One of the pressing issues for the broadband transformation is whether women and persons of color will end up owning sizeable parts of the digital content universe. The cable industry has long cut deals with a few strategic individuals and groups to help advance its monopolistic interests (the telephone giants are doing the same). Deals are made which appear to offer some diversity—but are really about control and the status quo. We think Bob Johnson and BET is a good example of how deals were cut and the promise and potential of our electronic media system to be more diverse was lost. Will this largely repeat itself as the media system is reconfigured to serve the `triple’ play platforms? Will groups and individuals organize so that there will be serious programming, locally and nationally? Here’s a history lesson to help with reflection..
When media titian John Malone backed cable lobbyist Bob Johnson to start BET (Black Entertainment Network), he knew he had found someone who would play ball with the cable and mainstream status quo. As Stephen Keating writes in Cut Throat, his book about the cable industry, Malone said that “Bob seemed like the kind of guy you could invest some money with and he wouldn’t embarrass you…When we thought about starting this, there was always the concern that this kind of channel could become radical and you wouldn’t want your name associated with it.â€
In Malone’s “oral history†at the Cable Center, he notes: “Bob Johnson, from Black Entertainment Television, who was on the staff at NCTA, came up to me after an NCTA meeting and said, “Do you think there would be any hope for a black channel aimed at the black demographic.” And I was very enthusiastic about it because we were trying to build in some markets of heavy black neighborhoods and we didn’t have anything to talk to them about. And so we put up what we could afford, a small amount of seed capital…Bob was very successful and he retained majority ownership all the way through, which was quite a testimony to his doggedness, his willingness to keep his budget down and grow the business.â€
Indeed, Malone’s TCI used BET to help it win control of very lucrative deals (franchises) from cities with a large diverse population. BET would be, despite Johnson’s stake, a creature of Malone-controlled TCI (Telecommunications, Inc.).
Here’s what Johnson himself said about the cable industry in his oral history (slightly edited): “I would say in the cable industry I was sort of in an industry where it was so few African-Americans that you basically went unnoticed and therefore it was sort of you were just a regular person in the cable industry. There was no reason to talk about black issues unless it was talked about in the context of more employment opportunities that would properly address minority… sort of committee for minority employment…there was never much discussion. There was also a committee to deal with minority ownership, but again, it was politically correct… Sort of a little bit lip service to giving minorities ownership in cable, but nothing was personal in terms of minority issues or racial issues because there were just so few of us. The advantage I had is that I was a known commodity to everybody, so if you go to a cable convention and if you’re black and you happen to be about 5’8″, you were Bob Johnson, no matter who you were… The only thing in the course of my relations with the cable industry… it was all very friendly, very cordial – I don’t think I ever faced directly any kind of race discrimination. Now, I always felt that the cable industry shortchanged us on rate carriage because we were a minority service, and I think they somewhat shortchanged us on giving us more distribution because we were a minority service, as opposed to giving some other channel broader distribution against their demographic.â€
Source: Cut Throat: High Stakes and Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier. Stephen Keating. Johnson Books. 1999.
“A Media Mogul Tries Remote Control.” Ron Stodghill. NYTimes. Feb. 18, 2007.
