SALON

Wednesday, Oct 6, 1999 4:00 PM UTC

Can Robert Johnson bring more blacks online?

Black Entertainment Television's founder is launching a $35 million African-American portal site. Will it help mend the digital divide?

By

Topics: Microsoft,

So far, no black entrepreneur has joined the technology industry’s billionaire boys club. But Robert Johnson is looking for an invitation.

Johnson is the owner and chairman of Black Entertainment Television (BET), and only the second black businessman to list his company on the New York Stock Exchange. (He subsequently took the cable network private through a leveraged buy-out.) He is also a Friend-of-Bill Democratic power donor and apparently makes the A-list of technology and media titans like Bill Gates and Barry Diller, both of whose companies are backing Johnson’s latest move: a Web portal designed to draw more African-Americans to the Internet.

Johnson’s Net venture, BET.com, scheduled to launch Nov. 1, wrangled some $35 million in start-up funding from Microsoft, USA Networks, News Corp. and AT&T’s Liberty Digital. The site, a revamped version of the BET-Microsoft venture MSBET, will feature comprehensive news for the African-American community, better chat technology and a retail area catering to black consumers. (The old site was little more than a home page for BET to showcase its entertainment programs, while the new site will be a true portal, generating revenue through advertising and e-commerce.)

“The African-American online community is growing rapidly,” says an announcement on the site, “and thus there is a need for a comprehensive, relevant online product that avails existing and emerging Black and Urban users to the best the Internet has to offer.”

But wait a minute. What about NetNoir and Afronet, BlackFamilies.com and Blackvoices? A half-dozen black portals already vie for the Net’s black users — so what will Johnson’s BET.com bring to the neighborhood?

Money. With $35 million in the bank, BET.com plans to create a top-flight site, and to market the hell out of it. If BET.com succeeds in its plans, it won’t simply draw users from the sites already targeting African-Americans — it will bring a whole new black audience to the Web.

“The BET brand clearly resonates with the African-American community,” says Scott Mills, chief operating officer for BET.com. “It is recognized by over 90 percent of African-Americans.” The idea seems to be to leverage the name and promotional tie-ins with the cable network, and thereby draw more blacks online. One of Johnson’s apparent aims is to reverse the so-called “digital divide” between whites and minorities.

“The failure of any community to avail itself of the resources of the Internet will limit its ability to succeed,” Johnson told the Associated Press. “BET is bringing its media channels, content and brand resources together with those of our partners to create an online destination that will educate, enrich, empower and entertain African-Americans.”

And that is, apparently, just fine by his competitors.

“It’s great, phenomenal,” says David Ellington, co-founder and chairman of Netnoir.com. “This puts a huge spotlight on the African-American audience. [Johnson's] move has validated the market. This is the kind of respect the market needs and deserves.” Barry Cooper, founder of Blackvoices.com, agreed, saying he hopes that BET’s promotional power can help swell the number of blacks on the Internet.

Recent government research suggests that African-Americans are far less likely to be online than white Americans. “Black and Hispanic households are roughly one-third as likely to have home Internet access as households of Asian/Pacific Islander descent, and roughly two-fifths as likely as white households,” according to the U.S. Department of Commerce report.

Can Johnson and BET.com help reverse the trend?

Perhaps. The question is whether they can do so without wreaking havoc on the African-American sites that pioneered the black community space. Though they have deeper histories on the Net, none can compete with BET for name recognition or for assets that would enable them to add bells and whistles to their sites or create big marketing campaigns.

Johnson has learned well how to dominate a market, with Black Entertainment Television, which started off as a small cable company showing little more than old movies with an all-black cast for two hours per week in 1980, and became a hugely popular around-the-clock network. And it sounds as if he has similar designs on the Internet. “We are going to brand the Internet, much the way we branded cable some 16 years ago,” Johnson said in a 1997 Washington Post Magazine story.

But BET.com says it won’t muscle out the competition. “It’s not our goal, and even if it was our goal, we think it can’t be achieved,” says Mills, the COO. “Our goal is simply to be the best.”

Still, it’s hard to disregard BET’s status in the cable world. While there are many black-owned magazines, radio stations, even several black-owned movie production companies, no other black-owned cable entity has sprung up in the 20 or so years since the birth of BET. “There are serious barriers to entry in the cable industry,” says Mills. These serious barriers presumably exist for whites as they do for blacks; yet we have dozens of white-owned cable companies and only one black-owned cable network.

Could Johnson and BET.com come to dominate the African-American portal space in the same way? Already, the company has attracted the largest investment in a black-owned Internet company ever — and brags about it. “Thirty-five million dollars, which is a bunch of cash. And all cash,” says Mills. “It was a significant amount of capital to fund our start-up.” Other African-American-oriented Web portals beat the bushes for years trying to attract major venture capital money, and some have found that it has only been with the entry of BET that deep-pocketed investors took notice of their sites. Ellington says that BET’s announcement instantly tripled Netnoir’s valuation.

With money to fund both content and marketing and its connections in the cable TV industry, BET.com has the potential to lock onto a lot of advertising dollars. Could other black-oriented Web sites be squeezed out by a new mega-player?

“It will never happen.,” says Willie Atterbery, Chairman and CEO of Afronet.com. “The Internet is too big, is growing too much, for any one site to offer everything that an African-American consumer would want.”

Besides, BET is a little late to the African-American market online. Both Netnoir and Blackvoices have been on the Web for about five years; they have developed loyal followings and know a thing or two about doing business on the Internet. Cooper says, “We’ve learned about our customers, about the Internet, and what advertisers want. Our history gives us an important head start on others who are just coming into cyberspace.”

Johnson may be new to the Net, but he is well aware of its opportunities; he says that he wants to take BET.com public. “To the extent that there is an opportunity with an IPO,” says Mills, “then we would pursue that opportunity to access Internet currency and to leverage and acquire more properties.” In the meantime, none of his competitors sound too concerned.

Ellington, of Netnoir, says, “There is a big enough market out there. When BET does marketing, Netnoir is one click away. And vice versa. This validates my work over the last five years. There’s going to be a Hertz and an Avis. And they both will make a lot of money.”

Raymond Rawlinson is a writer in the District of Columbia. More Raymond Rawlinson.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
129 points130 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
118 points119 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
84 points85 points | 75 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
83 points84 points | 17 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
72 points73 points | 16 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations