Paramount Skydance (previously ViacomCBS) is an American multinational entertainment conglomerate that was the subject of criticisms and controversies about its products and services. Criticism of Paramount Skydance has included the former Viacom Inc.'s announced plans of looking into splitting the company into two publicly traded companies. The company was not only dealing with a stagnating stock price, but also the rivalry between Leslie Moonves and Tom Freston, longtime heads of MTV Networks. In addition, the company was facing issues after MTV was banned from producing any more Super Bowl halftime shows after the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy in 2004.
Copyright complaints against YouTube
In February 2007, Viacom sent upwards of 100,000 DMCA takedown notices to the video-sharing site YouTube. Of the 100,000 notices, approximately 60–70 non-infringing videos were removed under the auspices of copyright infringement.Media Companies Blast YouTube for Anti-Piracy Policy. Foxnews.com (February 19, 2007). Retrieved on July 13, 2011.
On March 13, 2007, Viacom filed a US$1 billion legal claim (Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc.) against Google and YouTube alleging massive copyright infringement, alleging that users frequently uploaded copyrighted material to YouTube — enough to cause a hit in revenue for Viacom and a gain in advertisement revenue for YouTube.
The complaint contended that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of Viacom's programming were made available on YouTube and that these clips had collectively been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
In July 2008, the case generated controversy when District Judge Louis Stanton ruled that YouTube was required to hand over data detailing the viewing habits of every user who had ever watched videos on the site.
Judge Stanton rejected Viacom's request for YouTube to hand over the source code of its search engine system, saying that the code was a trade secret.
Google and Viacom later agreed to allow Google to anonymize all the data before handing it over to Viacom.
On June 23, 2010, Judge Stanton ruled in Google's favor in a motion for summary judgment, holding that Google was protected by provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, notwithstanding evidence of intentional copyright infringement. Viacom announced its intention to appeal the ruling.
CBS Entertainment Group
CBS News Throughout the years, CBS News has been accused by conservative activists have of perpetuating a liberal bias in its news coverage. The Media Research Center has been especially critical about the coverage of liberal topics by CBS.
BET Networks
BET Public Enemy rapper Chuck D, journalist George Curry, writer Keith Boykin, comic book creator Christopher Priest, filmmaker Spike Lee, Syracuse University professor of finance Boyce Watkins and cartoonist Aaron McGruder (who, in addition to numerous critical references throughout his series, The Boondocks, made a particular episode criticizing the channel), all have protested BET's programming and actions. As a result, BET heavily censors suggestive content from the videos that it airs, often with entire verses and scenes removed from certain rap videos. Furthermore, scholars within the black community maintain that BET perpetuates and justifies racism by affecting the interpersonal beliefs others may generalize out black people, and also by affecting the psyche of its young viewers through its bombardment of negative images of black people.
The New York Times reported that the Reverend Delman L. Coates and his organization Enough is Enough led protests every weekend outside the residences of BET executives against what they claim are negative stereotypes of black people perpetuated by BET music videos. Enough is Enough backed an April 2008 report titled The Rap on Rap by the Parents Television Council that claimed that BET rap programming, which they believed contained gratuitous sexual, violent, and profane content, was targeting children and teens. BET announced in March 2010 that Gordon would return to the network to host "a variety of news programs and specials."
In a 2010 interview, BET co-founder Sheila Johnson explained she herself is "ashamed" of what the network has become. "I don't watch it. I suggest to my kids that they don't watch it," she said. "When we started BET, it was going to be the Ebony magazine on television. We had public affairs programming. We had news... I had a show called Teen Summit, we had a large variety of programming, but the problem is that then the video revolution started up... And then something started happening, and I didn't like it at all. And I remember during those days we would sit up and watch these videos and decide which ones were going on and which ones were not. We got a lot of backlash from recording artists... and we had to start showing them. I didn't like the way women were being portrayed in these videos."
MTV Entertainment Group MTV Networks channels have been cited as suffering from channel drift. Music Television (as MTV was originally known) was originally a channel devoted to popular music videos upon its launch in 1981, but began adding entertainment and reality programs geared toward a young adult audience in the 1990s, beginning a progression toward its current focus of reality and scripted programming targeted primarily at teenagers and young adults. (The music videos transitioned to MTV2, then to MTV Hits, the current-day NickMusic.) Video Hits One likewise began as an outlet for adult contemporary music before transitioning to an urban pop culture channel as VH1; Country Music Television drifted to southern culture and general rerun programming as CMT; and The Nashville Network, perhaps the most dramatic, drifted to a male-heavy program lineup now known as Spike.
