By Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times
The woman who nurtured and brought the world BET - Black Entertainment Television - along with her husband three decades ago says she doesn't watch the once popular video, movie and music channel anymore.
Shelia Crump Johnson and her then husband, Bob developed BET with a $15,000 loan and $500,000 from media mogul John Malone. When the channel first aired in 1980, it targeted the African American viewer with music videos from the most popular artists in the entertainment industry.
In 1983, the cable channel began airing music videos 24-hours a day. Over the next twenty-years, BET nose dived from entertainment for the family to soft porn and a forum that displayed violent and often degrading music videos blamed for the negative image of the African Americans.
African-American community leaders and scholars argued that BET was detrimental to its young audience as it bombarded the living rooms of viewers with degrading images of African American men glorifying violence and the abuse of women and perpetuated racism by fostering the derogatory beliefs other races may have come to associate with African Americans.
Reverend Delman Coates' human service agency, Enough is Enough, a group not shy about protesting BET backed an April 2008 report titled "The Rap on Rap," by the Parents Television Council that found BET rap programming contained "gratuitous sexual, violent, and profane content," which was geared to target children and teens.
The protests were successful. In April 2010, BET no longer airs music videos other than gospel and focuses on airing reruns of popular black sitcoms along with black cinema.
As of 2000, BET was no longer Black owned when media conglomerate Viacom bought it for $3 billion. The Johnson walked away $1.3 billion richer making them, at that time, the nation’s first African-American billionaires.
When asked what she thought of BET since she and her former husband were bought out, Johnson said, "Don’t even get me started. I don’t watch it. I suggest to my kids that they don’t watch it… I’m ashamed of it, if you want to know the truth."
Johnson, 60, says she thinks BET is "potentially contributing to the spread of AIDS by promoting promiscuous, unprotected sex in raunchy, late-night rap videos."
Check out BET
ARTICLE: "BET's 'Hot Ghetto Mess' dubbed racist, elitist"
ARTICLE: " REASONS WHY BET IS AN EMBARRASSMENT"
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