DVrepublic News

Hollywood Critics Stand Their Ground Against Two New Black Indie Films

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:25:40

]]> When two independent Black films, We the Party and Woman Thou Art Loosed On The 7th Day, opened on consecutive weekends, thus entering the gated community of movie theaters, they encountered a hostility and suspicion by film critics analogous to the experience of Trayvon Martin, as Hollywood film critics stood their ground.
http://newsone.com/2004134/warrington-hudlin-on-white-critics-black-film/?fb_ref=.T5cR-RDwosA.like&fb_source=timeline

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:41:24

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:41:02

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Wed, 18 May 2011 18:40:30

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Moving pictures the next step for Africas mobile Internet users

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:15:38

]]> The speed with which Facebook has taken off on the African continent in the countries that are a bell-weather for early take-up has been impressive.

Twitter is trotting behind but with much smaller number but its only a matter of time. MXit has impressive up-take in South Africa. What has been missed in this social media explosion is the significance of moving pictures through things like You Tube and Vimeo. Russell Southwood argues that this surge will happen on mobiles and is not far around the corner.

Alexa.com does web site rankings by use for 14 African countries. The listing below shows the ranking of You Tube in those countries:

Egypt 3
Algeria 3
Tunisia 3
Mauritius 4
South Africa 4
Uganda 5
Tanzania 5
Congo-B 5
Kenya 5
Senegal 5
Nigeria 6
Ghana 6
Cote dIvoire 6
Madagascar 8

The incredible thing about these rankings is that a high level of use is clearly there well before the bandwidth exists to deliver it properly. Im sitting here writing this in Accra and all of the videos I looked at were buffering after 30 seconds to a minute.

The young are clearly the main users and it is one indication of its popularity that a university in Ghana has to stop its students using in work hours, otherwise it simply swamps all the other things the students need and want to do. Yes, the University will get more bandwidth but it takes time and prices have not come down. Its still at the have somewhere bandwidth but pay the same stage.

Video content from and about Africa is very patchy. Theres a lot of certain kinds of genres (movies, music) but nothing on many other topics. Some examples give some idea of the take-up by number of views. Obviously not all these views come from the continent but based on our own experience (see below) more come from the continent than might be imagined by the more skeptical:

Nigerian music
Timaya/Platinum Boy 707,234
Ono 2 Sexy/Jusustina 401,778
I go chop Yo Dollar 151,326
(spoof by Nigerian comic)
Highlife from Ghana
(music by Tumi Ebow Ansa) 64,092

One recurring channel with high viewership is VIOAfrica which focuses on Nigerian music. Interestingly, the video clip phenomenon has already spawned a beta site called metv. It is a content aggregation platform that allows the distribution of professionally made film content from the African continent on the internet. As storytelling goes, Africa is well known for its wealth and depth of this great tradition. metv africa bridges the gap between the storytellers and the listeners (viewers) in a web 2.0 way. Now all it has to do is get the contentand as ever, thats the difficult part.

Further along in this respect is Africanfilms.tv that will launch its site in June 2011 with 500 films that are being distributed on a non-exclusive basis using VoD. And then all they will have to do is attract the usersThese observations are not meant badly but it will take time for someone to hit it right with something more than just a hobby site.

(Its worth saying that this content is not only found on You Tube but also on Vimeo, which describes itself as a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about the videos they make.

At a more specialist level, advertising clips particularly funny ones - are making their way on to You Tube in increasing numbers. A Tigo Networks ad simply titled Ghana Funny Ad got 36,355 views and at a more modest level the Vodafone Ghana The chase ad got 1,136 views. Media companies like the Standard and the Nation in Kenya that already have a well developed web presence have found it easy to transfer news clips on to their site using You Tube. These are also available relatively cheaply to mobile users via Safaricom.

