Armed with a degree from Princeton and a JD from Georgetown, Adonis Hoffman has seen Washington communications policymaking from myriad angles — as a lawyer, lobbyist, Hill staffer, top Federal Communications Comission official (including chief of staff and senior legal adviser to commissioner Mignon Clyburn), professor and consultant on corporate responsibility. 

Hoffman taps that experience to counsel CEOs, business leaders and trade associations. He weighs in on racism in America, his most rewarding work and more. He spoke with Multichannel News senior content producer, Washington John Eggerton. 

You have done a lot of things in this town. Which job has been most rewarding and why? My early career in Washington was centered on foreign policy and international trade. I had the good fortune to work in Congress for Rep. Merv Dymally (D-Calif.), who brought me to Washington and changed my life. He was an internationalist and a leading member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the 1980s and ’90s. As staff director and counsel to that committee, I traveled to 45 countries and met with political leaders around the globe. 

When I left the Hill in the mid-1990s, I landed a job at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where I directed the program on Africa and International Law. At a time of sweeping democratic reform in Africa and the developing world, I worked on constitutional and election monitoring. My articles and books on U.S. policy were widely published and I felt as if I was contributing to an important dialogue that was taking place within our government. 

Everything else has been fine, but just not as heady.

What is The Advisory Counsel LLC? The Advisory Counsel is a firm that provides sage advice to today's leaders. We help big companies with big issues and challenges, usually resulting from mergers, class-action litigation or regulatory developments. Most of our work is with C-suite executives, general counsel and boards that need a strategic, multi-dimensional solution to a big problem: sometimes media, sometimes legislative, sometimes legal, sometimes relationship-building, but always discreet and high-level. 

Is there systemic racism in this country, and what can be done about it? Short answer is, yes. Just look at the data on disparities between Anglos and Blacks, or Anglos and Latinos, and you can see there is a deeply-rooted problem. But there has been tremendous progress, and there is no other country in the world that has addressed race better than the United States. Nowhere else has there been the level of struggle and success on race as in America. So we just need to keep going. 

What is the one thing the FCC could do to really affect media ownership diversity? Change the rules to allow for no caps on ownership, but provide a regulatory or fiscal incentive (credits or rebates) to majority owners to partner with minority owners in a meaningful way.

If you could give the Biden administration one piece of advice on communications policy, what would it be? Actually two pieces: Don't dismantle legacy media and don't kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. Competition is good, but only if the rules are flattened and apply to everyone, so be fair with business and don't over-regulate. 

Bonus Five

Destination on your bucket list: Israel (again), Greece and Turkey

Books on your nightstand or tablet? The Greatest Words Ever Spoken, Steven K. Scott; Crushing, T.D. Jakes

Most memorable recent meal? [Wife] Karla's lasagna from scratch, and her German chocolate cake (also from scratch). 

Favorite music? I'm shamelessly stuck in the ‘70s: Marvin, Smokey, Delfonics, Dramatics, Isleys and old-school slow jams.

What do you miss the most during COVID? Church, movies (in theaters) and concerts.

WASHINGTON — In part two of a wide-ranging interview, three of the TV industry’s top executives and diversity advocates — former Federal Communications Commission staff member Adonis Hoffman, now chairman of Business in the Public Interest; Alfred Liggins, president and CEO of Radio One, parent of cable network TV One; and Michael Powell, current president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and a former FCC chairman — talked about the power of Washington’s bully pulpit to boost diversity, the limits of more formal government action and the opportunities in disruption. Following is a continuation of their discussion with Multichannel News Washington bureau chief John Eggerton.

Part 1: Diversity Warriors: Three Power Players Explain Media's Struggle to Reflect the True America

MCN:Let’s get back to the notion of the power of the bully pulpit.

Adonis Hoffman: You [Powell] talk about the power of the bully pulpit. I tell CEOs, for example, “Listen, when you give a speech on competition or the market in your sector, why can’t you weave in — because you have this strong commitment to diversity — a couple of phrases about diversity and how important it is to your business and your company.” That costs you nothing, but gets you a long way down the road and reflects leadership.

I want to add another element to this. People often talk about a level playing field. I got it: a level playing field suggests that you have a couple of teams on the field. The sad reality is that when it comes to minorities, African- Americans and Latinos primarily, they don’t even know where the game is. They can’t even get on the field. So, the game is going on and they don’t even know where the stadium is.

So, they have to get inside the stadium, find uniforms that fit, and then when they get into the game, it’s already the third quarter. The game has been going on all along. That, to me, is one of the challenges.

