Nearly 30 years ago, Bob Johnson walked away from his job as a lobbyist for the National Cable Television Association to create Black Entertainment Television, a cable network aimed at the African-American audience.

The move worked out pretty well for Johnson. Part of the first wave of basic cable networks, BET quickly became a must-have for cable operators pushing into the big cities for the first time. In 1999, Johnson sold BET to Viacom for $3 billion.

Now head of an investment firm (the RLJ companies) with interests in hotels, auto dealerships, banking and sports, Johnson wants to parlay his television success.

He is proposing to launch another network targeting black viewers, this time using digital broadcasting as the distribution platform rather than cable.

His partner is Ion Media, which owns stations in 42 markets and has been struggling for years to find programming that will produce some audience and revenue growth.

To program and operate the network, Johnson and Ion formed Urban Television, a venture in which Johnson will hold a controlling 51 percent interest.

And to make sure that Urban Television has critical cable carriage in the 42 Ion markets, Ion has asked the FCC to transfer a portion of its digital channel in each market to Urban and grant it a so-called share-time license entitling it to must carry.

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Johnson's one-time employer with a new name, has already dismissed the digital share-time license as legal flim-flammery intended only to extend must-carry rights to DTV multicast channels, something the FCC has previously declined to do.

In this interview with TVNewsday Editor Harry A. Jessell, Johnson concedes that the programming for the new channel is still far from settled, but seems confident he can make a go of it in broadcasting if he can secure must carry rights.

An edited transcript:

Did you come up with this idea or did Ion bring this to you? 

Interestingly enough, this came about by my thinking about what's possible in television. I've had conversations with [former congressman] J.C. Watts about his news channel and what he was trying to do. I've also been looking at doing something in the Internet space and so I was thinking about that particular platform. And remember when the Sirius guys were told they had to create minority channels on satellite radio? So, I got to thinking about whether you could do the same thing with television spectrum. That's when I got introduced to [Ion CEO] Brandon Burgess and we began talking.

So what do you envision in terms of programming?

I really don't know yet. I know it's got to have a public interest focus. It's got to serve the broad base of the urban population, which is sorely underserved. So, I'm thinking about a range of things — going out to Hollywood and talking to some of the top African-American producers to see what they'd like to see on television that they can't get on. Maybe I'd invite some of the top minority entertainers and producers to co-invest in developing the channel.

Let me ask you: How many hours could Tyler Perry produce? He's got his own studio; he's got his own brand. How much could Jamie Fox or Damon Wayans do? They pitch pilots and the pilots get turned down. Could they go into Procter & Gamble and say, "Hey I've got distribution now. It's sort of like syndication. I've got 42 stations. It has this footprint, this distribution. How about I produce six shows that integrate Procter & Gamble products in it?"

Another possibility might be an all-news, all-talk TV channel. Another is the biggest issue facing this country, particularly African-Americans: health and wellness lifestyle. Ion has some experience in doing that. Another is personal finance — employment, job opportunities, business opportunities.

Another approach is to make the channel available to individual program bidders who would come in and say, "I've got an idea for a program I want to do." We cut a deal where they program the channel and take half the spots.

We're also developing a social networking site called Point of View. It would allow people to produce programs and air them on the Internet and comment back and forth. Maybe some of these programs would be attractive and purchased by the networks. So we create a place for pilots to sort of incubate.

So the programming is pretty much up in the air.

That's right. We really want to be creative.

The one thing we do know is that we are not looking to compete with BET or TV One and what they do. First of all, they're doing a great job at what they do. They're serving a market and there's no sense trying to | More …