Channel Changer

Talk to him about work, and in particular BET, and he's defensive and uptight, taking umbrage at the questions asked, intensely focused on spin. "You're bumming me out with your questions," he tells a reporter. It's as if he takes the criticisms personally. But get Hudlin talking about anything else -- the "Black Panther" series that he writes for Marvel Comics, getting married in Jamaica, the wonder of his little girl's traffic-stopping 'fro -- and he loosens up considerably. His sense of humor floats to the surface.

At 46, Hudlin is of the same generation that shaped Barack Obama, riding the cusp between Boomers and Gen X'ers, post civil rights movement and "post-racial." He comfortably straddles the line between Harvard (where he earned his bachelor's degree) and the 'hood (East St. Louis, Ill., where he grew up), a hip-hop head weaned on P-Funk and Prince, sci-fi and Marvel Comics.

Now he's riding the cusp between the old BET and the one he envisions for the future. Today, Hudlin and his network are at a critical juncture.

After nearly three decades in the business, BET is battling its image as a purveyor of stereotypes at the same time it's trying to position itself as a global player. Last month the network launched BET UK, its first real venture into international waters. (Next stop: South Africa in 2009.)

Now, after nearly three years on the job, Hudlin says he has started turning around the network, pushing it to the next level, from a surplus of music videos and syndicated reruns to scripted, original programming. At the same time, he and Lee point out that they've got a business to run, and that they'd be foolish to ignore the ones buttering their bread: that prized demographic of 18-to-34-year-olds. Young people, who, he says, "get it." BET's critics, he says, do not.

"What we do involves black youth culture, and black youth culture has always been vilified," Hudlin says. "That's the business we're in. I understand there's always going to be some level of vilification . . . and I'm not having it."

Hudlin is squeezed between making profits and making a difference. Observes a BET producer who declined to be identified for fear of losing his job: "You can criticize BET all you want, but it's about money. . . . You put all these high-minded, socially conscious programs on and your profits dip, you're right out of there."

BET, founded in Washington in 1980, emerged in the aftermath of the black-power '70s, riding a crest of hopes and expectations as the first black network. In the early days -- also the early days of rap -- the network was a family affair, with all ages tuning in. It was "Video Soul" with a genial Donnie Simpson and the wholesome Sherry Carter. It was nighttime newscasts with a sober-looking Ed Gordon. It was talk shows and Teen Summits and Mandela Freedom Fund Telethons. But along the way, things shifted. Newscasts shrank to sound bites. Hip-hop, or at least, commercial rap, morphed into something else, something harder and crasser. Videos took on a dominant role.

Being the first means being saddled with a certain amount of baggage. "BET is unique because it is the custodian of the airwaves for all black people," says Hudlin's brother Warrington. "It is a burden, a double standard. History places that on you. . . . BET hasn't done anything that VH1 and MTV haven't done. But people don't expect VH1 to be our channel."

Age-old dilemma. As Langston Hughes pointed out in 1926, "The Negro artist works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites. 'Oh, be respectable, write about nice people, show how good we are,' say the Negroes. 'Be stereotyped, don't go too far, don't shatter our illusions about you, don't amuse us too seriously. We will pay you,' say the whites."

Former Friends

At a recent daily taping of "106 & Park," BET's video countdown show, a plethora of hip-hop players and wannabes float in and out of the studios on West 57th Street in Manhattan. A giant screen displays rapper Rick Ross's latest video, "The Boss." In it, two half-naked women crawl over Ross's massive, tattooed chest, interspersed with dreamy clips of diamond-encrusted rings and stacks and stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

Ross raps: