All hype, no action

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.

Despite the failures and frustrations, new plans for Black networks kept coming. With the support of Marlon Jackson, formerly of the Jackson 5, Alvin James segued his Minority Broadcasting Corp. (with a new group of investors) into the Major Broadcasting Cable Network in 1998. Today, MBC is in more than 17 million households via satellite and cable access (up from 6 million in 2000), according to CEO Willie Gary, a multimillionaire Florida-based attorney. "It's just growing by leaps and bounds," says Gary. "We spent our first two years meeting, planning, explaining, negotiating, putting our infrastructure in place. So we're seeing the benefit now."

The venture, which is supported by former heavyweight champion boxer Evander Holyfield, as well as former baseball all-star Cecil Fielder, originally started as a gospel network, but changed its focus to attract a wider market.

"We still have a religious flavor," says Gary. "And we're committed to no crime, no sex and no violence. Black and white people need clean television," he adds.

In 1999, Chicago entrepreneur Donald Jackson, chairman and founder of Central City Productions, which produces the long-running syndicated show Minority Business Report, also promised a new 24-- hour network, The Black Family Channel. That venture, which planned to offer reality shows and Black soap operas beginning last fall, also slipped quietly off the map without explanation. Like WAN, it also seemed to be caught in the double bind of having to promote an imminent launch in order to gain the support of multi systems operators (MSOs), even though no cable or satellite carriage deals had been secured. "There's interest," said Jackson in 2000, "but no commitments."

BET also scrapped plans for its own Black family channel that year. As Johnson told members of the press at the time, a Black family channel "could lose $200 million in its first four years. I don't know many African Americans that can afford to lose $200 million. I got no takers."

Johnson does have a point, according to Frank Mercado-Valdes, founder of the African Heritage Network, a syndication company that recently changed its name to the Heritage Networks. "White men happen to know people who have $100 million that they don't know what to do with," he says. "Now that my office is in the Trump Towers, I'm starting to run into people like that. I have a [white] neighbor in my building, and we went to have cigars together. He has $1 billion in a personal fund in self-made capital. He's a lawyer with a venture capital firm. I never met a Black man with a billion dollars."

Another problem is poor management of funds, says Gary of MBC. "It's a very expensive venture. You have to overcome a lot of obstacles, and you gotta lay out a lot of cash. A lot of people start out undercapitalized," he says. Gary, who built a billion-dollar law practice with $1,500 (he has won landmark suits such as a $240 million verdict against Disney), says the key to staying alive in the telecommunications industry is timing. "Why should we spend $2.5 million on a college bowl ad when we only have 2 million viewers?" he argues. "New networks spend a lot of money on programming, but they don't have enough viewers to justify it yet."

Even Soul Train founder Don Cornelius has made the mistake of announcing a premature launch date for his long-planned network. The network was last slated for a 2001 launch, but alas, it has failed to materialize.

Part of the problem, argues Mercado-- Valdes, is that our definition of a "network" is too limited. "A network is any group of stations put together for the purpose of airing a single program," he says. "It can be a formal affiliation between a studio and station provider centered around fixed hours and days. Take King World," he continues, referring to the billion-dollar syndication company that distributes The Oprah Winfrey Show. "It's really [200] stations that come together to air a program. They may not call themselves that, but they're actually an ad hoc network."

As is Mercado-Valdes' Heritage Networks, founded in 1993. "We have our own internal distribution, production, and we also sell ads," he says. "We're an independent company. There's a reason Soul Train and Its Showtime at the Apollo [owned by Percy Sutton] are still around and American Bandstand is not," he continues. "The strength of Black syndication is profound. The Black audience has stayed loyal to these programs over many years."

But if distributing syndicated programming is so much easier than trying to win cable space for a full-service network, why don't more African Americans cast their lot into that business? "Because there's a lot more prestige in starting a network," says Mercado-Valdes, laughing. "Try picking up a woman in a bar saying you're a syndicator. Everyone wants to [get a foot in the door as] either a producer or director." Being a syndicator, on the other hand, involves a lot of grunt work. "You have to travel to places like Akron, Ohio," says Mercado-Valdes. "It's a very unglamorous way to make a lot of money. I began with $25,000," he continues, and the "largest library of African American movies" in the country. "I did $1 million the first year, and have doubled every year since," says Mercado-Valdes. "The margin of profit is high because the distributor charges 35 percent of gross revenues, right off the top. So for every dollar Oprah Winfrey made, Roger King [of King World Productions] made three. And yet, I'll tell you something," he adds, "I haven't had one African American man send me a resume saying they want to be a syndicator. Not one." Another case in point, says Mercado-- Valdes, is talk show host, producer and self-made syndicator Byron Allen. "He makes a great deal of money for distributing shows you've never heard of that run at 3:00 in the morning," says Mercado-- Valdes. Shows like The Entertainer, The American Athlete and Kickin' It generate millions of dollars in advertisements," says Mercado-Valdes. Allen reportedly arranges unique "barter deals" with cable operators, whereby they distribute his shows in more than 80 percent of the country and in return he receives half of all the advertising revenues generated.