I just spent three days last week with a small group from a major media company, CEO, CFO, CMO. I said: “Hey, listen, you guys are involved in a lot of transactions around the globe. You are buying and selling real estate as part of your core operations. You have contracts you are entering into, you have suppliers here. I know you have a goal of 10% supplier diversity.

“So, let’s go beyond that. What about deal flow. Have you thought about who manages your money. You’ve got a 401K program that your employees contribute to. How about weaving in a minority asset manager?”

You don’t have to displace anyone else or spend any more money. All you have to do is add an extra seat at the table and let some folks come in and participate.

Alfred Liggins: We’re talking about a business environment. Nobody should make a deal that’s bad for their business, to rob shareholders of the value they deserve for that asset just for the sake of diversity.

While you are conducting your normal course of business, think about opening up the opportunity to people who might not otherwise get a look at it. We are a black-owned company, but I’m not going to hire an employee that can’t do the job or compete in the marketplace just because they happened to be minority. That renders our organization ineffective and not able to compete and diminishes the viability of everybody else.

The same thing goes for business deals. When we bought the Clear Channel radio stations, we actually led the valuation. We had the highest multiple trading at that time. One of the reasons is, we went public at the height of the Internet bubble. But we drove the valuations, so we were able to set the high-water mark for those spinoffs at 20 times [cash flow], because that’s where our multiple was.

They didn’t give us a deal. They were actually happy. They had more stuff they wanted to sell us that we didn’t take.

The point is, people still make rational business decisions while they are trying to open up diversity opportunities. It is not in a business person’s DNA to lose money for the sake of diversity. It is not in my DNA, and I’m black.

MCN:But in a land where African-Americans were, for decades, denied opportunities in media, and given how important media is — even more so now with broadband — is there nothing the government should do? Take eminent domain. It may not be fair for some individuals in the short-term, but it’s viewed as a societal good in the long-term.

Hoffman: Twenty-five years ago I would have been right with you, John. Yeah, government needs to tear down the walls, open up the doors, kick down the barriers. But I think there are some marketplace and economic and basic political realities out here that weigh against that as an appropriate role for government.

Government has a legitimate role, in this instance, as an economic regulator. And in some limited instances, in the position of encouraging diversity of voices, which is in the Communications Act. That is part of the public-interest test. A diversity of voices could encompass the government [or] the [FCC] looking for new entrants, whether that be African-American, Hispanic, alternative lifestyle. So that is an appropriate role for government that has been authorized by Congress, because that is ultimately in the public interest.

But I really feel kind of sensitive when there is a government entity trying to shoehorn a solution, shoehorn an applicant, shoehorn a company, into a scenario where it may or may not have been able to compete.

Knock down the barriers, allow for a level playing field, then let there be some competition. If there is anything government can do, it is in eradicating barriers and enforcing where there are abuses. Then let the market have at it.

Liggins: You have to have marketplace solutions. If you give anybody an opportunity they are not capable of executing on, it won’t ultimately be an opportunity, because they will fail. That particular asset or access point will go to someone else, or perhaps get absorbed back into the market ecosystem and forever lost.

Michael Powell: And it will diminish the political support given to the opportunity. People will be less willing to give the opportunity the next time.

The one thing I would say is that we could certainly identify a number of things we probably all agree government has a small role in. But my own belief is that, while important, it will only be on the edges because of the Supreme Court precedent and a lot of things creating limitations. I think that the danger of making the government the central focus of what you are looking to solve is that you are not putting your energy and your focus on the things that really move the needle.

The marketplace is so fascinating right now. It is in complete disruption. There are opportunities lying all over the ground. To the point Alfred made: If you take a long-term view on this, are my children and the generation coming up, are they well educated enough to be leaders in the tech-oriented media digital space? Are there sufficient levels of financial literacy? Are there sufficient levels of internships?

I think sometimes we so throw the Hail Mary for some spectacular change in the number of people who own radio stations, we don’t do the hard work of tending to the field to build a more fruitful … To me, this is like my maddening Washington football team. Because [team owner] Dan Snyder wants a Super Bowl, he keeps throwing crazy Hail Marys. Every single year, we’re going to get this quarterback and it’s all going to work out. Right. Where other teams will say, ”Look, it’s going to take us four years, and we’re going to get the players, and they’re going to learn the system, and over time we are going to get better, and as time passes they are in the Super Bowl.”

