Tuesday, March 19, 2013

"Black" Television?

 Val commented that she only recently discovered the existence of the over the air Bounce Network.
The network is only two years old with limited (but growing) penetration into US markets.
The thing about Bounce is that it is a Black-owned network geared towards Blacks.
Some may cite TV One (Radio One (51%) and Comcast are partners) as being another "Black television network.
A quick look at the company's investment/management structure would lead me to agree. 

 Others may think of Centric and BET as being more representative of the Black television market.
But since Bob Johnson sold out to Viacom - most Blacks are just being resold their own culture from a Euro-Centric conglomerate.
Sure, Oprah has the Oprah Winfrey Network (Through Harpo Productions in partnership with the Discovery Network) - but is it still a "Black" network?

It's odd. With talk about what is "Black" (Black-Owned v. Geared Towards Blacks) - Blacks don't even own a major presence on the most democratic medium available (the Internet).
Even The Grio is owned by NBC News and The Root is owned by The Washington Post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That happened in Argentina some time ago where the government froze everyone's savings and people could only withdraw tiny amounts on certain days and times and you'd see endless lines of angry people waiting to get into the bank!

Scary right!

DF said...

Well just like any other avenue they found it advantageous to own Black TV. NBC bought Telemundo to resell Hispanics anglocentric angles too.

While Bounce is black owned it doesn't have an opinion just a reruns. TV One is still the only true Black owned station as Comcast was a strategic partnership to add Black channels. Also, TV one is the only place that leads with a more AfroCentric point of view. BET and Centric are just MTV and MTV Soul.

On the internet it's basically the same thing. But, if you look at the Grio and the Root no one really follows them that they can say they are the leader of anything. Shit, right now WorldStarHipHop has more of audience. The GRIO is always cosigned by MSNBC by letting one Black person talk about politics.

I guess if no one stands up we have a whole bunch of white backed Blacks talking like they are the leaders.

uglyblackjohn said...

@ FreeMan - Damn... I forgot about WSHH.