At an extremely specialist level, it has been interesting to watch the growth of our own Balancing Act Web TV Channel. In six months it has gone from nothing to around 2,000 views per month, well over 60% of which are coming from the continent. In a years time, the most watched videos (which is about 10% of them) will get 500-1,000 views each. Our total community of users is just over 10,000 because we deal with specialist topics.

It is incredibly easy making reasonably competent face-to-camera interview clips. Its not television but it only takes one person, a small tripod and a camera that costs around US$300. (We are currently mourning the announced closure of Flip by Cisco). The cameras are also very light and can be easily slipped into a briefcase or even a pocket.

The continent has an extremely small press because in many countries people prefer to listen to the radio or watch television. If that general statement is true, then it is doubly or triply true for the 18-35 age group who are driving this kind of use. An advertising executive told me:My girlfriend has given up buying a newspaper. She just looks at the headlines on her mobile. And shes always got the news before me And it doesnt take much imagination to see that headline clips and breaking news clips will be popular.

So how does this steady flow of video viewing (which will become a raging torrent once more bandwidth is in place) get on the mobile phone? Well, the easy answer is via the Internet and while smart phone numbers are still mainly in the hundreds of thousands, they could easily go over 25% of the user base in some countries. Once one of a group of friends is showing a funny or rude video, do you think those other friends wont go home wanting a similar type of phone? At the right price, streamed or downloaded vide content will be a driver of smartphone take-up.

But getting a business model out of all that free stuff streaming over handsets must give the network planners sleepless nights. Sure, you can turn it off or shape it out of existence but its coming like a freight train so it will be hard to hold off.

The joint venture between MTN and DStv has been to make a Pay TV bouquet available via DVB-H handsets and deliver it over its own special network for a monthly subscription. You have to admire DStv for taking the plunge well before anyone one else but the early results are underwhelming. Subscribers are in the low thousands to low tens of thousands. The cost and availability of DVB-H handsets is a big hurdle to overcome for most potential users. Most people are not buying a handset to get mobile TV access: theres a dreadful chicken and egg dilemma there.

The other route that is not really talked about is people buying cheap Chinese handsets that can receive analogue Free-To-Air TV transmissions. We have reports from a wide number of countries of people watching TV on tro-tros or matatus as they crawl through the ever-present traffic snarl-ups that infect every African city.

As ever, the answer to the what is the business model? question is predictable but nonetheless requires getting right. It can be one of three things or some hybrid of them:

- A subscription model based on pre-paid scratch cards and Internet access.
- VOD paid again in pre-paid blocks of credits and each item cheap enough to make the user not hesitate.
- Sponsorship where a single advertiser gets to put its logo and colours all over the channel because it will impress the young demographic that they have their finger on the pulse.

www.balancingact-africa.com

Groups Lay Out Minority Broadband Access Plan

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:22:16

]]> A coalition of national civil rights and labor organizations has responded to the Federal Communications Commissions request for commentary on how to improve access to broadband for low-income, minority, and other unserved and underserved communities.

In a letter to FCC Commissioners, the coalition urged swift action to broaden the reach of broadband access through the Lifeline and Link-Up programs as an economic imperative for minorities, stating that:

This access is critically important for success in the job market, especially in a competitive job market where March 2011 unemployment was 8.8 percent, black unemployment was 15.5 percent and Latino unemployment was 11.3 percent Broadband plays a critically important role in all parts of the jobs pipeline covering job readiness that includes obtaining skills necessary for a job, job placement that includes successfully applying for a job, and job progression that includes retraining for advancing through a job.