Diversity can be a lot like that. You can have a big, flashy press conference and, a year later, nothing has changed. If we are really committed, there are things we can do every single day. Somebody who I let intern here, and introduced to five people and taught how the law works, suddenly is the next Alfred Liggins. That’s actually what I can do most significantly to make a difference. And if we could get more people to focus on that as an obligation, I think we can make a bigger difference than anything government is going to do with a policy or a rule.

Hoffman: I don’t want to leave the conversation without saying this.

Things are not hunky dory. There are institutional barriers. There is institutional racism. There is institutional racism [affecting] qualified professionals, and I am not talking about youngsters coming in. At the entry level, there is a wide portal. My son can get a gig just about anywhere he passes the basic muster.

But when you talk about the middle levels where the pipeline is to decision-makers, that is where things break down. And those barriers still exist in this country. I’m not sure what the solutions are; I don’t have any solutions there. But we have to recognize those things still exist.

This is the kind of environment in which we live. I am 61. My civil rights and black power days are behind me. Now I have to deal with a corporate environment where guys who may or may not have as much Ivy League experience as I do are competing and getting better opportunities — maybe because they are younger, maybe because they are … whatever.

But the point is these institutional barriers do exist. They exist in law firms, in corporate America, in media companies, technology companies. We can’t overlook that. It is a reality that those who are leaders in this generation have to find a way to deal with.

I think we also have a responsibility to sensitize and educate younger folks coming up and younger leaders, that these legacy barriers have no use in today’s society. If we are an open, free, environment, [then] those buckets and silos don’t have to exist today, because there is enough out there for everybody and, oh, by the way, the demographic is changing too.

I did not want to leave the conversation without recognizing there are some problems, and the problems may be intractable at that level. But the good news is old folks die off, and old systems die off, and they give rise to new systems, new thinking and new innovations. And therein perhaps lies our salvation.

ONLINE EXCLUSVE: Additional material not included in the print edition

MCN: I didn’t want to leave the conversation without noting that it was 60 years ago today (Dec. 1, 1955) that Rosa Parks refused to take a back seat to anyone.  Who are your personal civil rights heroes?

Powell: I want to say two things. I have too many to single out. Although who wouldn’t say Martin Luther King?

I was born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, which was a pretty astonishing year in Alabama. My mother held me as an infant four churches down when the 16th Street Baptist Church exploded. We were right there on the street. For me, that has profound significance. Having had parents who were in and around it and grew up with it, they are civil rights heroes to me to.

But let me say one last thing that comes to mind when you talk about Rosa Parks. We have a duty to raise warriors. The generation that preceded me, they were warriors, you know. And they were going to fight through. My parents taught me that you can sit around and spend a lot of time talking about fairness, or you can become a warrior. And I clerked for Judge Harry Edwards, one of the first black appellate judges in the U.S., when I first came out of law school. He sat me down in his office, one-on-one, and he said: “Let me tell you something, whether you like it or not you are going to have to be better. I had to be better. You’re going to have to be better. It isn’t fair, now get over it and go be better. Go make sure you beat people so significantly that there is no explanation for you not rising other than race. But don’t sit around wallowing. Learn how to fight through.”

Society has changed an enormous amount since 1963, but it hasn’t changed enough.  Am I teaching young people to be the kind of tough, resilient, tenacious warriors they still need to be in a society that still has the lingering vestiges of a slave history and a racist history?

I am not doing them any favors by promising them that society is going to create real safe places. To me, that is a pipe dream right now. You’ve got to raise fighters.

Liggins: I was on a panel a week ago and I was asked a question about what I thought about this rise of young minority activists like Black Lives Matter.  My response was: I love it. I grew up in the media business. My mother instilled that pride and mission and warrior-ness in me that she had.

But I get asked all the time, in the era of the first black President, is black media relevant? Aren’t we all now in the same boat?  I don’t think you ever eradicate bias -- economic bias, racial bias. The world is a battle over resources. So, when I see this group of young people being outraged by this police brutality, Ivy League educated kids that are saying “Woah!” it makes me feel good that there still is a line over which you can push somebody too far, where they stand up and say: “This isn’t right. There should be social justice in this era.”

I am seeing these college students react to some of the same issues people in the 60’s were reacting to.

When you talk about heroes, I never marched. But I have stood shoulder to shoulder with the NAACP and Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network in order to get initiatives to the African American community. And I have seen firsthand what these organizations have done to help people and businesses. We have been aided by those organizations going to bat for us to help us maintain the viability of our business.

So, I guess my heroes are all of the people who have that commitment to not just social justice, but economic and business justice. There are a lot of people still on the playing field.

