This one is from the
Philadelphia Inquirer. What was telling to me was Gadson's comment about how much it would cost to produce quality programming. What, you can't tap Viacom's deep pockets?
Sun, Mar. 17, 2002
Despite its critics, BET stays the course
The cable network was sold last year, but sexy music videos still rule.
By Annette John-Hall
Inquirer Staff Writer
Ever since Robert L. Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television in 1980, BET has come to mean many things to the many African Americans the cable network targets.
To its hundreds of thousands of viewers, BET means, as its snazzy slogan proclaims, Black Star Power. But to its many vocal critics, who decry its abundance of lecherous music videos and lack of quality programs, BET still stands for Bad Entertainment Television.
Many detractors hoped that BET's sale last year to mega-media conglomerate Viacom for a staggering $3 billion would make things better. But what's on screen has barely changed, while Johnson and a handful of his executives have grown richer.
BET's split-personality programming is still making folks angry. For every serious Ed Gordon news interview on BET Tonight, there are several demeaning doses of a computer-animated, jive-talking VJ, introducing mind-numbing videos on Cita's World.
While the network has drawn on Viacom-owned CBS to improve its news broadcasts, the bargain-basement formula of videos galore that helped deliver the highest ratings in BET's history last year will not be tampered with, says Debra L. Lee, president and chief operating officer.
"Viacom liked BET. They bought us because we were BET," she says.
Lee and Johnson each signed five-year contracts to stay, on the condition that "we would continue to run it the way it had been," Lee said. Johnson, 55, was unavailable for an interview.
At a time when the cable industry is suffering from the overall effects of a sluggish economy, BET continues to grow. It is offered in 71.4 million homes (including 9 million of the country's 12.85 million African American households), and so far this season it has averaged a 0.49 rating, which translates into 347,000 homes. That's up 14 percent from the previous season, according to the latest Nielsen figures.
Off-screen, the most recent change has rankled some Harlem civic leaders. Last week, the network said that it would move out of its studio on 106th Street in the predominantly black New York neighborhood and into midtown Manhattan's CBS Broadcast Center. That could mean its top-rated video show, 106 and Park, may have to get a new title.
On-screen, the most visible change has been in the nightly newscast, which moved from Washington to New York to take advantage of CBS's resources. CBS recruited Will J. Wright, a former vice president for news at WWOR in New York, to produce BET Nightly News, and BET hired Jacque Reid, formerly of CNN's Headline News, to anchor.
"Through CBS, we now have access to a full national set of correspondents," says Nina Henderson-Moore, BET's senior vice president for news and public affairs. "So we now have the ability to pick up feeds and communicate news from all over the world that is of interest to the African American community."
New BET-produced programs include Journeys in Black, a weekly biography series that premiered with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan last month, and four recent concert specials (BET 20th Anniversary, Harlem Block Party, 6th Annual Walk of Fame Celebration, Celebration of Gospel) that have proven to be ratings winners.
But chances are you won't see movie-quality original programming the caliber of Showtime's Soul Food or HBO's Oz (though Lee is negotiating with Viacom's Showtime for Soul Food reruns). Those shows cost up to $1 million an episode to produce, too rich for BET's budget, says Curtis Gadson, executive vice president for entertainment programming.
"We have a profit objective," explains Kelli Lawson, executive vice president for marketing, "and we have to deliver. It's as simple as that."
Music-video programming is the cash cow BET milks for its biggest profit. Record companies provide the videos free, BET provides a range of shows on which to showcase them, young viewers jack up the ratings, and advertisers buy time on shows where they can reach that valued audience.
That explains the seven rhythm-and-blues and rap video shows that make up 49 percent of the network's programming.
That lineup remains a problem for the occasional viewers who say they would otherwise be more loyal.
"I do like some of the videos, but at some point it becomes a question of saturation," says Yvonne Bynoe, president of Urbanthinktank.com, a virtual forum on culture, economics and politics for the post-civil rights generation. "What BET offers is not balanced."