Lifeline and Link-Up have provided low-income households with discounts on monthly phone bills and initial installation charges since 1985, The letter recommends the following seven steps to enhance the effectiveness and reach of the Lifeline and Link-Up programs:

* Move quickly to expand Lifeline and Link-Up to support broadband services that can support voice as well as other applications;
* Expand Lifeline and Link-Up to support broadband services this year;
* Create a financial set-aside for competitive grants within the Lifeline program;
* Expand and simplify eligibility rules, create incentives within the program to reach target populations and reduce waste and fraud, and mandate combined outreach (and possibly administration) of this program with other similar programs;
* Increase efficiency and reduce waste by incorporating into the Lifeline program the latest and best thinking regarding federal benefit programsparticularly by expanding and simplifying eligibility rules, creating incentives within the program to reach target populations and reduce waste and fraud, combining outreach of this program with other similar programs, and redefining household;
* Postpone any consideration of a cap until the reforms proposed in the current proceeding can be implemented; and
* Take this opportunity to reevaluate the current distribution of financial support between universal service funds to support low income consumers and programs that support high cost areas.

The letter was signed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Asian American Justice Center, Communications Workers of America, National Urban League, NAACP, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Consumer Law Center, on behalf of its low-income clients, National Disability Rights Network, National Hispanic Media Coalition, National Organization for Women Foundation, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and United Church of Christ, Office of Communication, Inc.

Blaxploitation's Baadasssss History

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 16:16:11

]]> When Melvin Van Peebles released his X-rated, hyper-political Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971, few thought that it would spark a movie revolution. So what happened?

Forty years ago this month, Melvin Van Peebles' celluloid classic, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, shook up the world of cinema, much as a brash young pugilist originally known as Cassius Clay had done in the boxing ring some seven years earlier. Van Peebles' independently produced film merged European modernism and the avant-garde with the urgent demands of black power to create a cinematic document that echoed sentiments similar to those being articulated in the urban streets of 1970s America.

Though opening in only two theaters at the outset -- one in Detroit and one in Atlanta -- Sweetback went on to gross large sums of money compared with the initial cost of production, thus allowing Van Peebles to, among other things, reimburse Bill Cosby, who had graciously given the aspiring auteur a loan so that he could complete his ambitious film.

With no such thing as a marketing budget, Van Peebles released the film's Earth, Wind & Fire sound track before the film, and he would rely on the oral tradition, using strong word-of-mouth support, to help promote Sweetback to eager urban audiences. When the dust cleared, the film's success made Hollywood pay attention to the existence of an untapped audience. This set in motion a process that would give birth to a genre eventually referred to as "blaxploitation" going forward.

The critical reaction to Sweetback was varied. Lerone Bennett, executive editor of Ebony magazine, penned an article entitled "Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland" that criticized the film for romanticizing ghetto life, for opening with the scene described as the "rape of a child by a 40-year-old prostitute" and for assuming that sexual prowess was synonymous with revolutionary actions. According to Bennett, "f---ing will not set you free."

Yet Huey P. Newton, head of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, wrote his own lengthy essay about the film in the Panthers' newspaper. Arguing that Sweetback was a cultural reflection of the same types of political ideas that the Panthers championed, he went on to suggest that the movie was the "first truly revolutionary black film." Sweetback would become required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party.

The marked differences of opinion about this film would initiate an ongoing cultural debate, often centered around positive and negative media images and black representation in general. This same debate, somewhat modified, lingers to this day in relation to hip-hop culture.

He's a Complicated Man

In July 1971, MGM released Shaft, and it was as though the independent spirit of Sweetback had now quickly spawned a more mainstream successor. Unlike Sweetback, which posited its hero (played by Van Peebles) as "the bad-ass nigger coming back to get some dues," Shaft featured Richard Roundtree as "the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks."

In each case, the sexual prowess and protagonist's overall swag signaled the emergence of a new kind of black character, one who specialized in kickin' ass and takin' names! John Shaft, however, was equally at ease among cops and convicts, gangsters and revolutionaries. He was, after all, "the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about."

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The film was directed by Gordon Parks, a true Renaissance man if ever there was one. Parks was an acclaimed photographer for Vogue and Life magazines, an author and a filmmaker even before he directed Shaft. He would go on to write novels, compose classical music and choreograph ballet, in addition to directing the sequel to Shaft, Shaft's Big Score!, in 1972.