Hoffman: So, I have two sets of heroes. One is my mom and dad.

My dad was a hard-working guy, a plasterer born in New Orleans in Louisiana, a segregated state, who moved his family to California for a better life. He never went past high school and worked with his hands all his life. He worked his way up and provided for us and gave us a very comfortable lower middle-class, working-class environment.  My mother was a seamstress in a sewing factory. She left school in the 10th grade. Together they provided a quiet example for my siblings and me growing up. It was: hard work; stay out of trouble; don’t come home with any bad grades because if you don’t get into college on your own, it ain’t gonna happen.

The other is a man very important to me, Merv Dymally. He was born in Trinidad, came to the United States in the 1950s, worked his way through Lincoln University, earned his PhD at night, became a teacher of special education students,and became the first black lieutenant governor of California.

He was a liberal Democrat who believed in coalition politics. He took kids from the neighborhood, and if you had any mettle about you, he would put you in a room and tell you go get some coffee, or make some copies, and by the process of osmosis we all got introduced to the political system.

But he did something that was even more significant. Quietly, he was probably responsible for the election of most of the African American and Latino legislators in the state of California during a certain period. I’m here today because he brought me to Washington and said, “Hey, you’ve got an opportunity, go for it.”

He was a person who took the initiative to influence not just me but a number of other people in both the political and business worlds. 

You don’t have to have a trumpet to be a leader.  You can take one or two people by the hand and change society. So, I think that when I look around, sometimes I don’t think I’m pulling my weight. I take care of my family and a couple of young guys that I like to mentor. But I know I could be doing more and I would actually like to do more.

I think that’s the challenge for the folks of my generation who now have made it a little ways over the hump, and the wolf isn’t at the door, to bring some folks along.

But I do have a problem with some of those who get in those positions. In the hood, you’ve got access deniers and access providers. You’ve got the guys who get in the room and say: “I’m the only black guy here. This is good.” You’ve got other guys who get in and say: “I’m the only black guy here. Open the door and let some brothers up in this joint. “

I want to be a guy who is an access provider, so the room is better and richer as a result.

Adonis Hoffman, Alfred Liggins and Michael Powell deserve a collective nod for agreeing to talk honestly and at length with Multichannel News about the state of diversity in the media and elsewhere.

The three executives — Hoffman, a former Federal Communications Commission staffer now chairing Business in the Public Interest; Liggins, CEO of Radio One, which owns cable-TV network TV One; and Powell, a former FCC chairman and now CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association — are the subjects of this week’s Q&A cover story, with more to come in next week’s issue.

The conversation was an important one to have. There should be more frequent and serious attempts to define and encourage diversity in the workplace.

As neither an African-American nor a captain of industry (or policy), I went into the talk with a certain lack of familiarity on the topic. But that was part of the reason for doing it. As much as I wanted others to hear the participants’ stories and observations, I wanted to get schooled myself.

I can’t know what it’s like to walk even a few steps in their shoes, but one takeaway was that racial justice still requires beating on some closed doors that should have already been opened. Another is that success is both a sword and shield: A sword because, increasingly in business, success is dictated by the color green above all else; a shield, because the more successful you are, the harder it is to deny opportunities to others.

Speaking of career advancement advice he received from Judge Harry Edwards, one of the first black appellate judges in the U.S., Michael Powell says in the next installment of the Q&A that excellence is the best response to racism: “Make sure you beat people so significantly that there is no explanation for you not rising other than race.”

Diversity is just as good for business as it is for building that post-racial shining society on the hill, particularly if we are aiming ahead of the target.

Society is becoming increasingly diverse and, unless Donald Trump succeeds in replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a stop sign, it will become only more so.

No one is saying to hire the wrong person for the job. What they, and we, should be saying is, take affirmative steps to include diverse voices in the conversation and put diverse faces in front of the camera, behind the camera and in the C-suites and boardrooms.

That includes using government relationships, as well as its levers, to bring minorities into conversations they were systematically excluded from when licenses were handed out and big media companies were built.

It is ultimately equality of opportunity that will build a more inclusive society, that and recognizing that attempts to stereotype people, any people, are borne of ignorance and fear and are ultimately doomed to the dustbin — and rogues’ gallery — of history.

WASHINGTON — Police shootings of unarmed black men. Campus unrest over racial issues that brings down chancellors. Community activism asserting the value of black lives to shaken politicians. All of these trends put a spotlight on unresolved racial tensions in a country that has come a long way, but still has a way to go in its march toward a more inclusive society.

