It may sound like it though, so bear with me here.
Why do they have to call it black entertainment television? All it does is make them sound racist. If there was a white entertainment television, it would be shut down, or atleast boycotted from every possible cable provider there is. As it should be.
Why not call it something else to demonstrate its desire to allow all races access to television programming and writing. Why the need to brag that they have the highest black cast/writers/programmers, and exclude whites if at all possible? Do they actually allow white people to work for the channel at all?
So why is it acceptable to people that this is a channel? I reiterate, I am not trying to be racist here, I am simply sharing my opinion that this channel is perpetuating a problem and not solving it.
What do you guys think? And please don’t attack me for being a racist, I was not trying to spur a racial war here, but was just examining yet another attempt to alleviate a problem that only succeeded in worsening it.
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
Calling it Black Entertainment Television allows them to immediately address a target audience with the idea that they have provided a place where blacks will be allowed to express themselves in that medium without having to sell some magnate at Time-Warner-AOL that they will actually be able to make money with the project.
As it happens, since they do not (yet) have a lot of money to spend, they are not attracting the best and the brightest at this time.
On the other hand, they do have white-produced and -crewed shows and there are no barriers that I am aware of preventing white employment in BET Inc.
The basic intent is to provide a visible place where black talent can be reliably found without fear that it will be bumped by marginally more popular “white” shows as soon as an audience is found. (Note the differences in Fox programming between 1995 and today.)
Note that they have joined dozens of other niche markets in the cable- and sattelite-feed media rather than fighting it out on the limited arena of the open broadcast airwaves.
I see SINsApple’s point. I am not exactly racist (my brother-in-law is black) but I know I almost feel like I’m not “entitled” to watch BET because it isn’t for me - I’m a white person, and the name of the network is BLACK Entertainment Network. Not for white people, in other words. Yet I do sometimes watch it. If it has a sitcom on it that I like to see, I’ll watch it.
I have no problem with a network focusing primarily on black programs, with a high percentage of black performers. I mean, Lifetime does it for women. The thing is, “Lifetime” is a vague title. We all know that it is targeted for women, (and the ads for the network all mention that) but the title of the network does not have the word “women” in it.
So, for the same reason, I think maybe a different name for BET might reflect better what it is. I know this probably sounds politically correct, but sometimes when you are selling an image, wording is important. Maybe something ethnic-sounding, without specifying race? I dunno.
There is a white entertainment industry. It’s called “the media”. The overwhelming reality is (or at least was) that television and Hollywood are white industries where minorities were only accepted to the degree that they are/were bankable as minorities. It’s improved in the last twenty years or so, when minority demographics began to be desirable target audiences.
Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.
My cable company carries the following ethnic/culture targeted channels in addition to BET:
Jade: Japanese
Galavison: Latin Americans
KSCI: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Armenian
KMEX: Mexican
NATV: Japanese
The Nashville Network: Southerners
PBS: The British (Don’t tell me there are any Americans who actually watch “Are You Being Served?”!)
People watch these channels because they are targeted toward their culture and lifestyle (language is only a small part of that). If someone proposed “Shamrock TV” or “Italiavision” or “The Alpine Channel”, no one would be offended. There is a “Black” culture and African Americans are just as entitled to revel in it as I am entitled to puke green beer and curse Queen Liz every March 17.
You could always ask BET founder Robert Johnson. From the BET Website
and later in the blurb:
So there you have it. Descriptive, accurate, and a marketing hook to boot. Would that The Learning Channel were so accurate about the ULs and UFO myths they put on the air.
This GQ moment has been brought to you by MTV. Yea, so the M is for music. So what, you big jerk? We’re gonna show another Road Rules marathon and a fashion show and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.