As with Sweetback, the sound track for Shaft would be an integral part of the film's identity, with Isaac Hayes going on to win best original song for "Theme From Shaft" at the 1972 Academy Awards, after a noted performance at that year's Oscars, wearing an unforgettable vest of chains over his bare chest. At the time, Hayes was only the third African American, after Hattie McDaniel and Sidney Poitier, to win an Academy Award. Parks' direction and Hayes' score combined to create a truly spectacular opening scene in which Shaft walks through New York City like the soulful conquering hero and erstwhile man about town that he is.

Tryin' to Get Over

The third component of the triple threat that made blaxploitation a reality was the 1972 release of the independently produced, Warner Bros.-distributed Super Fly, a film directed by Parks' son Gordon Parks Jr. Here the militancy of Sweetback and the swag of Shaft found its place in the character of Youngblood Priest, a Harlem cocaine dealer in an especially tricked-out "hog" (Cadillac El Dorado), who is intent on making one last deal before getting out of the game on top.

If it were only that easy! Supplemented by Curtis Mayfield's brilliant Greek chorus of a sound track, Super Fly forwarded a conscious existential dilemma that would showcase the dope dealer's plight in truly political terms. Yet despite the film's slept-on progressive politics, many came away simply absorbed in the ghetto-fabulous display of cars, clothes and cash.

Instead of prompting people to get out of the life as Priest had done, Super Fly often had the reverse effect, here serving as something of a recruiting tool for aspiring hustlers. Soon after Super Fly hit theaters, urban cats were donning perms and wearing coke spoons around their necks like their cinematic hero Priest. The lifestyle proved irresistible to many, and Hollywood was now ready to serve this newfound audience, much as Priest served his customers.

It was around this time that Junius Griffin, former film publicist and head of the Hollywood branch of the NAACP, would be credited with coining the controversial phrase "black exploitation" to describe these new cinematic offerings. In a polemic for the NAACP's Crisis magazine in May 1973, Griffin writes, "We must tell black and white movie producers that the transformation from the stereotyped Step n' Fetchit to super nigger on screen is just another form of cultural genocide." He goes on to say, "We must insist that our children are not constantly exposed to a steady diet of so-called black movies that glorify black males as pimps, dope pushers, gangsters, and super males with vast physical powers but no cognitive skills."

Pimpin' the Genre

Though the debates about the cultural merits of these films would continue unabated, more and more blaxploitation films would start to be released at a much faster clip. There would be subgenres of the larger genre. Following the popularity of Iceberg Slim's street novella Pimp, the silver screen would showcase pimp classics like The Mack (1973), Willie Dynamite (1974) and The Candy Tangerine Man (1975).

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Pam Grier's Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), along with Tamara Dobson's Cleopatra Jones (1973), would foreground the powerful women of the era, who merged sexuality with an Angela Davis-like consciousness in bringing down all manner of evil. Movies like Blacula (1972); the sequel, Scream Blacula Scream (1973); and J.D.'s Revenge (1976) would link blackness to the horror film, while other titles, like Mandingo (1975) and Drum (1976), would serve as blaxploitation's revisionist history of slavery.

Jamaa Fanaka's Penitentiary (1979) took the genre to prison. Blue comedian Rudy Ray Moore turned his bawdy oral toasts into hilarious cinematic gems of the lowest order with films like Dolemite (1975), The Human Tornado (1976) and Petey Wheatstraw (1977).

One of the biggest surprises of the era was the release and subsequent disappearance of Ivan Dixon's film The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). The film features a black protagonist who, after being selected for the CIA, learns its methods of covert warfare and then uses those methods to start a revolution in the streets of Chicago.

Originally released as one of the many blaxploitation films of the mid-1970s, The Spook quickly disappeared from theaters, causing many to suspect that government forces had pulled the film from theaters because of its incendiary political nature. After all, there has long been a racist assumption, going back to the days of Jack Johnson's fight films, that black people were unable to distinguish fact from fiction and could be manipulated into imitating what they saw on-screen.

