Forbes Magazine and the Robert Johnson Cover Story

[nikki25]

Folks,

For a while, we had been discussing the current BET programming structure post the Viacom acquisition, positing that the programs are largely misrepresentative of the African-American culture. About a week ago, I read an article in Forbes Magazine wherein Mr. Johnson was the cover story (October, 2001). With the purchase, he has been made the first black billionaire.

Here are some points of the article:

*People shouldn't judge the network for what it is not. Judge it for what it really is.
*He compared the network with Viacom's other network, MTV, by stating that no one questions MTV for its portrayal of white culture, so why must BET be held up to such a standard.
*The article stated that Tavis Smiley was a low-rated talk show. When, we all know that the show was the highest rated show on the network. Perhaps this comparison was to network TV on the whole.

At any rate, did any one else view this article? What were your thoughts?

[Steeltrap]

I did view that article. It didn't surprise me because I always sensed that Robert Johnson's main concern was getting the caiche in his tillers, programming be damned.

I'm not a reader of Forbes most of the time -- I prefer BusinessWeek, which does a better job of keeping the cheerleading out. I got the impression that Forbes felt that Johnson was giving the marketplace what it wanted and that Johnson's critics should keep their mouth shut.

This is why someone with money should find a way to put together another CNN aimed at the black community. There's also an earlier thread on GC about this, but I can't remember whether it's on AKA Ave. or DST Blvd.

[lovelyivy84]

Originally posted by nikki25
Folks,


*People shouldn't judge the network for what it is not. Judge it for what it really is.
*He compared the network with Viacom's other network, MTV, by stating that no one questions MTV for its portrayal of white culture, so why must BET be held up to such a standard.

At any rate, did any one else view this article? What were your thoughts?

That channel really is a cesspool. It IS the prime place to go if you want to see black women exploited as sex objects. Umm, Uncut? WTF?

And as for MTV, the name of the channel is not WPTV (White people tv). When you purport to be the media outlet that targets and represents black people, then dammit we are going to hold you to a higher standard! If you can't handle that, then getting out of the business is a great idea!

I have nothing but contempt for him or his network. I wish they would change the name, because it fa sho -sorry, for sure- does not represent black thought or culture!

He is so full of it.

[nikki25]

Originally posted by Steeltrap
This is why someone with money should find a way to put together another CNN aimed at the black community. There's also an earlier thread on GC about this, but I can't remember whether it's on AKA Ave. or DST Blvd.

We talked about that here on this forum.

The article stunned me to no end, though. I couldn't believe how freely he disclosed his intentions.

Also, thanks for the heads up about Forbes. I wondered why they felt the need to persuade me that Johnson's move was really a good one. The article left me a bit salty.

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by nikki25


We talked about that here on this forum.

The article stunned me to no end, though. I couldn't believe how freely he disclosed his intentions.

Also, thanks for the heads up about Forbes. I wondered why they felt the need to persuade me that Johnson's move was really a good one. The article left me a bit salty.

I hear that. I'm a business journalist and have to read these publications to keep up. I have respect for capitalism, but the tone of that article was a bit much.

[Ideal08]

Originally posted by lovelyivy84
And as for MTV, the name of the channel is not WPTV (White people tv). When you purport to be the media outlet that targets and represents black people, then dammit we are going to hold you to a higher standard! If you can't handle that, then getting out of the business is a great idea!

He is so full of it.

Ditto.

[Exquisite5]

Since, we're on the subject I thought it was a good place and time to mention that at the NPHC Nat'l Convention in Philly last month the Council of Presidents, chaired by our beloved Soror Norma S. White announced the NPHC org and member boycott of BET because of its post-acquisition programming. They are also unpleased by the Tavist Smiley situation, and he has been informed of the boycott.

Also, when the Council of Presidents requested a meeting with the heads of BET they were granted the meeting, but instead of being able to address the wishes they called the meeting for, the BET execs dominated the meeting with a company "agenda" and, apparently, were very rude to the Council of Presidents. As a result, the Council of Presidents calls for the members of all 9 affiliate organizations to boycott BET until a formal apology is made and programming is improved, and more properly reflects black culture.

I already, wasn't the biggest fan of BET so a boycott isn't that hard for me to take part in. What do you think? Will it work?

FYI..This also includes local chapters participating in HITS from the Streets when he tours college campuses.

[Steeltrap]

I love digging up old threads. Nothing particularly new, but I actually understand his concerns about "hero worship." It speaks to the fact that we need several leaders, not just one messianic one.

ST

TELEVISION
Founder of Black Entertainment thinks in green
African American billionaire Robert L. Johnson doesn't want to be seen as a role model but as "a good, solid business guy."
By Johanna Neuman
Times Staff Writer

February 21 2003

WASHINGTON -- Robert L. Johnson is hobbling these days, recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in a Bahamas boating accident over the Christmas holidays. Many who know him are amused that the man who has ruled his business empire with a kind of raw competitive zeal is showing such unaccustomed weakness.

