Why I Hate BET - Daunte Henderson

I remember when BET Uncut used to be the thing to watch at 3am. Me and my friends would have endless conversations about videos like “Tipdrill”, “What Thang Smell Like” and “Pussy Poppin”. For a broke male like myself that doesn’t have interest in strip clubs or paying for pleasure, BET Uncut was perfect. I could stay at the crib and look at all the booty for free. It was like going to the club minus the social interaction. BET Uncut was the most hardcore thing on cable TV besides the Real Sex series on HBO. The videos on Uncut showcased the raunchiest of the raunchiest. Strippers gyrating, half naked models, hardcore rap music all in a one hour segment. Misogynistic, YES, sexist, Yes, entertaining, yeah, wrong, yeah. BET has since decided to pull BET Uncut from the lineup after much criticism from the African American community and rightfully so. As the media voice for the African American community, BET has let a lot of my people down. African Americans have enough negativity on television without the programs like BET Uncut, We Got to Do Better, College Hill and any other remake of MTV that they can produce. In my opinion the damage is still being done to the African American community by our market leader in African American entertainment. BET sucks! I’ll stand on it and won’t budge.

Robert Johnson, founder of BET and also a Black man, sold the company for 3 billion to media giant Viacom. I’m not mad at the brother. I might change a few morals for a cool billion, BUT the quality of programming at BET has changed for the worse since this change in ownership. Viacom owns Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike TV, The N, TV Land, Nick at Nite Children's Entertainment: Nickelodeon, Noggin Music: MTV, VH1, MTV2, and many more companies. They own basically everything as you can see. I’ve noticed one disturbing thing about BET. They always seem to counterattack anything MTV does. MTV has “The Real World”, BET has “College Hill”. MTV has “Making the Video”, BET has “Access Granted”. MTV has “Punk’d”, BET has “Hell Date”, MTV has “The Hills”, BET has “Baldwin Hills”. ARE YOU SERIOUS? I didn’t even name everything. Are you that hard up for originality that you have to copycat everything MTV does? If you’re going to copy off something at least let it be good. If you look at the programs on BET they don’t even have good picture quality. Look at MTV and you will see the difference. The pictures have great clarity and they look professional. Besides a few shows like “106 & Park” and the various church programs on BET, the picture quality sucks. The picture quality is terrible. Keep in mind that BET and MTV are owned by the same company. Is Viacom not giving you enough money?

BET has added shows like “Keep the Faith”, “Cousin Jeff Chronicles” and a few other enlightening shows but there still is a lot of work to be done. We can start with the trashy commercials that air after 10 p.m. If you have ever watched BET you’ll notice the ringtone commercials that dominate BET. These commercials feature voluptuous women and scantily clad women selling their ringtones and cellphone wallpapers. BET also airs phone sex and dating commercials after hours. WHY? It seems BET is more concerned with remaking MTV and commercials than making quality programming. BET on the weekends is unbearable. They are heavily flooded with redundant Top 25 music countdowns, Jamie Foxx reruns and the infamous infomercials. It’s terrible. I might sound like the biggest hater of BET but it disgusts me to call this the voice of our people. I know I’m not the only who sees this.

The more and more I look at BET the more I see the reason why people stereotype our people. I mean if this is the source of BLACK ENTERTAINMENT then I’d rather watch MTV. I’d rather sit through two hours of the likes of Avril Lavigne (which I don’t like) than watch a half an hour “We Got to Do Better”. It’s a crying shame that I have to look for positive depictions of African American in other media outlets. Maybe they need to change their acronym to BET (Black Exploitation Television) Maybe it won’t be so misleading.