Fade to Black

Though blaxploitation began as something potentially empowering, the genre, with Hollywood's mercenary involvement, eventually became a series of repetitive images, devoid of any political substance. Schlock like The Black Six (1973) -- starring NFL stars Gene Washington, Mean Joe Greene, Willie Lanier, Mercury Morris, Carl Eller and Lem Barney -- which billed itself as "Six times tougher than Shaft! Six times rougher than Super Fly!" was a laughable motorcycle-gang film that could be said to typify the genre at its worst.

At a certain point, blaxploitation films began to decline in both substance and number. Hollywood had regained its footing after some financial struggles in the early part of the decade. With the release of films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and George Lucas' Star Wars (1977), Hollywood had discovered new revenue streams and no longer needed the chump-change profits that came from making low-budget black movies that had played so well in urban areas.

Richard Pryor, arguably the greatest stand-up comedian of all time, had made several scene-stealing turns in films like The Mack (1973), Uptown Saturday Night (1974) and Car Wash (1976). But by the late '70s, he was a star in his own right, and his move into mainstream movie stardom seemed to signal that black representation in Hollywood was now poised to go to the next level.

This promise was short-lived, however, since Pryor was never able to capture the energy that had typified his performances before he went mainstream. The R-rated Pryor of the '70s seemed to give way to a more gentrified PG version in the '80s, now that he had made the transition to mainstream Hollywood. By the time Pryor was going mainstream, the genre known as blaxploitation had gone dark.

The Rebirth of a Genre

Ultimately, the merits of blaxploitation would be judged by the way future generations responded to the genre. Would blaxploitation live a second life, or was it doomed to be swept away in the ash pile of '70s history?

Well, by the late '80s, rappers began appropriating the personas of various blaxploitation characters and sampling dialogue from famous scenes in their music. With a strong boost from hip-hop, the celebrated sound tracks of the blaxploitation era would start to be sampled regularly and then re-released on compact disc.

By the early '90s, a new generation of black filmmakers would be referencing the blaxploitation era with films like New Jack City (1991) and Dead Presidents (1995), telling their own contemporary urban cinematic tales. Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood's most celebrated new auteur from the '90s, would devote significant screen time to various blaxploitation themes in films like Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994) and, especially, his homage to the era, Jackie Brown (1997), which starred blaxploitation's looming female icon, Pam Grier.

Blaxploitation has been so significant over the years that it birthed a second genre, one we might call the blaxploitation parody. Beginning with Keenen Ivory Wayan's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), and on to Undercover Brother (2002) and, most recently, Black Dynamite (2009), the comedy to be mined from blaxploitation's over-the-top style and off-the-chain attitude continues to produce laughs long after the original era has passed.

Some of the best examples of blaxploitation influence can be found in films like John Singleton's remake of Shaft (2000) and in Mario Van Peebles' Baadasssss! (2004), a film that dramatizes his father Melvin's efforts in making Sweetback.

Passing the torch from one generation to the next allowed blaxploitation to live on long past what many thought was its expiration date. Though many want to dismiss blaxploitation, for all its strengths and flaws, this body of work still represents one of the most sustained periods of black cinematic production in Hollywood history. In 1971, few imagined that we would be talking about Sweetback and the era it influenced 40 years hence, but here we are, still reppin'. I suspect that someone will be doing the same 40 years from now. Can you dig it?

Todd Boyd, PhD is the Katherine and Frank Price Endowed Chair for the Study of Race and Popular Culture, and professor of critical studies, in the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is the author of The Notorious Ph.D.'s Guide to the Super Fly '70s; his blog is Notorious Ph.D.

