It’s not enough.
That was a message emphatically delivered Monday by several members of Congress and numerous minority producers and diversity-minded media-business watchdog groups to Comcast and NBC Universal, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing conducted in downtown Los Angeles.
The four-hour hearing, the first and probably only one to be held in Los Angeles over the proposed Comcast purchase of NBCU, was convened at the California Science Center, at the urging of U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who represents the area.
Its purpose: to explore the issue of ethnic and cultural diversity in the broadcast and cable media -- and more specifically, how one of the biggest mergers in media history will improve or worsen that situation.
Earlier Monday morning, Comcast and NBCU unveiled a step up of their commitment on diversity. As one part they said at least half of the six independently owned channels they earlier announced would be added to add to cable systems over the next three years would have substantial minority ownership.
The panel of committee members and witnesses called upon Monday to discuss the diversity records of Comcast and NBC Universal were clearly not impressed.
“It’s crumbs, and they know it,” said Stanley Washington, chairman-CEO of the National Coalition of African American Owned Media, one of more than a dozen witnesses called on to speak.
Garnering thunderous applause from the packed room, Washington clearly was playing to the home crowd of African American, Latino and Asian media leaders, who were seizing the moment to have their voices heard.
For the small group of lower-ranking Comcast and NBC Universal officials on hand, it was a long meeting. Conspicuously absent were Comcast chairman-CEO Brian Roberts and NBCU president-CEO Jeff Zucker.
Also not on hand was former Los Angeles Lakers great and noted minority business investor Ervin Magic Johnson, who had earlier publicly expressed his support for the Comcast/NBC merger.
Not that members of the committee – which in addition to Waters, Gohmert and chairman John Conyers (D-MI), also included Tennessee’s Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Judy Chu (D-CA) – didn't hear testimony from a range of perspectives.
The witness list included several pro-merger voices, such as Paula Madison, executive VP of diversity for NBC Universal; Will Griffin, president and COO of the Comcast co-owned Hip Hop On Demand channel; and Alfred Liggins, president and CEO of Comcast business partner Radio One.
For his part, Griffin argued that mandating that certain Comcast channels be 100 percent minority-owned -- something that should be required by the cable company before the merger is approved, according to several witnesses -- is unrealistic.
In order to get enough capital to survive and grow, Griffin noted, any channel must tap non-minority sources in the financial markets.
"It's also advertisers," he said. "They have only been willing to pay for a limited amount of African-American impressions."
But the pro-merger contingent was in the decided minority itself Monday.
Conceding the larger point that minorities are poorly represented in the media business – in terms of everything from on-camera talent to services procurement – this pro contingent’s sentiment was perhaps best exemplified by Madison, who, while being stringently pressed toward the tail end of the meeting by Waters, offered up the following:
“You can pooh-pooh it, but it’s a start.”
