TNJ - January 2001 - Editor's Note - The Beleaguered Media by Njeru Waithaka

Editor's Note
January 2001

The Beleaguered Media
by Njeru Waithaka

Whereas black people take great pride in the success of one of their own, greater still is their pride in ownership; a pride that is slowly being taken away as more and more black companies sell themselves to giant corporations.

The November sale of BET Holdings Inc., owner of BET cable television network, to Viacom Inc., the media powerhouse that owns CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon cable TV channels, is the latest in the surrender of autonomy to a conglomerate.

That sale has made BET’s founder, Robert Johnson, a billionaire but it has left him powerless. After his contract expires in five years, Johnson, who has never reported to anyone in 20 years since he founded BET, will be at the mercy of Viacom. He reports to Mel Karmazin, president and COO.

For black people, without whom BET would never have existed, the sale means loss of control of their own images and ideas.

Africana.com, which was launched by Harvard Professor Louis Gates on Martin Luther King Jr.’s day last year, with the aim of drawing multitudes of African Americans to the Internet, succumbed to Time Warner in September. Just as Viacom is using BET as its key to reaching black consumers, Time Warner, a company notorious for buying, speculating on and then selling black media companies, is using Africana.com to reach black consumers.

The reasons for selling Africana.com, which provides blacks with the history and culture of the African Diaspora, with educational materials and with such services as Radio Africana, which links its consumers to 80 black radio stations globally, was to give the portal greater distribution and to increase its content through Time Warner’s magazines and music library. But overnight, Gates and co-founder Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, and in a fashion similar to BET’s Johnson, descended from ownership to consultancy. What’s more, Gates said that Africana.com would continue with its business plan of generating revenue through sponsorship, implying that he didn’t get all the resources he sold Africana.com for.

If the reason for selling black media is to garner more resources and to improve quality, why can’t black companies merge with other black companies to form a giant black corporation that would itself be able to acquire a mainstream corporation? Why, for example, couldn’t BET.com have merged with Africana.com to become a leading black-owned portal?

Because BET had been criticized for its poor programming, it sold itself to Viacom to improve its quality. Can a black-owned company produce anything of quality without the mainstream? What a precedence for posterity!

No one should dictate to the owners what they should do with their companies or begrudge them their money but would there be a Time Warner or a Viacom had these corporations decided to sell themselves?

It takes time and mistakes to grow a business. Black media companies such as Radio One in Washington, DC, WBLS Radio and Black Enterprise magazine in New York City ought to be commended for holding onto black ownership.

Click here for January 2002 Editor's Note - A Bright Economic Horizon

Click here for November 2001 Editor's Note - Initiatives Rigged in Controversy

Click here for April 2001 Editor's Note - The Good Competition

Click here for February 2001 Editor's Note - The Perennial Debate

Click here for January 2001 Editor's Note - The Beleaguered Media

Click here for October 2000 Editor's Note - Selling Out Cheaply

Click here for September 2000 Editor's Note - A Question of Trust

Click here for July / August 2000 Editor's Note - Value In Differences

Click here for June 2000 Editor's Note - Be Wary of Numbers

Click here for May 2000 Editor's Note - A Sobering Reminder