The Coming Battle for Africa's Internet

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:27:01

]]> DAKAR, Senegal -- On a normal week, 30-year-old Salam Fall would be under-slept in West Virginia, juggling the odd hours of a graveyard shift at an IT company with the even odder hours of his moonlight gig, managing an internet start-up based five time zones to the east. But in early February, the Senegalese-American immigrant -- and his green card 9 years in the making -- returned to Senegal to make some changes at Seneweb.com, his website and, in many ways, the unofficial homepage of the nation.

If you're Senegalese or have ever traveled to the West African nation, you've likely come across this site. A buzzing, sensational aggregator of the former French colony's news, it feels and looks like the Huffington Post of Senegal -- except with far less in the way of competition. Deeply influential in Senegalese media and politics, it's where obscure reports of government waywardness go viral. On a happening day, the site fetches 200,000 unique visits and 1.3 million hits -- astounding numbers in a nation of 13 million, less than a million of whom can even get online.

That traffic has traditionally come not from inside Senegal but from all the motley places where West Africans travel for work -- such as Romania, the source of 905 unique Seneweb visits last month. For this region's disparate migrant communities, websites such as Seneweb are an invaluable tool for keeping up with the goings on at home. Accordingly, nearly every country in the neighborhood has its Seneweb: Ghanaweb is probably the most influential, followed by Côte d'Ivoire's Abidjan.net.

But in the past few years, as Fall was pulling night shifts, something fundamental changed for the man who would be Africa's Arianna Huffington.

"At one point, people in the U.S. were the main people who visited," he said. "But now, the majority of visitors are in Senegal. The internet has taken off here."

It will continue to take off, analysts say, as internet access becomes cheaper and more widespread. It's largely just a matter of how quickly it happens and how common it becomes. Less than ten percent of Africa's population has internet access, but Seacom chief executive Brian Herlihy told me he expects that number to grow by half every year "for the foreseeable future."

His company is one of several laying links in what they hope could become as much as 100,000 miles of broadband wiring criss-crossing the world's second-largest continent like the 21st century version of a transcontinental railway. The connections start with undersea cables and extend onshore towards 3G towers within reception range of the continent's growing middle class.

That burgeoning bourgeoisie is Africa's lead variable, and Herlihy ballparks its current mass at 300 million people, each earning between $2,000 and $5,000 yearly -- not always enough to keep a router in the living room lit, but certainly enough to pay off a BlackBerry bill. The service they enjoy, smoother than its American equivalent, runs off towers that are newer and more adaptable to data transfers, which is rendering Africa's telecom transition -- from a continent of voice phones to one of pocket PCs -- more scalable than expected.

"It's just happening faster and faster than anybody could have imagined," Herlihy says.

Plus, that expanded internet access isn't just a symptom of a greater prosperity -- it can also help drive that same middle class growth. The World Bank estimates that every ten percent of a country's population that winds up online powers a percentage point and a half of yearly economic growth.

That growth potential helps explain why the World Bank's offices in Sierra Leone and Liberia, which typically focus on building roads or power plants, have allocated $57 million to support a $300 million project to build a broadband cable reaching out to sea.

Currently, most internet access in Sierra Leone and Liberia is only by satellite, which restricts it to those who are both extremely rich and extremely patient. But the World Bank-funded cable is expected to drop prices to a tenth of where they sit now -- well into what, for example, schools and shopowners could afford.

"We don't believe something like internet access or mobile technology is meant for the well-off," the bank's Sierra Leone manager Vijay Pillai said. "The impact of mobile phones clearly demonstrates that internet is something that can be transformative for the bulk of the population."

salam-seneweb_two.jpgBack in the Senegalese office where Seneweb shuffles the news, Fall believes that the converse is true as well: Africa's population could also be transformative for the internet.

Google -- the company has six offices on the continent, including one in Dakar's colonial district, where it recently held a conference for local developers -- seems intent on developing the market in Africa, where it can deploy many of the same services that arose out of North America's chaotic and competitive first decades on the internet.