To amplify: You have to remember that BET started up 20 years ago. In 1980, cable systems did not have 78+ channels, and a new channel had to fight just to get on the lineup (they still have to fight, but that’s another thread). A good channel position was pretty much out of the question; a new channel without the support of a behemoth got something in the 30’s or worse. Then, once on the system, the infant channel had to fight again to stand out to the viewer. Johnson’s task was made even harder because some urban areas (large parts of NYC, for instance) had not even been wired yet. If Johnson had called his new creation the Uhuru Network or something similar, many people would never have tuned in at all. Even today, most cable viewing is done in the first 25 channels and new networks try to use simple names like Animal Planet to get the point across.
Fast forward to 2000. Many Americans of African descent prefer to be called African Americans, but “black” as a term is not dead, nor is it considered racist. Johnson has 20 years of brand equity built into his empire (he also makes movies, has a book imprint, operates restaurants, sponsors music festivals and does all the other stuff that a modern media conglomerate finds necessary).
Why would he change it, especially if the calls to do so are coming from outside his core audience? It would be like changing the name of the NAACP. Arguably, “colored people” is these days a pretty unfortunate term for black people, but the built-up brand equity exceeds any bad feelings that the use of the old term might create.
I understand that BET is a celebration of Black culture. What I’d like to know is why the Black Miss America Pageant isn’t racist? There’s nothing cultural about a beauty pageant is there?
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who
have lost the power of reasoning.
–Voltaire
You know how some racists are - they say they have no problem with people of another race, but if they were asked the question, “Yeah, but would you let your sister marry one?” they would hem and haw and sputter.
But I was OK with it. More than OK with it. As was my family. So sometimes when I try to establish my feelings about people of different races, I just cut to the chase and say “Oh, and yes - I would let my sister marry one!” If you get my point there.
Well, there’s culture and then there’s culture. (This is the U.S., of course, home of the last philistines.)
More seriously, it isn’t a case of active racism so much as a case on institutions perpetuating themselves. When the Black Miss America Pageant was founded, blacks were not allowed to participate in the original Miss America Pageant. Later, when blacks were allowed to compete, it was with the general understanding that “Of course, they can’t win.” Years go by and finally we begin crowning black women as Miss America.
So, should the black pageant fold up shop? Perhaps. On the other hand, there are quite a few people who make their living by acting as the administrators of the event. Why should they give up their jobs? The Black Miss America Pageant will simply roll along until it garners so few sponsors that it will dry up and blow away. (If we could just get the sponsors of the big one to walk away, as well. . .)
On the Lifetime Network, they announce it as “Lifetime - Television for Women” all day long. This has always bothered me a bit, just as the terms “guy flick” and “chick flick” when going to see movies. I recently saw “Fight Club” and when I was telling a girlfriend about it, her boyfriend kept calling it a “guy flick”. Some of us don’t necessarily see things along those lines. If it bugs you, break the mold. Take a group of girls to see a guy flick. Sit down and watch a bunch of B.E.T. with some white people. Do something.
Black TV, White TV, TV for women, Movies for men, whatever. It’s all stereotyping, but in marketing terms it all does make some sense. You want to bring your product to the immediate attention of the target audience. In this case it is black americans. I don’t think they intend to EXCLUDE white people from watching (B-chip?), but the point may be to let everyone know that they will be looking at black faces if they tune in. If this is a draw for black americans, so be it. It seems pretty straightforward, if not perfectly correct. Unfortunately, this world is not much of an environment for keeping things correct.
Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
– Emo Phillips
Ya know, if you want to watch BET, then watch it. If you want to watch Lifetime, then watch it. I watch the House and Garden channel sometimes, and I’m neither a house nor a garden. Get a big ol’ grip, people!
Thanks Otto, I thought I might make it through a whole thread without someone telling me “if you don’t like it, then don’t do it” (this applying to reading SDMB, watching T.V., putting up with trolls, mucking around bbq pit, et cetera). Oh well.
And I guess I should have put this in the mpsims or gq or something, but I figured someone would get angry at me, so I went ahead and started it here.
So since no one else saw fit to be rude (don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate it), then I guess I will be: You fucking gutless wonders! You can’t even show enough insensitivity to pounce on a girl who was trying to start a civilized thread. Losers.
Thanks for opening my eyes to the other side of this topic folks.
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