That divide extends to the media, where minority ownership continues to lag a general population that is becoming a “minority majority.”

Multichannel News reached out to three business and policy leaders who have blazed trails for others to follow. They shared frank and candid stories about how diversity efforts work in the real world, how relationships in Washington can be a powerful tool to diversify media properties, and what still needs to happen.

Adonis Hoffman, currently chairman of Business in the Public Interest and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, is former chief of staff to FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn; Alfred Liggins is president and CEO of Radio One, whose properties include 55 broadcast stations and the TV One cable network; and Michael Powell, a former Federal Communications Commission chairman, is president and CEO of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

In Part I of a wide-ranging interview hosted at NCTA headquarters here, Hoffman, Liggins and Powell talked bluntly with MCN Washington bureau chief John Eggerton about life in a not-quite-postracial America and the degree to which success can serve as a sword and shield in the fight for media equality.

Part 2: Diversity and the Power of Relationships: Hoffman, Powell and Liggins Offer Insights on the Next Steps in Fostering Inclusion

MCN:What is the current state of media ownership diversity?

Alfred Liggins: It is beyond dismal. There has been significant rollback due to industry consolidation and a lack of any policy catalyst to further increase the minority ownership ranks.

One of the things I have always taken an issue with were people who sort of banged the diversity gavel solely for the sake of making a quick buck.

We take stewardship of the assets we own pretty seriously as a communications link to our community. We like being in the business; it’s part of our identity, and we have done what we could to stay competitive. There are other people who will take advantage of a diversity opportunity to get an asset, turn around and sell it to somebody else and make money. But you might as well be buying Viacom or Time Warner stock if you want to do that.

Michael Powell: I would agree with Alfred, particularly if your metric is in the classic lens of the traditional media. It is relatively dismal. But I would also say that these have become very big businesses. They require very substantial economic wherewithal and require enormous amounts of capital, particularly if you look through the traditional lens of, “Does somebody own a set of radio stations or television stations or an entire cable network?”

But media is evolving and exploding in all kinds of new and iterative ways. I think it is very hard to simply characterize the role of minority significance only in terms of ownership. Ownership is a pretty weak story. But in the cable industry, for example, minority employment and participation in the business is a relatively positive story over time. We’re proud that in the cable industry, 39% of that population is minority, and that is something that is very concertedly worked on.

Getting minorities into C-suites and onto boards and into companies and into management also has a very dramatic effect on the public stewardship, that is, serving the greater needs of society around the representation of diverse points of view and voices. Those people can play an important role. And as things become even more innovative through digitalization and technology and Web properties and streaming, we’ll have to have evolving conceptions of what it means to be an owner and what the significance is.

It’s going to be pretty hard if you want to have a black Google, but it doesn’t mean that ecosystem doesn’t provide some profitable opportunities to be good stewards and to express those voices. Although I personally think that’s in its infancy and we should have a sense of dissatisfaction with the growth and pace of that at the moment. But I think it’s a new frontier that should be fully explored.

Liggins: There are many more black-owned websites now than there ever were radio and television stations. Those are media outlets as well.

Adonis Hoffman: With respect to participation not just as owners, but as content providers and content creators— those in front of, those behind the cameras, the ones that do the deals — those numbers, while there is some improvement in terms of the impact of particularly African-American and, to a lesser extent, Latino influences in content, you don’t see the same with respect to ownership or participation in the deals or the financing.

It is a big business. It’s a big dollar industry. When you talk about big dollar industries, at some point there has to be some parity.

And there are some opportunities. As my boy and my daughter and their millennial generation gets into the business of business, they’re not looking to buy television stations. They’re not looking to buy radio stations. They’re not looking to buy newspapers or magazines. They’re either looking to do an app or something along those lines that resonates with their media consumption habits. And I think those are where the opportunities lie now.

So, looking backwards to legacy issues, it’s bad. Looking forward to opportunities on the horizon, then I think the future is bright. It needs some nurturing, though, to get where we want to get.

MCN:You touched on programming. There is much discussion about diverse programming. But there have been waves of diverse programing in the past that then receded. Are we in one of those cycles?

Hoffman: My biggest concern is with the success of [Fox series] Empire. Advertisers are jumping on the Empire bandwagon. With that success, we’re going to have the same sort of situation we had when President Obama came into office. That is, “black president, we gave at the office.”

You have Empire, run with it and, oh, by the way, when Empire runs its course and all of that has happened, Fox will move on to another genre. So I am concerned there may be some “victimization of success” in terms of content and, like all fads, it will run its course.