The search engine company, seeing plenty of openings in the nascent African web services market, is aiming to fill as many of them as possible. Google offers a Craigslist-style site where Africans can shop used goods -- sheep, pool tables, balafons (a xylophone-like West African instrument), or just about anything else. Last year, Google unfurled Baraza, a question-and-answer forum for Africans, which resembles Yahoo! Answers.

Fall called these "tried and failed methods for Senegalese market."

"I just feel like Google in Senegal, they really don't know what they're after, they just want to be here, waiting and seeing." he said.

Google Spokesperson Julie Taylor told me her company's presence is largely about encouraging local content, but Fall doesn't buy this explanation.

"The web has local content, but local tools -- that it doesn't have," he said, lamenting that many sites are just copies of their Western equivalents, which were designed for a very different part of the world.

"The only thing you have is tools that are built by U.S. and European companies and those tools are definitely not geared towards the African market."

Fall has a few tools in mind -- a phone-based bookkeeping service for shopkeepers, for example, which could do much in a part of the world where every salesman records his turnover in a notebook. He also wants to add a Blogger service to Seneweb and to sidestep Google Ads by soliciting African companies to buy banners on his site.

"I'm expecting them to advertise through us directly," he said. "Most private companies here don't even budget for advertising on the internet. I have to go after them, sit them down, and make a case for this internet thing."

African businesses might be skeptical about the web, but forward-looking tech companies from Seneweb to Google are already planning for how to best serve the continent's billion-plus consumers.

"You look at Africa, Brazil, China, India, and right there you have almost four billion of the world's consumers," Herlihy says. "They're only going to be happy using products designed for Americans for so long."

This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/03/the-coming-battle-for-africas-internet/72491/ />

Study: African-Americans' usage of online and mobile TV platforms outpacing whites'

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:23:04

]]> Early results of Horowitz Associates, Inc.'s annual State of Cable and Digital Media -- Multicultural Edition 2011 study has just been released and reveal that, at least weekly, almost a third of urban consumers (31%) watch TV content via alternative platforms such as on a computer/laptop, on a mobile device/tablet, or streamed directly from the Internet to the TV through an "OTT" device such as an Apple TV, a Vudu Box, an Xbox, or a Blu-Ray DVD player.

Those who use alternative platforms for TV spend, on average, 15% of their viewing time on a platform other than traditional TV. This is in addition to time devoted to digital TV platforms such as DVRs and VOD.

African-Americans' use of digital media is particularly active, according to Horowitz's "State of Cable and Broadband Services" report early findings:

- 36% of Black consumers watch TV content on alternative platforms at least weekly versus 25% of White non-Hispanic urban consumers

- Incidence of weekly mobile TV viewing is highest among Black and Hispanic urban consumers: 14%, report at least weekly viewing, compared to 7% among White and 5% among Asian urban consumers.

- Data on TV viewing through a computer or laptop alone found that 17% of Blacks do so, versus 15% of Whites

- Approximately 61% of African-Americans surveyed report currently subscribe to cable, a slight increase over the 59% that reported cable subscriptions in 2009

More findings from this research will be revealed at next week's Multicultural Media Forum on Wednesday March 16th at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York City which runs from 8am-1pm. The event features a roster of research, media, and advertising executives who will address strategies for capturing and retaining audiences in multiplatform, multicultural America, and the important role of culturally relevant in-language content in serving the cross-platform needs of these audiences

Our Right-Leaning Public Media

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:34:31

]]> The tumultuous managerial shakeup at National Public Radio headquarters for trivial verbal miscues once again has highlighted the ludicrous corporatist right-wing charge that public radio and public TV are replete with left-leaning or leftist programming.

Ludicrous, that is, unless this criticisms yardstick is the propaganda regularly exuded by the extreme right-wing Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. These capitalists use the publics airwaves free-of-charge to make big money.

The truth is that the frightened executives at public TV and radio have long been more hospitable to interviews with right of center or extreme right-wing and corporatist talking heads than liberal or progressive guests.

