Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Bob Johnson: Technology and Content Diversity Inevitably Defeat Incumbent Regulation

Robert "Bob" Johnson · Live Episode! Black Entertainment Television: Robert Johnson · Dec 14, 2017 · at 10:46

Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), reflects on how the cable industry successfully overcame entrenched broadcaster and telephone company opposition through satellite technology and legal victories.

0:00 / 0:23exact quote · 23.3s
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“Technology is a hard thing to keep tied down, and as satellites launched, and you could beam signals across the entire country, and aggregate huge audiences via cable, over time, the argument for more content, free choice, more diversity of content, particularly, Won the argument with a couple of court cases”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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Assertion Supported
Johnson: BET Capitalized on MTV Not Airing Black Music Videos
“And then when MTV refused to play, or started out not playing black music videos, and the black talent wanted to have their videos shown, and I went to them and say, hey, if you keep making the videos, I'll keep putting them on. And as a result of that, we gai…”
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Disclosure
Bob Johnson: BET's pitch was adapted directly from an elderly channel proposal
“But I had his information, so when I started BET, I said, black people have certain spending patterns. Black people have certain shopping patterns. I just, wherever he had elderly, I just filled in black. And I just went in and took his model, and out of that …”
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What-if
Johnson would have accepted 20 percent equity to secure Malone's capital
“What Malone didn't know at the time, if he had reversed the numbers and said, I'll be 80, and Bob, you'll be 20, I said, John, that's a deal.”
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Insight
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Disclosure
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Insight
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“When you start a business, it was the preconceived notion that your business existed to further the collective, the goal of African Americans, so if you were doing something that they felt didn't do it, say if you weren't doing black educational television, Yo…”
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