The firing a year ago of Tavis Smiley, host of BET Tonight and a nationally known activist, prompted renewed criticism of the network's content. Viewers, exhorted by syndicated radio host Tom Joyner, whose morning show features Smiley twice a week, flooded Viacom's New York offices with thousands of phone calls, faxes and e-mails.
And in December, the National Pan-Hellenic Council, a group of black sororities and fraternities representing more than a million upwardly mobile African Americans, threatened to boycott if BET didn't take some of the "distasteful" videos off the air. "We're watching to see what changes have been made and will be made," says Norma Solomon White, council president. Lee says BET will continue a "dialogue" with the council.
Lee points out that for years a committee of network executives has reviewed videos for offensive content. No violent videos are aired on BET, she says. No gunplay. No isolated female body parts.
"But," Lee adds, "it's a delicate balance. . . . The real driver of this has got to be the audience."
Through it all, BET rolls on. Its corporate offices in northeast Washington are the epitome of Afrocentric chic, with Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence prints on the walls and wooden African sculptures perched on pedestals in the hallways.
"Our thing has always been about growth, about how do you get to the next phase," Lee says. ". . . We were the first black company to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. There are 350 black folks who work here. . . . To say that BET doesn't care about the black community, to say that all we care about is the bottom line, is ridiculous."
Lee notes that the network has sponsored a national awareness campaign on HIV/AIDS and contributed millions to various black organizations, including the United Negro College Fund, the NAACP, and the Urban League.
If Lee, 47, sounds a little weary, it's not because she's broke. She is one of several executives who became instant millionaires when Johnson - who started BET with a $15,000 bank loan and a $500,000 investment from cable mogul John C. Malone - took the company private in 1998. Yet she is careful about money, and thinks nothing of turning down her son's request for a pair of $200 Jordans.
A Harvard-trained lawyer, Lee was the sole member of the legal department when she started at BET 16 years ago. She has since learned that the people who complain about BET aren't necessarily the ones who watch BET.
Take Comic View, a showcase for up-and-coming stand-up comedians. For 10 years, it has been BET's highest-rated show, averaging a 1.04 rating, which translates into 735,000 viewers.
"Black folks just like it," Lee shrugs. "As much as we say we want PBS, that's what we watch - comedy, music and sitcoms. It's entertainment. It's like white folks watching King of the Hill, Friends or Seinfeld."
Lee's own tastes sometimes clash with what BET viewers want. Fifteen years ago, she bought the highly acclaimed series Frank's Place in an effort to upgrade BET's lineup. The thoughtful drama-comedy with a predominantly black cast starring Tim Reid had been praised by critics but floundered in the CBS ratings. Frank's Place was sure to be a hands-down success with an all-black audience. Right?
"Nobody watched it," Lee sighs.
The overriding challenge for the nation's first and most visible black network hasn't changed: How does BET navigate between its social responsibilty and its bottom line?
Sociologist and author Earl Ofari Hutchinson says, "BET has abdicated its responsibility to its African American viewers . . . and it will only get worse. BET has never felt that it's had to be acceptable to African Americans in terms of carrying the torch for political and social issues."
Lee N. Thornton, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland and a former CBS correspondent, believes the blame rests not only with BET, but also on other blacks who criticize it yet continue to watch.
"We need to be more entreprenuerial so we don't have a major psychological stakeholding in something that wasn't 'ours' to begin with," Thornton says, pointing to such fledgling black-owned cable networks as the Major Broadcasting Co. and New Urban Entertainment as potential alternatives.
Lee lets the critcism roll off her. Her contract with Viacom runs out in 2006. By then, she predicts, BET should be well-positioned to enjoy even more success.
"We've built this company as an institution in the black community," she says. "We've created opportunities. . . . Bob Johnson is the first black billionaire. Is there something wrong with that? That's a wonderful thing. That's what being good and profitable is all about."
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