Word: network
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Imagine how valuable it would be to own the principal directory of Internet domain names. Network Solutions, the Herndon, Va., company that's had the exclusive right to sign up dot-com names for the last five years, is worth more than $2 billion in today's stock market. But who really owns the "whois" directory...
...cited their "two spectacular, unbelievable decades" at Warner, a 19-year tenure spent mostly at the top of the film heap. And in recent years Warner's highly profitable television business even eclipsed the movie studio, creating such TV hits as ER and Friends and the rapidly rising WB network. Along the way they took the reins of Time Warner's vast $4 billion music empire following one of the brutal power struggles that periodically boiled up after Time Inc. merged with Warner Communications...
...pilots the four networks announced for fall, none has a minority star, an embarrassment that led the same TV executives who unveiled the vanilla slate to issue chagrined statements, point to minority characters on existing shows and scramble to make last-minute cast additions. But the issue is more than numbers. It's the future of integration. Network prime time has not just been whitewashed, as Mfume says, it's also been redlined--divided into distinct white and minority (mostly black) 'hoods. Four years after Oprah Winfrey challenged Ross and Rachel to "get a black Friend," the most diverse group...
...black-themed programming is, comparatively, the good news. Space aliens will have more network lead roles than Asians or Native Americans, while Hispanics, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, are woefully underrepresented. "Networks have realized they can't stereotype us, but instead they ignore us," says Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the Hispanic advocacy group the National Council of La Raza. And the networks' few efforts at Hispanic- or Asian-themed programs (see, or better yet don't, the misused Margaret Cho in All-American Girl) have been feeble and short-lived, feeding the belief that they're untenable...
Racial optimists might look to cable, where channels like Lifetime, MTV, HBO and Showtime offer multiracial fare--while siphoning away broadcast's audience and acclaim. Indeed, Mfume's jeremiad may be an ironic compliment: at least someone still considers the ratings-troubled networks worth fighting over. Is it any wonder the nightly lineup looks like a divided school district, pre-Brown v. Board of Education? If you were running a network today, you too would wish it were 1954 again...