But when the video model no longer became tenable, BET followed its compatriots VH1 and MTV into reality programming, often about the lives of the young, fashion-conscious and largely well-to-do and assumed the burden of correcting reductive portraits of black life.
The deal that was supposedly financially untenable for the studios magically became tenable when the profits from the Oscar broadcast were threatened.
In the meantime, our cities, our schools, our neighborhoods and our very livelihoods become less tenable by the day.
At the same time, Obama's insistence on offering no policy concessions will start to become less tenable, given the dire consequences of a default.
Only after the development of anesthesia and antisepsis, in the nineteenth century, and, in the early twentieth century, of a double-layer suturing technique that could stop an opened uterus from hemorrhaging, did Cesarean section become a tenable option.
That may become less tenable, though, as Ms. Swift's personal life makes its way into the tabloids, as it lately has in regards to her never-confirmed romance with Joe Jonas, the would-be rake of the Jonas Brothers.
But denial has become less tenable by the day: air-quality data is now widely available, including a running update from the roof of the U.S. Embassy; "airpocalypse" conditions have become a regular, sometimes crippling feature of Chinese cities; and pollution is driving away tourists.
As bin Laden's international image and stature increase — along with his support, both ideological and financial, among some of the kingdom's elite and the elites of other states in the Persian Gulf — any Saudi hopes of quietly resolving its bin Laden problem by force become less tenable.
