A lit­tle more than half of all res­i­dents of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. are African-American.  In Detroit, 8 out of 10 res­i­dents are African-American. Other Com­cast mar­kets with high con­cen­tra­tions of African-American sub­scribers include: Atlanta, Bal­ti­more, Birm­ing­ham, Chicago, Jack­son, MS, Mem­phis, New Orleans, Oak­land, CA, Pitts­burgh, Raleigh-Durham and many more.  Nev­er­the­less, the avail­abil­ity of African-American wholly-owned media does not reflect these sta­tis­tics.  Indeed, not one of the net­works on Comcast’s cable tele­vi­sion plat­form is 100% African-American owned and widely dis­trib­uted. Even chan­nels that carry African-American tar­geted con­tent are not 100% owned by African-American com­pa­nies.  Via­com owns BET and Com­cast owns 33% of TV One. The pro­posed merger will per­pet­u­ate or even worsen the lack of 100% African-American owned cable net­works. The deal will reduce com­pe­ti­tion by per­mit­ting Comcast/NBCU to play favoritism to their mas­sive port­fo­lio of 44 owned cable net­works, and more to be launched in the future, in lieu of 100% African-American owned chan­nels which will never get widely dis­trib­uted on the Com­cast plat­form. So we have no oppor­tu­nity to sur­vive and thrive. And to sup­port these facts, please refer to the FCC Car­riage Com­plaint filed Jan­u­ary 5, 2010, by the Ten­nis Chan­nel against Com­cast for this very rea­son. Addi­tion­ally, Com­cast was caught block­ing and slow­ing down com­pet­ing video con­tent on their broad­band plat­form which recently resulted in a class action law­suit against Com­cast in which they set­tled in the amount of $16 mil­lion for their deplorable behav­ior. These are just two exam­ples of their anti-competitive conduct.

Dr. Maya Angelou said it best, “When some­one shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

The 2009 com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages of Brian Roberts, Chair­man and Steve Burke, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of Com­cast, were in excess of $35 mil­lion each. These two men, Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, paid them­selves sig­nif­i­cantly more than what Com­cast paid to wholly-owned African-American media collectively.

Com­cast spends approx­i­mately $7 bil­lion per year on con­tent from cable net­works and less than $2 mil­lion per year is allo­cated to wholly-owned African-American net­works. Matt Bond, Com­cast Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Pro­gram­ming Con­tent Acqui­si­tions, should be sub­poe­naed to tes­tify under oath as to how many African-American owned media com­pa­nies have been allowed to pitch him (or not pitch him) for Car­riage Dis­tri­b­u­tion Agree­ments. How many African-American owned media com­pa­nies have been con­sis­tently denied such oppor­tu­ni­ties? Clearly the answer is dis­turb­ing, given the lack of 100% African-American owned cable net­works widely dis­trib­uted on the Com­cast plat­form.  And it’s not for the lack of try­ing.  Busi­ness­man Alvin James, along with Mar­lon Jack­son of the Jack­son Five, Attor­ney Willie E. Gary, Heavy­weight Cham­pion, Evan­der Holy­field and Base­ball Icon Cecil Fielder, raised in excess of 60 mil­lion dol­lars to fund a 100% African-American owned net­work called The Black Fam­ily Chan­nel.  Instead of Com­cast ensur­ing that The Black Fam­ily Chan­nel suc­ceeded, they exploited these African-American entre­pre­neurs by charg­ing them mil­lions of dol­lars in unnec­es­sary launch fees. If Com­cast did not sup­port a net­work called The Black Fam­ily Chan­nel, why should Black fam­i­lies sup­port Comcast?

I had a let­ter sent to Brian Roberts, dated April 9, 2010, stat­ing our posi­tion and request­ing a meet­ing to resolve this urgent issue. On May 12, 2010, I intro­duced myself to Brian Roberts at the NCTA Cable Show in Los Ange­les and requested a meet­ing with Mr. Roberts about these issues. Unfor­tu­nately the meet­ing request was denied. If this is their con­duct while they are try­ing to secure approval of the largest media acqui­si­tion in his­tory, how do you think they are going to act if they get approved?  The time has come for Com­cast to under­stand that African-Americans are no longer inter­ested in liv­ing on the Com­cast plan­ta­tion. Until Com­cast does busi­ness with African-American owned media in a sig­nif­i­cant way, we’re going to boy­cott and cam­paign to have African-American fam­i­lies and our sup­port­ers dis­con­nect Com­cast ser­vices immediately.

The National Coali­tion of African Amer­i­can Owned Media (NCAAOM) is work­ing to ensure that African-American Owned media com­pa­nies are  given  the  same  oppor­tu­ni­ties  as  their  non-African  Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts to own, pro­duce com­pelling con­tent, access dis­tri­b­u­tion, and flour­ish in today’s inte­grated media land­scape.  The  orga­ni­za­tion  is  focused  on  cre­at­ing  sus­tained  equal­ity  through  own­er­ship  as  a  means  of rec­ti­fy­ing the con­tin­ued racial imbal­ance within the com­pet­i­tive media industry.

Source: blacktalentnews