Friday, August 13, 1999
BET starting online service for blacks
Knight Ridder News Service
BET Holdings, which runs four cable channels and three magazines aimed at African-Americans, said Thursday that it would team with three big media companies to launch an Internet portal for blacks.
The initial investment, $35 million, is the largest outlay ever for an online service for blacks, whose percentage of Internet use runs about half that of whites.
BET Chief Executive Officer Robert Johnson said his portal, BET.com, scheduled to start in November, could help change that.
“Let's not forget, African-Americans are not destitute in terms of technology for entertainment. They are heavy subscribers to cable, for instance.
“The easiest way to attract African-Americans to computers ... is to let them know that there is content there that has a value to them.”
BET and its new partners, News Corp. (Fox's parent), USA Networks and Liberty Media, plan to let them know like crazy.
BET.com, however, would hardly be the first Internet site for blacks. Blackvoices.com, the current leader, which boasts 15 million page views a month, started four years ago, when founder Barry Cooper, a former sports writer at the Orlando Sentinel, rigged it up as an adjunct to that newspaper's nascent Web site — for hardly any money at all.
Bill LaVeist, Blackvoices.com executive producer, said he welcomed his big-bucks competition.
“It validates that the audience is there. There's more room now than when we started, and there's more to do.”
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