PBSs Charlie Rose has had war-loving William Kristol on thirty one times, Henry Kissinger fifty five times, Richard Perle ten times, the global corporatist cheerleader, Tom Friedman seventy times. Compare that guest list with Roses interviews of widely published left of center guestsNoam Chomsky two times, William Grieder two times, Jim Hightower two times, Charlie Peters two times, Lewis Lapham three times, Bob Herbert six times, Paul Krugman twenty one times, Victor Navasky one time, Mark Green five times and Sy Hersh, once a frequent guest, has not been on since January 2005.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, the widely-quoted super-accurate drug industry critic, who is often featured on the commercial TV network shows, has never been on Roses show. Nor has the long-time head of Citizens for Tax Justice and widely respected progressive tax analyst, Robert McIntyre.

Far more corporate executives, not known for their leftist inclinations, appear on Roses show than do leaders of environmental, consumer, labor and poverty organizations.

In case you are wondering, Ive appeared four times, but not since August 2005, and not once on the hostile Terri Gross radio show.

The unabashed progressive Bill Moyers Show is off the air and has not been replaced. No one can charge PBSs News Hour with Jim Lehrer with anything other than very straightforward news delivery, bland opinion exchanges and a troubling inclination to avoid much reporting that upsets the power structures in Congress, the White House, the Pentagon or Wall Street.

The longest running show on PBS was hard-line conservative William F. Buckleys showFiring Linewhich came on the air in 1966 and ended in 1999.

Sponsorship by large corporations, such as Coca Cola and AT&T, have aboundeda largesse not likely to be continued year after year for a leftist media organization.

None of this deters the Far Right that presently got a majority in the House of Representatives to defund the $422 million annual appropriation to the umbrella entityCorporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). About 15% of all revenues for all public broadcasting stations comes from this Congressional contribution.

Though he admits to liking National Public Radio, conservative columnist David Harsanyi, believes there is no practical argument left in the defense of federal fundingin an era of nearly unlimited choices.

Really? Do commercial radio stations give you much news between the Niagara of advertisements and music? Even the frenetic news, sports, traffic and weather flashes, garnished by ads, are either redundant or made up of soundbytes (apart from the merely 2 minutes of CBS radio news every half-hour). If you want serious news, features and interviews on the radio, you go to public radio or the few community and Pacifica radio stations.

Harsanyi continues: Something, though, seems awfully wrong with continuing to force taxpayers who disagree with the missioneven if their perceptions are falseto keep giving.

Public radios popular Morning Edition and All Things Considered are the most listened to radio shows after Rush Limbaughs, and any taxpayer can turn them off. Compare the relatively small public radio and TV budget allocations with the tens of billions of dollars each yearnot counting the Wall Street bailoutin compelling taxpayers to subsidize, through hundreds of programs, greedy, mismanaged, corrupt or polluting corporations either directly in handouts, giveaways and guarantees or indirectly in tax escapes, bloated contracts and grants. Can the taxpayer turn them off?

Here is a solution that will avoid any need for Congressional contributions to CPB. The people own the public airwaves. They are the landlords. The commercial radio and TV stations are the tenants that pay nothing for their 24 hour use of this public property. You pay more for your auto license than the largest television station in New York pays the Federal Communications Commission for its broadcasting licensewhich is nothing. It has been that way since the 1927 and 1934 communication laws.

Why not charge these profitable businesses rent for use of the public airwaves and direct some of the ample proceeds to nonprofit public radio and public TV as well as an assortment of audience controlled TV and radio channels that could broadcast what is going on in our country locally, regionally, nationally and internationally? (See: Ralph Nader & Claire Riley, Oh, Say Can You See: A Broadcast Network for the Audience, 5 J.L. & POL. 1, [1988])

Now that would be a worthy program for public broadcasting. Get Limbaughs and Hannitys companies off welfare. Want to guess what their listeners think about corporate welfare?
Ralph Nader

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.