Michael Powell: I don’t disagree with that, but I think there is a big “but.”

If content companies are anything they are into aggregating audiences in order to make money. If you look at the socio-demographic trends in the United States — for better or worse, depending on whose perspective you take — this country is becoming brown.

Right now, for children who are in elementary school, they are already in a majority-minority nation, and by various estimates, say 2040, you could have a country that is predominately one flavor or another of what you would call a “minority” today. And that trend is going to continue even more profoundly into this century.

So they are going to be the audience. I mean, I have seen the thing Adonis is talking about with Empire — “you got yours, you’re done.” But it could also mean you are at the beginning of a turning point, which is, that’s who the audience is.

I think the thing about Empire I found so interesting is no one expected it to be the hit that it became. It was a stunning, meteoric rise, and that might have indicated at least an appreciation of who the public really is in this day and age and what they are quickly becoming. It’s the same problem you see in politics. How are you going to be an effective political party if you don’t find a way to be a home to what we call “minorities” in America today?

Liggins: I think it actually is a turning point because there is something different today with what’s going on with black content in particular. In the past, you had the networks, and they would have their runs with minority content. Fox got launched on …

Hoffman:In Living Color.

Liggins: And then Martin and Living Single, and then they switched to more mainstream programming. The same thing happened with the UP network. All the networks have historically had their runs with minority content. The difference this go-round is the cable networks.

When we launched TV One in 2004, there was only BET and they were running music videos. Now, you see a proliferation of black programming across the cable landscape, and it is not necessarily networks that are targeted to African-Americans. WE [tv] has a slate of African-American programming; the Oprah network [OWN]; Bravo’s biggest show is [The Real] Housewives of Atlanta. So you’ve got 300 cable networks out there all playing in the black space.

And the primary reason is: a) there are more black people today, because the population is growing; and b) they watch much more television than the general population. So, they are a great target market for a television network.

I happen to think Empire is faddish, and the second season is kind of waning, and it may not be here two seasons from now. But I fully expect that Bravo will always have some black-female-targeted show on the air, given the success that they have had. Also, cable has grown in terms of audience size. AMC can have the No. 1 show in television [in The Walking Dead]. There is more money being spent on cable networks, they have more money to program, so I think they stay in the game in this genre. And I think that is the difference between now and, say, 15 years ago.

MCN:So, the important color is not black or white, but green?

Liggins: Black people don’t care whether a network is black-targeted. If there is a great show, they’ll go there. Now, they may come back to my network [TV One] more often because I program to them 24/7 or they build an affinity for our tone and voice that one of the general-market networks doesn’t have. But rest assured, if someone’s got great, entertaining and compelling shows, they will find that network.

Hoffman: Green is the color that matters, but it is being driven by brown and black eyeballs.

If you look at the Nielsen report that came out about the impact that African-American and Latino consumers particularly have, we over-index on radio consumption, we over-index on TV consumption, packaged-goods consumption and, interestingly, in consumer-electronics adoption, which should lead to greater participation in all the ancillary businesses that surround that.

So, if we know that black folks and brown folks drive the numbers for any given show, whether it’s cable or broadcast or even over-the top, then, ideally, those numbers should be reflected across producers, dealmakers, etc. And those numbers we don’t see.

What I am trying to say is there is an outsized influence on the zeitgeist and the culture of this country provided by African-Americans, primarily in terms of music and style and fads, and to a lesser extent, Latinos. And once we recognize that reality is here, right now — we don’t have to wait until 2040 — and find a way to incentivize business opportunities as a result of that, then that gets us to where I think we want to be as a society.

MCN:Let me go back to the government a minute. Is there anything the government should do? That brings me to the minority tax certificate [giving businesses a tax break for selling broadcast and cable properties to minorities]. Why doesn’t Congress reinstate it?

Powell: I have heard about this for the better part of my life and career, and one of the reasons is that it actually is one of the few things that was ever done that created actual results. So it was unceremoniously, and wrongly, repealed.

Tax policy is the single greatest lever of U.S. government activity that aligns and incents behavior. In a capitalist country like ours, that’s the way it’s done. If you want people to dig for oil, you provide incentives and tax credits for people to do that. So, if you really cared about the objective, those are the principal tools to make an impact. I think that is why it worked and why it remains talked about and popular.

MCN:So why isn’t it the law?

Powell: I think if we are being candid, I don’t have any real optimism that you will see a revival of that in the current political climate. For one, there is just this sort of war over government expenditures. And I don’t think the country’s economic temperament is suited to succeeding with this initiative.