But Johnson -- the founder of the Black Entertainment Television that made him the nation's first black billionaire when he sold it to Viacom two years ago for $3 billion, the fan of basketball who just became the first African American to own a major league sports team with his $300-million purchase of the NBA expansion team in Charlotte -- does not see the humor.

His attitude is diffident, but his goal is clear: to be first in everything he touches. "Had there been equal opportunity for access to capital or equal opportunity for access to education, I wouldn't necessarily have been the first guy to start a black cable network or the first guy to buy an NBA team," he recently told Cable World magazine. As W.C. Fields might have put it, except for the honor, he'd rather be in Philadelphia.

Johnson won the franchise from competing bidder Larry Bird, a basketball great whose eyes welled with tears when he lost. Basketball officials all but cried too, saying they hope Bird gets the next team. One wag said of Johnson, "Not many people beat Larry Bird one on one."

Johnson doesn't care whom he beats; he just wants to win. In the 1990s, when a rival group of cable owners tried to start a second black network, one with more public affairs shows and fewer violent, sexually explicit rap videos compared with BET's programming, Johnson muscled them into bankruptcy, according to those in the cable industry. And he resents anyone who suggests that he is any different from any hard-driving, bottom-line white businessman who plays for keeps.

"The fact that I am African American was a plus," Johnson said of the politically sensitive basketball league in a recent interview with Business Wire. "But at the end of the day, if I didn't have the credibility or experience, there's no way."

The thing of it is, the 56-year-old Johnson may be black, but he thinks green. One former business associate put it this way: "There are times when Bob likes being an African American leader, and times when he likes being wealthy."

He is the ninth of 10 children born in Hickory, Miss., and the only one to graduate from college. His father sold timber and his mother taught school. When he was a kid, Archie and Edna Johnson went north, to Freeport, Ill. A high school teacher shamed Johnson into going to college, according to a friend, by asking for a show of hands by those seeking higher education and frowning at him when he was the only one who failed to raise his.

At the University of Illinois he fell in love with Sheila Crump, a cheerleader and violinist. In part to impress her family, he got a graduate degree in public administration from Princeton. The two married, had two children and have since divorced.

Johnson came to Washington after college, working first at the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, later as press secretary to D.C. delegate Walter Fauntroy. In 1976, at 30, he took a job as a lobbyist for the National Cable Television Assn.

Two years later, as a vice president for the association, he accompanied a businessman on a sales pitch to Capitol Hill. They were there to brief Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), a passionate advocate for seniors, about a new cable network for the elderly. That idea crashed, but Johnson borrowed the proposal and adapted it for black viewers.

He could see the promise. Capitalizing on the dawning age of cable television and the burgeoning black middle class, Johnson borrowed $15,000 and then persuaded cable tycoon John Malone to invest $500,000 in the idea of an all-black network. He also talked to cable pioneer Bob Rosencrans, who offered him time on his satellites. Blacks constitute about 12% of the viewing public, and cable operators liked the idea of a targeted black network.

On Jan. 8, 1980, BET went on the air.


Starting small

At first, the fledgling network's programming consisted of a few hours of old movies on Friday nights. The first BET broadcast was a 1974 movie about an African safari called "Visit to a Chief's Son." Johnson had to drive to Virginia to watch it, because the District of Columbia did not yet have cable.

For its first six years, BET lost money. In 1989 Johnson lobbied for higher fees from local cable franchises, winning an increase from 2.5 cents to 5 cents per subscriber. Noting the explosive success of MTV, he soon added hip-hop music and edgy videos, and BET took off.

Critics dogged him. Pilloried for firing popular talk show host Tavis Smiley in 2001 after Smiley aired an exclusive interview on ABC and for the quality of BET's content in general (late last year, the network slashed its public affairs programming in favor of rap videos and gangsta movies) Johnson defended his choices on grounds of the bottom line.

"We understood that we were not running a popularity contest for Hollywood, and we were not trying to be socially redeeming for black intellectuals," he told Forbes magazine in a 2001 interview with Brett Pulley, now at work on an unauthorized biography. "We had the right to run our business the same way that MTV and HBO run theirs."

In 1992, an era during which he was continually assailed for not "giving back to the community," he said during an interview with C-SPAN: "I don't want to be seen as a hero to younger people. I want to be seen as a good, solid business guy who goes out and does a job, and the job is to build a business. In the black community there's always a rush to see a 'role model,' but we need less hero worship. There are thousands of white businessmen who never get asked, 'Are you a hero?' and never are asked what they have given back to the white community."


Giving back

In his deal with Viacom, Johnson will oversee BET until the end of 2005. Nowadays, the network has a 5 1/2-acre campus in Washington, D.C., where Johnson lives, 350 employees nationwide and 74 million subscribers. And Johnson has started to give back. Long a major contributor to the Democratic Party, this month alone he donated $3 million to the National Underground Railroad Museum in Cincinnati, $3.5 million to the National Cable Television Center and Museum in Denver, and $1 million to the Lincoln Center Jazz Project.

