First, if you're thinking of BET, that's cable. This is rabbit-ears (presumably digital).
"Our audience is so desperately underserved, I think consumers will welcome a fourth option," he said.I can understand that blacks are underserved by the television media. I can understand why anyone would be underserved. I'm hella underserved by TV: There ain't never any shit on I wanna watch. Maybe the occasional natural disaster.
Well, I read somewhere how BET had become a final option for "comedies" that exploited the black stereotypes that blacks like to watch, such as Good Times. Well, why not. Whites liked Petticoat Junction and Hee Haw. Maybe Bounce sees money in it in the non-cable sphere despite its rapid and inevitable shrinkage.
But I remain confused. Why would anyone want to bet the farm on a network designed to limit its appeal? Is the purpose to encourage disunity? Or just make a buck on good old fashioned cultural self-selection? I say go for it, it's a free country (sort of). I just don't see a shrinking market as a good place to set tight and specific targets.
Written here because I don't want to put this on Facebook thanks to the inevitable arguments from certain stupid genuises but still want to post it somewhere. Hey, I'm on a computer all the god damn time anyway.
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As "Larry the Liquidator" said:
"...do you know the surest way to go broke?
"Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure.
"You know, at one time there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.
"Now, how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?"
The market for narrow, exclusive-interest TV is in the shitter and getting worse. How many fishing channels, or curling channels, or shopping networks is enough to saturate the market? One is usually more than enough. No less true for narrow, racial-interest TV.
Language-based (e.g., "Spanish Language" channels) are in better shape, as their market is at least stable, and frequently increasing, especially since practically every hunted, pitiful, starving, embarrassingly neglected, slave-boy illegal alien has a digital TV.
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