And even though they pay lip service, you really haven’t seen a champion emerge in the Congress to really go to war for it. You get people saying they like it. But in my career, I’ve never seen anyone double down and fight for it.

And I am worried that it is stale. It was yesterday’s idea and had value, but can’t we be more creative, more innovative? And I think it also occurred at a pre-Internet time. I am not really sure that is the right thing to be incenting anymore.

One thing I wanted to layer in here is that nothing is ever guaranteed or assured. For the better part of 60 years, diversity of voices and perspectives has deeply woven itself into what you would call the traditional incumbent communications sector. But that sector now is being largely dwarfed by a new sector to which these norms and the extension of that long government dialogue has not been extrapolated.

If you go into the tech space, which by far is driving the future, look at it from an employment standpoint. In this day and age, when there are 39% minorities in this country, Google has 1% black employees. Maybe Apple has 7%. They produce all kinds of content, all kinds of product, all kinds of activities, and you won’t find a huge presence of this whether you look inside a Netflix frame or you look inside Facebook or Amazon Prime.

I’m not saying these companies are necessarily hostile, but I do think you’re getting into a world in which these values get swept up into this euphoria of what it means to be tech, what it means to be cool or hip. And I worry significantly that diversity has not yet found any foothold in that part of the emerging economy.

When I look at students today that are complaining about the degree to which their culture is fairly represented, whether [at the University of] Missouri or Claremont McKenna [College in California], these are kids growing up in the social-networking era that was supposed to be this nirvana for communications and understanding that actually seems to be having the opposite effect in significant ways.

I don’t know how to have that conversation yet, but it’s time to start. What does diversity mean for the 21st, 22nd century? We are quickly not going to be talking about, God bless ’em, radio stations [turns to Liggins sympathetically, who laughs], or, God bless me, good old-fashioned cable channels.

Like Adonis said, my children are app-driven people. There are young black men who have grown up in a world that is dominated largely by that atmosphere and where do they see themselves there?

MCN:So should the FCC just punt on all this legacy diversity action it has yet to take?

Liggins: My view on the FCC and their diversity efforts is that they regulate industries and businesses that have control of assets of the nation. Individuals don’t own the spectrum. The nation owns the spectrum and we have licenses for it. So, I think the FCC does have a role in making sure there are diverse voices and opportunities.

Hoffman: I spend a lot of time talking to boards and investors these days about diversity and corporate responsibility. And the point I try to make, and it is analogous to government, is that leadership starts at the top. You get a CEO who says, “We need to be more diverse, let me see what I can do.”

The best example I have seen of FCC leadership in terms of diversity has been transaction-specific.

So, you have a transaction, whether a merger or disposition of assets, and some enlightened commissioner or leader — perhaps a member of Congress — says: “We have an opportunity to make an impact right here, right now. We don’t have to go through the APA [Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how the federal government establishes regulations] or through a rulemaking or anything.” Other than this: “I know Alfred is in the business of broadcasting or cablecasting, and I know these guys have a need to either dispose of something. Why don’t I give them a call and say, ‘Hey, you guys get together. You’ve got my blessing. Go find a way to make something happen. And then when you get done, come back and we’ll stand up and take a photo for the press.’”

I think that as simple and informal as that sounds, that’s the way stuff happens. And the bottom line is that the guys who just got TV stations recently as the result of a spinoff of assets, I think it sort of happened that way. Somebody said: “Oh, by the way, X company is looking to do a deal. They might be interested in selling some assets to a minority. Do you know anybody?” Boom, it happens.

That happens in the business world all the time. It’s informal and it’s hard to leave progress to such informality, but that leads to progress.

Liggins: It does happen in the business world, but it’s usually to a friend, another business associate, a banker’s friend, who says, “Hey! I’ve got this assignment to spin off these assets and we’ve been doing business, so I’m going to look in your direction.” I see it all the time. And that is probably the No. 1 reason why there isn’t deal flow in the minority communities, because they are not in those circles where the business ultimately gets transacted.

Powell: Look, when I was chairman of the FCC, I cared about diversity a lot. I tried to do a lot of things. But I will say one of the things that quickly settled into my mindshare was that the FCC should understand what it can’t do. It is fundamentally an economic regulator. It is not a social regulator.

The problem the commission has is structural. No matter how good-hearted or how committed, the problem is it doesn’t really have the tools and assets to make the kind of scale-sized impact it is often encouraged to try. And, by the way, they have several niches in which they have profound obligations, as Alfred mentioned in broadcasting.

