The digital dilemma: ten challenges facing minority-owned new media ventures.

• Author: Ford-Livene, Marcelino

1. INTRODUCTION

   Every morning in Africa, a gazelle awakens knowing that it must outrun the fastest lion if it wants to stay alive. Every morning, a lion wakes up knowing it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It makes no difference whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you'd better be running. --An Old African Proverb Since the beginning of the print publishing, radio, broadcast television, cable, and telecommunications industries, minorities have had to compete against well-funded mainstream media companies to own a piece of the media and communications pie. Minority-owned companies competing in these industries have had no shortage of vision, creativity, or motivation. They have also had no shortage of challenges, setbacks, and failures. Those who have succeeded have managed their growth, adapted to change, overcome market failures, and fought hard against the bias inherent in the industry. However, the financial, regulatory, and competitive challenges that minority-owned media companies have faced over the last fifteen years have become overwhelming.(1)

   Many people of color in the print, radio, broadcast television, cable, or communications industry believe that the Internet may be the last frontier for minority-owned media participation. The advent of the Information Superhighway, the digital convergence of communications, entertainment, and media on the Internet, and the emergence of "new media" on the World Wide Web (Web) have led many to take a serious look at the Web as a viable media opportunity.(2) Given the enormous barriers to entry in traditional media, it is only natural for minority visionaries to see the emerging new media industry as an avenue of ownership for the future. Whether the area is entertainment or education, communications or commerce, analysts, educators, industry professionals, laypersons, regulators, politicians, and technologists all agree that the Internet has the potential to change the way individuals are entertained, communicate, conduct business, learn, and think.

   However, there are many challenges facing minorities who want to create a thriving media presence on the Web. Collectively, these challenges can be thought of as the "Digital Dilemma," which today affects the creation and participation of minority-owned new media ventures (MNVs) in this emerging industry.

   The purpose of this Article is to identify and discuss ten challenges affecting minority participation and ownership of for-profit new media outlets on the Web.(3) While many of these challenges affect for-profit new media companies regardless of ownership, mission, financing, target market, or race, some are very unique to minority-owned companies and their target audiences. The ultimate goal here is to present a wide range of relevant issues and problems affecting minority ownership of media outlets on the Web as a step toward stimulating thought and encouraging discussion of strategies to overcome these challenges.

   Before discussing these challenges, it is important to understand how the Internet evolved into what it is today. The Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began funding the work of scientists and engineers on ARPAnet, the forerunner of the Internet, in 1969.(4) "Their mandate was to link distant computers into a national computer network system. One of their main achievements was developing packet-switching network technology so the ARPAnet could work like a phone network rather than like a mainframe system dependent on a single link."(5) An initial network was established between the University of California Los Angeles and SRI International in late 1969.(6) Within two years, more than twenty sites were hooked up, and the first e-mail message was sent.(7) "In 1988 the ARPAnet was officially decommissioned in favor of what is now known as the Internet."(8)

   "[T]he transformation of the Internet from an academic forum into a global service accessible and useful to mainstream businesses and consumers" has been one of its bigger commercial and technical challenges.(9) To meet this challenge, the high-tech industry has been striving to meet two major needs: infrastructure and applications.(10)

   "The infrastructure needed includes those technologies necessary to make the Internet functional for the mainstream--access provision, security systems, browsers and interfaces, search engines, server software, pipelines, and hardware."(11) Applications are as diverse as electronic mail, news services, multi-player games, and other types of content.

   Many consumers and businesses access the Internet through a relatively newer part of the Net called the World Wide Web. The Web is a collection of linked onscreen documents (or pages) that provide information that can include words, pictures, audio snippets, and video clips. Clicking on highlighted words--which represent links to other Web pages--allows users to jump easily to related information, even if the computer (server) storing the data is many miles away. The Web lets general users and businesses bypass the arcane procedures of the Internet's older avenues, such as typing in long, abstruse commands....(12) The Web provides easy access to desired content. Many businesses set up Web pages that offer packaged and frequently updated sets of information that users can access on a regular basis.

   "The first companies to profit from the Internet were the hardware providers--the makers of servers and connectivity devices."(13) Internet access or service providers (ISPs) were the next group of companies to capitalize on the Internet.(14) These ISPs served individual users and organizations, "offering a combination of hardware, software, and communications facilities that provide[d] value-added services such as electronic mail and access to newsgroups, bulletin boards, and directory services."(15) In 1994, browser companies started to gain momentum. Browsers, the "graphical, point-and-click navigational tools that [made] it easier for non-technical users to move around the Internet, in particular the World Wide Web," were made available to the public via free downloads.(16) This was Netscape's strategy. In the business market, Netscape created an installed base for the browser by offering it for little or no cost. It then created feature-rich, higher-priced server software to sell to businesses.(17)

2. CHALLENGE 1: THE BANDWIDTH BOTTLENECK(18)

   If there's any area I have a concern for the industry ... it's in the area of high-speed connections to the Internet.(19) --Bill Gates For most ordinary consumers, the small office/home office (SOHO) market, and for many schools, libraries, hospitals, and rural areas, there is a dramatic difference between the speed at which their computers process and exchange information with local devices and the speed at which they can connect to the Internet backbone network with all of its high-speed digital capacity. Some observers have analogized the situation: It is like turning off the interstate highway system in a sports car onto a narrow, two-lane gravel road.

   In terms of accessing the Internet, this lack of adequate bandwidth to the home or office contributes significantly to what is increasingly referred to as the "World Wide Wait." Bandwidth constraints cause pages, many color pictures, and other graphic material to download slowly. It also limits video clip presentations to the size of a postage stamp, so they are sent slowly. Thus, the motion in the video appears jerky rather than fluid and continuous. This has serious implications for the development of dynamic content by MNVs. In the early stages of Web development, bandwidth constraints were merely frustrating and inconvenient. But with the growth of the Web as a serious new medium for entertainment, education, and communications, and more recently, as a tool for electronic commerce, this bandwidth bottleneck may also have serious consequences for the continued growth of the economy. In terms of the connectivity for underserved Americans, the bandwidth bottleneck will have a serious impact in the battle (1) to empower all Americans to participate in the communications marketplace; and (2) to ensure that the nation does not devolve into a nation of "haves" and "have nots." Many feel that the foremost bandwidth constraint issues in the nation's telecommunications infrastructure are: (1) access to the information superhighway for the mass market, that is, the "last mile to the home" issue; and (2) connectivity to the high bandwidth Internet backbone by the nation's small to medium-sized towns and communities. Thus, today's bandwidth constraints create one of the most important issues to be addressed in the area of telecommunications policy and regulation.(20)

   The quest for more bandwidth capacity is leading many to believe that the Internet is steadily approaching a transitional moment, especially on the consumer side. Momentum is building to bring super-fast broadband(21) Internet connections to urban and rural households, schools, libraries, hospitals, reservations, as well as to other places. It will come through cable modems, digital boxes attached to television sets, through satellite or terrestrial wireless devices, or through phone company technology such as digital subscriber lines (DSL).

   1. Bandwidth Policy and the Telecommunications Act of 1996

      Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 addresses the need to increase the incentives for deployment of advanced telecommunication capabilities for all Americans.(22) It defines advanced telecommunications capability "without regard to any transmission media or technology, as high-speed, switched, broadband telecommunications capability that enables users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology."(23) It also provides that the

      [Federal Communications Commission (FCC)]...