But for all his acclaim as a media mogul and a major media player, Johnson has an enduring ambivalence toward the news media. He once suggested to the Washington Post that BET and its founder would make a good profile, then changed his mind halfway through and refused to cooperate. He also declined to be interviewed for this article and asked friends and associates not to cooperate. Many obliged him. Those who agreed to talk tried to explain him.

George Curry, whom Johnson hired to edit Emerge magazine, a BET holding that was aimed at an upscale black audience and has since folded, recalls that Johnson often told him, "I don't want to reinvent the wheel, I just want to paint it black."

And Butch Lewis -- the most improbable of Johnson's friends, a New York boxing promoter as flamboyant as Johnson is circumspect -- said the key to understanding Johnson is his business acumen.

"It's like a game of Monopoly," said Lewis. "If you don't know the rules, you're happy to get $50 when you pass Go. But Johnson's played in the game enough, in real boardrooms, to understand the rules. He knows you're supposed to get $200."

What Johnson does is what entrepreneurs have often done in America: pitch to the lowest common denominator. And that, says one admirer, is an indication that blacks are beginning to make it in America, when they can eschew the highbrow for money-making programming. Detractors say he was so driven that he stepped on competitors -- especially black colleagues trying to start rival networks -- when maybe he could have just made more room at the top.

But Lewis sees what Johnson no doubt sees. He sees a double standard.

"If the race had been fair long before now," he said, alluding to that mix of sports, theater and business that defines Johnson's life, "there would be no such thing as a race card."



Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times

[Confucius]

BET is trash, I don't watch it anymore. It is obvious that the people who have the power to change the content will not! I wish that someone or a group of people would develop another black channel.

[Steeltrap]

Originally posted by Confucius
BET is trash, I don't watch it anymore. It is obvious that the people who have the power to change the content will not! I wish that someone or a group of people would develop another black channel.

Soror, I heard somewhere that Major Broadcasting Co. was going to launch a news/public affairs channel aimed at African Americans. Interesting story, but I wonder if they can get the capital they need to operate a strong operation. All-news operations are expensive because of the technology involved and the people involved.

Here's the story:

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

NEW YORK - An Atlanta-based cable company said Tuesday it plans to launch a 24-hour news channel aimed at black viewers late this year or early in 2004.
Major Broadcasting Cable Network, best known for airing the football and basketball games of black colleges, will call its new sister network "MBC News: The Urban Voice."
The plans were announced two months after the much more established Black Entertainment Television announced a sharp cutback in its public affairs programming. Willie Gary, a principal of MBC, said the timing is coincidental.
"We didn't plan it that way," Gary said. "But clearly, it's a void there from the African-American perspective that we will be filling."
MBC News will be modeled after CNN Headline News, and has hired former CNN newsman Gordon Graham. It will show news, sports and weather reports on a 30-minute "wheel," with occasional other programming.
With limited room for more channels on cable systems, the news network will face an uphill battle to survive. The 4-year-old main MBC network claims it is seen in 24 million homes — less than a quarter of the nation's TV households. MBC isn't available in New York, but can be seen in Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and Houston.
MBC News won't restrict itself to black issues, said Gary, who is joined on the network's board by fighter Evander Holyfield, entertainer Marlon Jackson and former baseball star Cecil Fielder.
"While we'll be talking about Iraq, we'll also be talking about some important stories that will be going on in the urban market," Gary said. "With another channel, you might not get that on a daily basis."
BET disappointed some black viewers in December by canceling the interview program "BET Tonight with Ed Gordon," on which former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott appeared to express contrition over racially insensitive remarks about Strom Thurmond. The Sunday morning show "Lead Story" and public affairs program "Teen Summit" were also axed.
BET reported this week that its ratings in January were the highest in the network's 23-year history.
Debra Lee, BET's president, said she doubts that an all-news channel aimed at blacks can be successful. People admire public affairs programming but don't necessarily watch it, she said. And building a news network is expensive, she added, one reason that BET is partners with fellow Viacom-owned CBS News for some programming.
"I think it's interesting," Lee said. "I just don't know how they make it work."
Major Broadcasting, which once emphasized its connection to gospel music, renounces sex and violence in its programming. Its Web site calls MBC "Your Family's Urban Television Network."
BET, meanwhile, has been criticized for airing salacious music videos and comedies.
But could a faith-based philosophy lead MBC News to pull its punches in news coverage?
Gary said he would not be interested in showing pictures, for example, of a shooting in a black community. But he said, "We're not going to censor the news. With the news you have to call it the way you see it."
MBC would not say how many journalists would be brought on. The network will save money by sharing personnel with a Tallahassee, Fla.-based cable news network, said programming director Travis Mitchell.


___

[Confucius]

Originally posted by Steeltrap
Soror, I heard somewhere that Major Broadcasting Co. was going to launch a news/public affairs channel aimed at African Americans. Interesting story, but I wonder if they can get the capital they need to operate a strong operation. All-news operations are expensive because of the technology involved and the people involved.

It sounds like a better alternative, I will keep my eyes open. Thanks for the information.

[abaici]

I heard on the radio that Radio One was thinking about developing a cable network as well.