I think they owe the country answers on things that have been sitting there now for years that they should resolve. But the truth is, it is very tough to have a rulemaking, a policy, an order without violating the APA or the organic Telecommunications Act.

Hoffman: Or the Constitution itself.

Powell: Or the Constitution. Making real progress is knowing what your limitations are, and what I realized was that the most powerful asset I had both as a chairman and, frankly, as an African-American chairman who cared, was to use my bully pulpit, and my ability through relationships, connections and influence, to make that conversation alive. I can start a committee [Powell formed a diversity committee during his FCC tenure]. I can introduce him [points to Liggins] to an important media mogul. And I think that leads us in much more effective and productive ways. I could have started a lot of proceedings and I think I would have been yet another guy who started a lot of proceedings and, years later, you wonder why nothing has changed.

Liggins: Three of the biggest transformative business events that helped us grow Radio One and TV One to what they are today were, one, chairman Bill Kennard [the first African-American FCC chair], who didn’t have any policy levers. But radio was consolidating and [Clear Channel Communications chairman] Lowry Mays and [Infinity Broadcasting president] Mel Karmazin were buying up the industry, and Lowry Mays and Clear Channel were buying a lot of AM and FM radios and they had a lot of overlap and they had a hundred and something stations that had to be sold. He [Kennard] told them: “Minority ownership is very important to me. You should sell stations to minorities.” And they did. And a lot of people bought a lot of radio stations and we doubled the size of our company in terms of cash flow. That was transformative for our radio group.

A second one was when we launched TV One and Comcast gave us a distribution deal and became our partner. It would not have happened without that and that was on the heels of their AT&T Broadband merger.

And then, cable networks lose a lot of money — we lost $30 million a year for four years before we turned a profit. But you have to get enough scale to get over the hump, which is about 30 million subs.

Chairman Powell introduced my mother, Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, to [21st Century Fox chairman] Rupert Murdoch at some meeting on the eighth floor [the commissioner’s floor at FCC headquarters] and said [we] were starting a cable network targeted to African Americans and he [Murdoch] should meet with them.”

I got the meeting, and the next thing you know we had full distribution on DirecTV. And that was the instant distribution piece that made TV One profitable. It got us over that hump, all because people in power said it was important to them.

Hoffman: I completely agree. Those moments were brought about as a result of seminal events where the commission or the government had a key role. So, you have to have the recognition on the part of government that: “Here’s a seminal moment. I’ve got an opportunity to do something if you’ve got a commitment. So, here’s a transaction before me.” I agree, rulemakings alone, policy prescriptions, [it] ain’t gonna happen, but there’s an opportunity to impact far beyond that. And those seminal moments, I think in this media environment, are coming up more regularly than they have in the past.

MCN:But doesn’t that translate to diversity by deal condition?

Powell: There is something we should be careful about here, because if it’s read wrong, this could sound inappropriate. We’re not talking about government officials saying, “you’d better sell to a minority or else” or “I am going to hold over your merger, or else.”

But, let’s just face it, you have to raise the dial. You have to make people conscious of the options. I have never, as a government official, told Rupert Murdoch or anyone else they had to do anything. But what I told them is: “Diversity is a really important value in this country and there are really talented entrepreneurs out there trying to get a break, and I just would encourage you when you get a chance, let me introduce you to one ’cause I happen to know one. You are going to sell them anyway, why don’t we make sure you put in your pool an opportunity?” And if they hear that from the chairman of the FCC, I don’t think they are taking a directive. But they are saying, “look, it’s important to him.”

That is what leadership is, right?

The world works on relationships and connections and opportunity. You make your own luck. The problem for our communities is they have historically been kept out of those interlocking relationships.

And, by the way, it works just this way with the sole-white community. I guarantee you Rupert’s son gets introduced to so-and-so because that’s the way the world really works. And what you can do when you are in a position of leadership is help accelerate network connections that are otherwise very difficult for a community that hasn’t been born into them and raised among them and had an opportunity to grow them.

And I think that whether you are a government official or the head of a trade association or the head of a company, you can take on a personal responsibility. I have never taken a job where when I sat down to think about my vision where there wasn’t a bullet on that piece of paper that said, “What are you going to do on the diversity front as part of your leadership?” And I’ve done that in every job I’ve ever had.

NEXT WEEK:In Part II, learn more about the power of the bully pulpit to boost diversity, the limits of government intervention, the opportunities in disruption and some personal civil-rights stories.