplify what the station is
supposed to stand for."

City officials were in talks with BET to anchor its
Gotham Plaza project at 125th Street and Lexington
Avenue. The new location would have included a street
level studio similar to those of NBC in Rockefeller
Center or ABC in Times Square, and expanded on the
current space at 106th Street and Park Avenue.

"I thought it was a done deal," Rangel said of that
plan. "We did all the celebrating as though it had
happened."

But Lane said officials at the empowerment zone _
which had helped lure BET uptown two years ago with a
variety of tax breaks _ discovered the network was
breaking off talks through a press release.

BET had initially moved to Harlem several months prior
to the Viacom purchase.

A BET spokesman did not return calls for comment. But
Rangel said he had spoken to BET founder and chairman
Robert Johnson, who had assured him that "the door's
not as closed on this deal as I thought."

In a statement released late Wednesday, BET president
and chief operating officer Debra Lee said the network
would "continue to look for programming opportunities
in Harlem when feasible."

The network will also "remain open to the possibility
of office space and production facilities in Harlem
should our future business needs dictate additional
expansion," Lee said. No timetable for the move
downtown was announced.
The network said its move was necessary to find more
space for its news and music programs. That did little
to assuage the hard feelings of supporters of the
abandoned Harlem studio.

"We are," Rangel said, "terribly disappointed."

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)