"Byron Allen is very smart," says Lee Gaither, vice president of Saturday morning programs at NBC. "He's created a model that no one else could have done. He goes to press junkets with the journalists, and he gets time with celebrities and interviews them. And then he gives the show to cable operators for free. He tells them, `just split the ad revenues with me.' But not everyone could do that. His model is based on contacts and the quality of his productions."

And yet despite the challenges of getting a Black-oriented network off the ground (as opposed to the somewhat easier task of selling shows as a distributor-- syndicator), new Black cable ventures continue to scramble for space.

The Word Network, a Michigan-- based non-profit urban religious channel founded by Frank Adell, who is white, was launched in 2000. Claiming a reach of 21 million households, both satellite and cable, the network features 63 African American ministers who broadcast their services, as well as gospel concerts and ministry conventions.

Another venture with only a relatively small number of Black dollars invested is New Urban Entertainment (NUE), formerly located just outside Washington, D.C. The company had planned its launch for 2000. Positioning itself as yet another fullservice network, with movies, comedy and dramatic series, music, news, information and sports for an urban audience, NUE, which boasts the legendary music producer Quincy Jones as a founding shareholder, seemed destined for success. Radio One, the country's largest Black-owned radio broadcaster, put up $2.5 million in cash and advertising time and NUE chairman Dennis Brownlee had high hopes of raising the additional $100 million needed from AOL (now AOL Time Warner).

But things didn't go as planned. Last May, NUE effectively ceased operations. "They laid off 95 percent of their staff," says Scott Royster, CFO of Radio One.

At the end of February, Johnathan Rodgers, one of the top African American executives in cable, announced he was stepping down as president of Discovery Networks U.S. According to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, he said he'd rather "be with a start-up or a fixer-upper," and confirmed he'd spoken with NUE.

But resuscitating NUE would be a tall order even for Rodgers, who previously spent 20 years at CBS. "We're attempting to raise additional capital," Royster adds, "but a start-up cable channel requires tens of millions of dollars."

Why then have so many Black networks bitten the dust, even with celebrity backing and respectable amounts of capital?

"Because the reality of clearing a network on cable is that you're asking a Comcast to give you a dedicated channel, 24 hours a day," says Mercado-Valdes. "That's very difficult." Cable systems operators are reluctant to do that, partly because of racism and partly because of a desire to maintain monopolistic control.

Subsidiary cable channels such as Showtime (owned by Viacom) and HBO (owned by AOL/Time Warner) are currently the primary providers of original African American-oriented programming.

Presumably their parent companies want to keep it that way. So while dozens of "new" networks have launched in recent years, most are in fact subsidiaries of the cable operators themselves, which exercise near monopolistic control by geographic region. Comcast rules in the Northeast, AOL/Time Warner dominates the South and Midwest, and AT&T has its strongest base in the West. Smaller operators such as Millennium Digital Media and Cox Cable have managed to carve out small pieces of the pie as well. It is to these few entities that new Black cable ventures must come calling.

Lee Gaither of NBC still sees some potential for Black networks, but says "you have to redefine success. You have to be comfortable with regional play."

Such will be the fate of start-ups such as the Maryland-based Dream Network, a gospel-based network founded by Alvin Augustus Jones and currently airing on eight stations in four states as well as via satellite. Or for the narrow niche programming of African TV Network (ATVN), aimed at African immigrants in the United States and set for a July 2002 launch.

"Our plan is to start [in] New York. Chicago and D.C. are the next targets," says ATVN owner Clement Afforo, adding that "the goal of ATVN is to serve as a platform where the image of Africa can be seen in a positive light."

So the question remains: Will a nationally recognized Black-owned network ever see the light of day?

"I think it's highly unlikely that any Black man will have majority equity ownership in a network," offers Mercado-- Valdes. "Even what Bob Johnson did is not possible anymore."

Kristal Brent Zook, author of Color by Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution of Black Television (Oxford University Press, 1999), is a writer in Los Angeles.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2002
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