Dateline Pasadena. My wifi card is still en route. I hope to post more tomorrow, after it arrives.
I will be the first to admit that I don't understand everything I see on BET. The obsession with bling and booty -- OK, I get that. But I'm pretty sure a lot of "106 and Park" would not make sense to me even if I turned the captions on.
Well, it appears a well-meaning publicist took it upon himself or herself to help out befuddled, 40-something Caucasian journalists like myself ... by planting questions in the audience.
Mary McNamara, a colleague of mine who writes for Multichannel News, was approached by someone from the BET entourage and asked if she'd like to ask a question. And then handed this journo a slip of paper which read (the line at the top refers to the new BET show being promo'ed):
SEASON OF THE TIGER
How was Grambling State University selected for the show and do you think the show will have an effect on future band competitions?
I can't recall if someone wound up asking this question -- obviously the trade reporter didn't, and intrepidly snuck off with the slip -- but the plants were certainly in keeping with BET's overall approach to its 45-minute presentation, which was to prevent a single unscripted moment from occurring. Debra Lee and company only opened the floor for questions at the end, pushing the panel well into the next one (no small thing on the days of cable press tour, when as many as 10 different channels are jockeying for our attention). Worse, while they were monopolizing the time up on stage, they had the gall to start asking canned questions of other panelists -- which, of course, is what we're supposed to be doing.
To their credit, I didn't see any BET executives reading off slips of paper.
After all of the stuff with Tom Delay, you would think that BET would know better...
Posted by: ted | January 11, 2006 at 11:26 PM