The NPHC Boycotts Bet?

[Steeltrap]

Just picked this up from another listserv I belong to:

Announcement

************************************************** **********************************

I received word on today, the formal letter concerning the BET boycott will be sent out tomorrow or Monday. All nine National Presidents are in the process of signing the document. An electronic copy will be sent to NPHC HQ. We will attach that correspondence and send it via the NPHC list serve and it will be posted on the NPHC web site. At this time, I do not have knowledge as to how each individual organization will disseminate this information to its respective membership.



Thank you for your patience.

Virginia LeBlanc
National Executive Director
National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc.
Memorial Hall West 111
Bloomington, IN 47405

Office: 812.855.8820; Fax: 812.856.5477

HQ E-mail: info@nphchq.org; Web site: http://www.nphchq.org

NPHC: Unified in Our Quest to Shape the Future

[sphinxpoet]

Originally posted by mccoyred
I was not able to make the convention in Philly. However, the next question becomes HOW the power was given. Was there a vote of NPHC delegate? Was it an outcome of a discussion and sent to the COP for a statement? I guess since the overwhelming majority of members were not at the convention, it seems so sudden. Unfortunately the other listserve assumes everyone was there but of course that could not be true. Please offer some additional input.

The point is that the power was given at the Atlanta National Convention in 99 I believe where they just stated that the council of Presidents would have more wide band power. We must remeber that delgates are selected by NPHC chapter and not Orgs. So if you have an NPHC chapter in your area the got 2 voting delegates. The COP can decide in the best interest of the body at all times and the COP can veto any legislation passed by the NPHC body at any time and send it back for a revote where it may be overturned.

Sounds just like National Gvt.

Sphinxpoet

[Professor]

This is new to me. Am I the only one that was not aware of recent actions. Additionally, were chapters provided the info.

[sphinxpoet]

November 2, 2001


Mr. Robert Johnson
CEO
Black Entertainment Television
1900 W Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C.

Re: Television Programming

Dear Mr. Johnson:

We write as a follow up to the meeting held on September 27, 2001. The Council of Presidents of the African- American Greek Letter organizations that consist of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity and Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, collectively have over1.4 Million members. It is our intent to call for a national boycott of Black Entertainment Television (BET).

As discussed with you and your staff , we believe that BET does not operate in the best interest of the African American community. Your responses to our concerns were not only unacceptable but were also insulting. We raised concerns with you about the type of videos shown on BET that have negative influences on our community, particularly our youth. We believe that these videos are an exploitation of African American youth. We discussed with you our concerns about BET’s failure to advertise with and support African American businesses and institutions. BET’s lack of reciprocity with the African American community is woefully insensitive and unfair. Further, we discussed with you that BET’s failure to communicate with community leaders is unacceptable.

Your response made it clear to us that your priority is to increase profits without regard to the negative impact on the African American community. You made it clear that the concerns we raised would not increase the profits of BET and therefore BET would not alter its business practices or programming to address these concerns.

It is our intent to communicate this boycott to all African-American organizations and seek their support. Additionally, it is our intent to communicate this boycott to Viacom and all BET advertisers. This boycott shall remain in effect until our concerns are satisfactorily resolved.

Joint Position Statement Regarding BET
Council of Presidents
National Pan-Hellenic Council, Inc.
November 2, 2001
Page 2



__________________________________
Harry E. Johnson, Sr.
General President
Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.



___________________________________
Norma Solomon White
Supreme Basileus
Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.


___________________________________
Howard L. Tutman
Grand Polemarch
Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.



___________________________________
Lloyd J. Jordan, Esq.
Grand Basileus
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc.



___________________________________
Gwendolyn E. Boyd
National President
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
___________________________________
Arthur R. Thomas, Esq.
National President
Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.



___________________________________
Barbara Carpenter, Ph.D.
National President
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.


___________________________________
Helen J. Owens
International Grand Basileus
Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.



___________________________________
Steve Birdine
Grand Polaris
Iota Phi Theta Fraternity, Inc.

[jali0004]

Is Mr. Johnson still associated with BET, even though the company is now a branch of Viacom, Inc.?

[Steeltrap]

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.

[AKA2D '91]

I saw a news story regarding Johnson and this issue. The reporter as well as guests said that Johnson is an entrepreneur. Therefore, he is about MAKING MONEY. Johnson insisted that BET is BLACK ENTERTAINMENT Television, NOT, Black EDUCATION Television.

One of the guests on the panel, who also is an entrepreneur said that he, too, blasted Johnson for how the network was programmed. However, when he became an on-line vendor, he changed his opinion, citing that as an ENTRE-PRO-NIP (lol), he is about MAKING the Benjamins. And that's what it is about.

So, I guess if peeps want to be EDUCATED, they are going to have to start up their OWN NETWORK.

Where is OPRAH, BILL COSBY, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHEAL JORDAN, Masta P and 'nem?

I know that Marlon Jackson and some others have started their own network, but it's on digital cable like channel 2,000 or so

Maybe the NPHC (as another entity, because of status) should come together and establish a network which will EDUCATE our people.

Givin' ya something to think about!

[AKAtude]

Originally posted by AKA2D '91
Where is OPRAH, BILL COSBY, MICHAEL JACKSON, MICHEAL JORDAN, Masta P and 'nem?

Maybe the NPHC (as another entity, because of status) should come together and establish a network which will EDUCATE our people.

Givin' ya something to think about!

I think you might be on to something, 2D!

[Jody]

There is an article at www.niaonline.com which states that the Council of Presidents have decided against the boycott... for now

[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.)

[Steeltrap]

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."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Steeltrap]

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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[Blackwatch]

This is truly sad. To see black people so money hungry as to ignore outcries from the community in which they claim to have established an institution is rediculous. Let's look at the numbers from the report (I am a sociologist in training )BET is offered in 71.4 million households in America, of which only 9 million are black. That translates into 12.6% of the subscribed homes are black. They average 347,000 viewers. If we double the proportion of that viewership that is African American (what we call over sampling), we see that about 85,000 viewers on average whatching BET are black, which means the rest are mostly white. This goes to show you that BET is minstrel TV, Bamboozled all over again. I do not think that many black people actually watch the stuff that gets the ratings (like Cita and Comic View) the numbers just do not add up. BET's viewership is mostly white, just like rap music fans, this is the reason why they have to show the destructive stuff, because that is the image that whites find acceptable of us. Even if we as blacks stop watching BET, it wouldn't effect the bottom line rating that much at all. But if we as the NPHC called for the actual boycott of advertisers, then their bottom line would be effected, then we will see some changes.
My 06 sense worth.

[pretty_girl82]

I can't stand Bogus Entertainment TV. They have gone form positive to straight out negative. BET is all about getting money, point blank. They have the name to attract blacks because they know that we've been looking for something like this. I am 19 and have been watching it since I can remember. I remember when I actaully learned something from BET. I really don't like CITA because she says ignorant things and talks like she didn't pass the 1st grade. Here at my school it is predominatly white. We were celebrated black history month and they showed Kings of Comedy for the tribute to blacks....is that all they think of us?......as entertainers.
GLOs I hope you all can put some since into them.