Kaitz Foundation raises money for National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC), the Emma L. Bowen Foundation (creating cable career opportunities for minority youth), and and Women in Cable & Telecommunications. Their cable industry awards supposedly weigh a number of factors tied to programming, recruitment and corporate outreach.

Here’s the kicker: if you weigh “programming” and “corporate outreach” generally, there is no way in hell you are going to ignore things like “ratings” and “revenue” under the former and “largess” under the latter.

Consider straight from Kaitz itself as part of its praise for MTV Networks (which owns VH1 and Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and others):

Nickelodeon: Convenes 3rd Annual World Wide Day of Play Sep 30 2006 in which all programming goes off the air for three hours to get people to go outside as part of a healthy kids and family campaign. Total cost: $30 million in on-air messaging, financial grants to schools and communities, and grassroots activities outreach worldwide (not including junior goodwill ambassador program to Katrina-damaged communities)

[MY SIDENOTE: Maybe forcing people to turn off their t.v. sets results in dark screen with a tiny multicolored dot for millions of Americans. For the network, programming static (integrated black and white and gray) or a test pattern (many colors) at some point is considered multiculturalism at its best. Win-Win?]

But I digress…

Basically MTV Networks is being honored by a cable industry support foundation that pumps money towards diversity initiatives in order to keep lawmakers off the industry’s back from mandating that which its supposed to do as a condition of providing services to commmunities in areas it doesn’t want to at rates it shouldn’t be allowed to.

And why specifically is MTV Networks being recognized?

(1) For jamming the same lame old programming onto new digital music channels under different names to different racial and ethnic demographics

(2) For the *other* awards (cable and non-industry) its subsidiary properties already won

(3) Socially responsible work that, while noteworthy, is not marked for being multiracial/multiethnic in its purpose or content.

But then the kicker kicks in:

NAMIC’s Executive Leadership Development Program was initially championed by Tom Freston, who until last week was President and CEO of MTV Networks which is owned by Viacom, chaired by Sumner Redstone, who just named Freston to the position nine months ago.

Freston, age 60, spent 26 years at Viacom, 18 of them at MTV. So amid all the bad news (though he did get a reported $50-60 million severance package), go figure on the award…