BET

Last night I had the pleasure of sitting with my boyfriend for 4 hours while he was a guest on the Koolout show on WVON 1690 A.M. radio. I must say that I was duped, we went to Jokes and Notes earlier for some laughs and to support his “Get A Job” co-star Lil Rell. I guess the show was going a bit longer than he anticipated because we ended up rushing out to the radio station, for what he told me would be about a 20 minute talk segment on Maxim 13:22 production company and the short film ‘Don’t Bite the Apple’ that he did with them.
About three hours later they were talking about BET and the 2011 BET awards. Koolout had just taken a caller who was concerned about whether or not Black people are overly critical of the channel and whether or not the award show was good. The only person in the room with whom I actually agreed surprised me.

Koolout was going on about how BET perpetuates all the negative stereotypes about Black people and how the BET awards were unorganized and of poor quality compared to something like the Grammys. My first thoughts were, wow, why do people not only keep comparing BET to every other station that is not even trying to reach a Black audience and the BET awards and the Grammys are two totally different things with two totally different budgets
Tina the female co-host to Koolout’s Sunday night radio show surprised me by sticking up for BET and the 2011 awards. She was the only one in the room who had watched the awards and said it was very organized and they did a good job of mixing the old with the new with the variety of performers. She was also the one who pointed out the budget differences between the BET awards and the Grammys. Now she also said that the BET awards was live and that the Grammys are not, which I’m not so sure is true but the budget differences are obvious in the look of the two different channels.

Sitting there listening to a bunch of Black people berate BET then start offering ‘Well they are doing betters’ after the only non Black said she thinks BET and Debra Lee are doing a good job, did not sit well with me.

I wonder when people started watching BET, because BET was never so terrible to me.
I didn’t hear this much complaining about it when it was just a channel that played videos on every one of its shows.

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My memory of BET before Debra Lee is Midnight Whispers, (which I looked forward to every night), College Hill, Rap-City The basement, 106th and Park, reruns of Comic view, bad movies usually staring rappers, Uncut, and infomercials and religious shows after hours and on Sundays. There was also BET J, the ‘more mature’ counterpart to BET and I loved that channel. The programming was varied and fresh, it only had one show that played videos that I can recall and the videos were less Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, and all of Young Money, and more Eric Roberson, Beyonce and maybe Common.

Outside of a handful of Black shows sprinkled across a handful of white stations that’s what Black Entertainment was at the time. And then BOOM, one day BET was the downfall of Black people everywhere as if Flavor of Love was part of its Tuesday night line up, as if BET set the formula for rap music videos to feature thick dark girls and any kind of light or white chick, blunts, fancy cars and cash falling from the sky. No people, BET was just a platform for some of the the shit that Black people created and tuned into, to be televised.
Now admittedly I have no idea what went on behind the scences, who knows if the people who created good and positive shows like ‘Everybody Hates Chris’, ‘Girlfriends’ or ‘Making the Band’ came to BET first for a chance to have their show created, or if they went right to WGN, ABC, MTV etc.

As for the awards shows, I didn’t get to watch them last night, but I hope to catch a rerun. I won’t be blaming BET if they don’t catch all the Bitch, Nigga, Fuck, Pussy, etc. and bleep them out on time, that doesn’t make them unorganized in my eyes.
4:55p.m.