All hype, no action

New Crisis, The, Mar/Apr 2002 by Zook, Kristal Brent

Issues & View

Why Black-owned TV

Networks Can't Seem

To Get Off The Ground

Isn't it ironic that the Hallmark Channel (part of Crown Media holdings) was the network that cashed in on the most famous Black dramatic series ever to air on television, during its recent rebroadcast of Roots for the series' 25th anniversary? You'd think that there might have been at least one African American-owned network in existence by now, decades after the original ABC debut of the miniseries, that would have allowed African Americans to reap at least some of the profits of Alex Haley's historic epic.

That we should have our own Black network is an argument as old as Marcus Garvey's Black Star Steamship Line fleet of ships; as resonant as Black dolls, bean pies and recycling dollars in the community. "Why can't we just get together?" we've asked one another time and again.

While promoting my book Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television, this was the most often asked question: "We have Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby and lots of positive folks who could invest," people would say to me.

So why do we keep begging all these other networks to put our shows on?

Some point to racism. Others say the problem has more to do with poor business planning. Still others argue that we're limited by a monopolistic broadcast industry intent on keeping power in a very few white hands. These are all part of the truth. We have a lot to learn about how media power is maintained. But we also fail by limiting ourselves to predictable battles on tired battlefields.

From the debut of Black Entertainment Television (BET) in January 1980 to the Minority Broadcasting Corp., launched eight years later, and dozens of ventures that followed, virtually none (other than BET, which sold to Viacom for a staggering $3 billion last year) has managed to carve out a permanent space in the 300-- plus channel universe. We viewers say we want more venues that present the diversity of the African American experience. Black start-ups have tried to sell such a vision to cable operators over the past two decades. They've enlisted the backing of entertainers and athletes, such as Marlon Jackson and Evander Holyfield of the Major Broadcasting Cable Network, Janet Jackson of the now defunct World African Network, and Quincy Jones of New Urban Entertainment. And they've had money -- certainly more than Bob Johnson's borrowed $15,000 in start-up capital. So why then - now that BET is under Viacom -- is there not a single nationally recognized Black-owned network?

Blacks first ventured into the cable network arena in 1979, the year that Johnson, then a lobbyist with the National Cable Television Association, had an idea for the first all-Black cable network. He pitched his plan to cable industry giant, John Malone of TCI, who threw in $500,000, as well as his formidable clout as owner of one of the largest cable systems in the nation. Twenty years later, BET was in more than 55 million homes, and 90 percent of all Black cable households, although, despite common perceptions, it was never entirely Black-owned.

Many African Americans have been disappointed in BET's content which features little more than rump-shaking music videos. Time and again, Johnson made it clear that he was uninterested in offering quality dramatic or original programming (notwithstanding the sporadic health, sports and teen shows, as well as the network's recent hour-long Arabesque movie series, adapted from the company's line of romance novels).

In 1988, Alvin James of the Atlantabased Minority Broadcasting Corp. (MBC) posed the first real (though largely symbolic) threat to BET's narrow fare. With early, but not necessarily formal support from Oprah Winfrey and Stedman Graham, James' MBC launched the first African American Movie Network with a 12-hour block of Black films, aired via satellite, in 1993.

Encouraged by such possibilities, Eugene and Phyllis Jackson of the World African Network (WAN), originally based in Los Angeles, also announced their imminent launch that same year. They were certainly qualified to construct such a network- In 1971, Eugene had founded Unity Broadcasting, a news service that distributed programming to more than 125 radio stations. Jackson, for her part, was a seasoned producer and former head of children's programming at NBC. The Jacksons set up headquarters on Slauson Avenue, occupying several high-rise offices alongside the well-to-do Black Ladera Heights district of South Los Angeles. With a team of a dozen or so staffers, the couple masterminded a schedule "dedicated to the cultural uplift of African descendants," as I learned during several visits to their offices during that time. Vowing to provide "culturally correct" programming, the couple even planned to secure distribution in the African "motherland."

For a while, WAN was said to have the backing of Janet Jackson and Percy Sutton, chairman of Inner City Broadcasting, was an early investor. But after a long struggle to secure agreements with cable operators, Eugene and Phyllis Jackson finally moved their headquarters to Atlanta, and then virtually disappeared in 1994.