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Ion, Billionaire Seek Cable Carriage for 42 Stations

Ion Media and the billionaire who started Black Entertainment Television made an ambitious proposal to the FCC seeking guaranteed pay-TV carriage for 42 multicast stations they'll run separate from the broadcaster’s existing properties. “Urban TV” would be aimed at African-Americans and other minority viewers and be 51 percent owned by Robert Johnson, who sold BET to Viacom for about $3 billion in 2000. Ion would hold the other 49 percent, the companies said in an FCC filing last week.

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Executives at Ion and Johnson’s company said the proposal is the first to ask the FCC to allow share-time licenses to be used for digital broadcasting. It would essentially ask the FCC to treat Urban TV programming as a second broadcaster on Ion’s existing stations and so subject to must-carry rules. Broadcast lawyers not involved in the deal said the proposal is creative and will face close study at the FCC. Minority groups said they think the programming that Urban TV promises would be good business and would benefit minorities.

The plan comes after Ion tried “to persuade cable to carry our kids and health and wellness programming for two years, and with limited success,” said John Lawson, executive vice president. “We hope that cable will join us in carrying this new pro-social channel of interest to an underserved audience.” The company won’t shutter its Ion Life network or qubo digital network and will continue broadcasting current shows on its 59 stations, Lawson said. Among FCC officials, “the general response has been quite positive” to Urban TV, he added, “but because we're covering new territory there’s a sense that our applications will require a lot of study.”

The companies hope to start full-time programming at Urban TV in 2009, following FCC approval of the share-time arrangement, said Lawson and a spokeswoman for Johnson’s company. The FCC has existing authority to OK the arrangement, said Lawson. Commissioners were “very interested” in the approach, deeming it “creative,” said another broadcast lawyer. Johnson may eventually try to find minorities and others to invest in Urban TV, the spokeswoman said. It might be geared toward Hispanics as well as blacks and could include public affairs, news and health shows, she said.

Urban TV may not fly without carriage from cable operators and other multichannel video programming distributors, broadcast lawyers said. “To avoid disputes with MVPDs that would undermine any realistic opportunity of Urban’s fledgling station group to survive,” the parties said, they are asking the FCC to “confirm, concurrent with grant of this application, that Urban’s stations would be entitled to carriage.” A spokesman for the NCTA, which opposes expanding multicast carriage rights, said “this appears to be a request for multicast must-carry rights in all but name only… Broadcasters with compelling content can, and do, obtain carriage for multicast programming, but mandating carriage of those signals should again be rejected,” as the FCC has done in the past.

“Must-carry is a tough argument,” said Jim Winston, executive director of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters. “Every time it comes up before the FCC it ends up in court, so I am just troubled that whatever the FCC does, they may have a court case out of it.” Because of Johnson’s success in TV, Winston is hopeful Urban TV will take off. Blacks and whites alike may watch Urban TV, as they do with BET, he said. An FCC diversity advisory committee recommended that the commission allow share-time rules to be used for the purpose envisaged by Urban TV, said committee member David Honig, executive director of the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. “The reason previous entrants failed is they could not get cable carriage -- that’s the backbone they need to survive -- and if [Urban TV] can’t get cable carriage this venture isn’t likely to survive, either.”