National Empowerment Television

National Empowerment Television (NET), also known as America's Voice, was a cable TV network designed to rapidly mobilize conservative followers for grassroots lobbying. It was created by Paul Weyrich, a key strategist for the paleoconservative movement. At its peak, it claimed to reach more than 11 million homes.

Like many conservatives, Weyrich believed that the mainstream news and entertainment media exhibited a liberal bias. In an attempt to help counter this, he mobilized groups and donors who were equally concerned by the supposed lack of journalistic integrity. Coordinated by the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), they launched a Washington, D.C.-based satellite television network called National Empowerment Television (NET). Its logo featured a square of nine dots, referring to a puzzle that cannot be solved without drawing lines "outside the box." NET went on air for the first time on December 6, 1993.

Many in academia and the mainstream media roundly criticized NET. For instance, the Columbia Journalism Review observed in 1994 that it spurned "broadcast journalism's caveat against partisan news programming.... One-third of the programs on NET are produced by 'associate broadcasters' -- organizations handpicked by Weyrich to share NET's airtime. Among the dozen associate broadcasters on NET are Accuracy in Media, the National Rifle Association, and the American Life League, an anti-abortion group. Though these programs can look like 'Discovery Channel' documentaries, they are in fact unrestrained, unfiltered, political infomercials."

Indeed, in an attempt to circumvent mainstream media opposition, NET went to associate broadcasters, local broadcasting channels for television syndication, and other non-traditional means of marketing. Thus, NET was able to become a broader resource for the U.S. social and economic conservative movements. Many organizations which had been traditionally shunned by major broadcasters and advertisers bought the rights to air programs on the channel, including the Christian Coalition, the Cato Institute, Accuracy in Media, and others.

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