Simpson Raises Profile of Network

After years of playing cable’s second fiddle--battling rival MTV for access to the hottest music videos and watching its news coverage go unnoticed by the networks--Black Entertainment Television will hit the big time tonight when it is expected to air the first live question-and-answer session with O.J. Simpson since his acquittal on murder charges.

For the nation’s only black-owned cable network, which has long been criticized for serving up a TV diet heavy on music videos and infomercials, the Simpson interview is an opportunity to overcome the perception that the network is all froth and no substance.

Although BET is available to more than 44 million subscribers and is a staple in many urban households, the network remains little known to many white viewers, even though it has landed interviews with some of the biggest names in the country, including Bill Clinton, Louis Farrakhan, Newt Gingrich and Oprah Winfrey.

But, as with others who have tried to interview Simpson since the trial, BET officials are already encountering criticism and questions about how objective and hard-hitting the interview will be.

Jefferi K. Lee, the president of BET networks, said this week: “We will not retry him. We want to talk about issues and issues that affect him, as a black man in America who has done everything the judiciary asked him to do, and is still being persecuted.”

Although officials say they haven’t received any threats of organized protests--as NBC did before Simpson canceled his scheduled interview with anchor Tom Brokaw and NBC “Today” show host Katie Couric in October--BET officials said they are aware of complaints from those who think that BET won’t be tough enough on Simpson.

What’s more, DeWayne Wickham, a black newspaper columnist and past president of the National Assn. of Black Journalists, said he has heard people express concerns that BET may pull its punches because it is benefiting financially from airing commercials for Simpson’s controversial video “O.J. Tells.” The ads promote the video as “uncut, uncensored, unrehearsed.”

“I’ve heard [the concerns], but our record is as good as the networks’,” said Robert Johnson, BET’s chief executive. “We didn’t back away from the tobacco industry like ABC did. We never had a truck blow up like” NBC “Dateline” did in a widely criticized investigation of the dangers of gas tank explosions in GM pickup trucks. “I think that kind of criticism is racist. BET’s credibility is not tied to this interview.”

As for the commercials promoting Simpson’s video, Johnson said: “Just because O.J. is buying time on BET doesn’t mean we can’t ask him tough questions.”

If the interview takes place, it will introduce BET to perhaps its largest viewing audience. At the BET corporate offices, located in a sleek glass complex in a predominantly black neighborhood miles from the rest of official Washington, staff members Tuesday were frazzled as they scrambled to prepare for the interview that could catapult the network to greater prominence.

A receptionist said the office was flooded with calls from critics and inquisitive reporters as well as from viewers suggesting questions.

The interview comes in the same week that Simpson is undergoing another kind of questioning. On Monday, he started his deposition in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against him by the families and estates of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

Simpson is to be interviewed by Ed Gordon, a 34-year-old journalist who anchors BET’s weekly newscasts and hosts a weekly news round table with black journalists. The interview is to be conducted live from Los Angeles at a site BET would not disclose.

Gordon, who started his TV career as an unpaid intern at a public television station in Detroit before joining BET in 1988, is no stranger to high-profile interviews. And he has commented in the past on what he contends is the microscopic scrutiny he and BET have undergone since the network’s news division was started in the mid-’80s.

“We are fighting now what CNN fought some years ago--to gain some type of credibility,” Gordon told the Washington Post three years ago. “For years, people laughed and scoffed at CNN: ‘You think people are going to take you seriously as a news organization?’ And now the networks are playing catch-up to CNN.”

David Honig, a veteran civil rights lawyer who is executive director of the Minority Media Telecommunications Council, a media advocacy group in Washington, sympathizes with Gordon’s predicament.

“Ed Gordon is just as competent as any other network journalist,” Honig said. “Everyone’s going to have sour grapes that they didn’t get the O.J. interview; it’s the nature of competition. But it would be inappropriate and unfortunate if anyone tried to inject race into those sour grapes.”

Despite the prospects of a massive audience Wednesday night during the Simpson interview, some experts doubt that BET will reap any long-term benefits.

“I’m sure this won’t hurt them, but I don’t know how much this will help them long term; it’s only one interview. How long can that last?” said Kathy Haesele, senior vice president at Advanswers, a firm that places ads in the media. BET, she added, is “not that well-known, and they have never had high ratings.”

With a $15,000 personal bank loan, Johnson launched BET in January 1980 as a two-hour-a-week service airing Friday nights. The operation has since gone public and grown into a 24-hour, seven-day-a week network reaching 44.2 million cable households and generating $115 million in revenue, according to its annual report and the latest audience figures from Nielsen Media Research.

BET Holdings Inc., which owns BET, recently launched a jazz network and began publishing in 1991 a teen lifestyle magazine called YSB (Young Sisters and Brothers). It also also owns Action, a national pay-per-view movie channel. BET Holdings recently placed 57th on Forbes magazine’s 1995 listing of the 200 best small companies in America.

Network officials say they believe that BET reaches 97% of the 6 million black households with cable but acknowledged that BET’s penetration among other ethnic groups is much smaller. Overall, it is able to reach less than half the nation’s 95.9 million TV households.

Before the interview, BET News will take a look at the trial fallout in a program titled “O.J. Simpson Beyond the Verdict--The Aftermath.”

The interview is to air live at 7 p.m., Los Angeles time, followed at 8 p.m. by a viewer call-in show with BET’s Bev Smith, the host of “Our Voices.”

The last time BET drew so much attention was in September when, in honor of the network’s 15th anniversary celebration, pop superstar Michael Jackson dropped by the studio and sang “You Are Not Alone.”

Although BET officials expect that many of the viewers who tune in won’t have seen the network before, Johnson said no extensive plans have been made to capitalize on the publicity coup. Only on-air promos and press releases to major news media have been used to advertise the show, he said.

Times staff writers Faye Fiore, Marc Lacey and Jane Hall contributed to this story.