MTV The channel has been a target of criticism by diverse groups about programming choices, social issues, political correctness, sensitivity, censorship, and a perceived negative social influence on young people. Portions of the content of MTV's programs and productions have come under controversy in the general news media and among social groups that have taken offense.
During MTV's first few years on the air, very few black artists were included in rotation on the channel. Those who were in MTV's rotation included Eddy Grant, Tina Turner, Donna Summer, Musical Youth, Herbie Hancock, Grace Jones, and Prince. The very first non-white act played on MTV in the U.S. was UK band The Specials, which featured an integrated line-up of white and black musicians and vocalists. The Specials' video "Rat Race" was played as the 58th video on the station's first day of broadcasting.Hoye, Jacob. MTV Uncensored. Pocket Books, 2001. .
MTV rejected other black artists' videos, such as Rick James' "Super Freak", because they did not fit the channel's carefully selected AOR format at the time. The exclusion enraged James; he publicly advocated the addition of more black artists' videos on the channel. Rock legend David Bowie also questioned MTV's lack of black artists during an on-air interview with VJ Mark Goodman in 1983. MTV's original head of talent and acquisition, Carolyn B. Baker, who was black, had questioned why the definition of music had to be so narrow, as had a few others outside the network. "The party line at MTV was that we weren't playing black music because of the 'research'," said Baker years later. "But the research was based on ignorance... we were young, we were cutting edge. We didn't have to be on the cutting edge of racism." Nevertheless, it was Baker who had personally rejected Rick James' video for Super Freak "because there were half-naked women in it, and it was a piece of c--p. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV."Marks, Craig & Tannebaum, Rob, I Want My MTV, Penguin Books, 2011, pg. 167–168
The network's director of music programming Buzz Brindle told an interviewer in 2006, "MTV was originally designed to be a rock music channel. It was difficult for MTV to find African American artists whose music fit the channel's format that leaned toward rock at the outset." Writers Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum noted that the channel "aired videos by plenty of white artists who didn't play rock." Andrew Goodwin later wrote, "[MTV] denied racism, on the grounds that it merely followed the rules of the rock business (which were, nonetheless, the consequence of a long history of racism)."Marks, Craig & Tannebaum, Rob, I Want My MTV, Penguin Books, 2011, pg. 166 MTV senior executive vice president Les Garland complained decades later, "The worst thing was that "racism" b------t... there were hardly any videos being made by black artists. Record companies weren't funding them. They never got charged with racism."
Before 1983, Michael Jackson also struggled to receive airtime on MTV. To resolve the struggle and finally "break the color barrier", the president of CBS Records at the time, Walter Yetnikoff, denounced MTV in a strong, profane statement, threatening to take away MTV's ability to play any of the record label's music videos.The quote from Walter Yetnikoff reads, "I'm pulling everything we have off the air... I'm not going to give you any more videos. And I'm going to go public and fucking tell them about the fact you don't want to play music by a black guy." However, Les Garland, then acquisitions head, said he decided to air Jackson's "Billie Jean" video without pressure from CBS. This was contradicted by CBS head of Business Affairs David Benjamin in Vanity Fair.
According to The Austin Chronicle, Jackson's video for the song "Billie Jean" was "the video that broke the color barrier, even though the channel itself was responsible for erecting that barrier in the first place." But change was not immediate. "Billie Jean" was not added to MTV's "medium rotation" playlist (two to three airings per day) until after it had already reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. A month later, it was bumped up into "heavy rotation", one week before the MTV debut of Jackson's "Beat It" video. Both videos were played several times a day for the next two months; by early summer, the channel had ceased playing both songs. But the impact was permanent. When Jackson's elaborate video for "Thriller" was released late in the year, which raised the ambition bar for what a video could be, the network's support for it was total; subsequently more pop and R & B videos were played on MTV.
Eventually, videos from the emerging genre of rap and hip hop would also begin to enter rotation on MTV. A majority of the rap artists appearing on MTV in the mid-1980s, such as Run-DMC, The Fat Boys, Whodini, L.L. Cool J and the Beastie Boys, were from the East Coast.
Video director Don Letts has a different view of the timeline, saying, "People often say "Billie Jean" was the first black music video on MTV. "Pass the Dutchie" was first. Because they were little and spoke in funny British accents, Musical Youth were deemed as non-threatening, and therefore non-black."
In 1983, Rolling Stones Steven Levy wrote, "MTV's greatest achievement has been to coax rock & roll into the video arena where you can't distinguish between entertainment and the sales pitch." The Dead Kennedys released a song in 1985 titled "MTV, Get Off The Air".
MTV has edited a number of music videos to remove references to drugs, In this case, a reference to crack cocaine was removed from the video for "My Band" by D12. sex, violence, weapons, racism, homophobia, or advertising. Many music videos aired on the channel were censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel.