When Robert L. Johnson launched Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1980, the Black community- and culture-focused cable channel initially offered just two hours of weekly programming on the Madison Square Garden Sports Network (later renamed USA Network). Now celebrating its 45th anniversary, the channel has since evolved into the multi-platform BET Media Group.
Related
With the original cable channel — BET Linear — as its foundation, the BET Media Group currently encompasses seven additional platforms. Those include subscription streaming service BET+, original content provider BET Studios, interactive division BET Digital, the Black women-dedicated BET Her, global-focused BET International, events and experience division BET LIVE and multicultural cable channel VH1.
Since becoming its own channel in 1983 — and establishing long-running franchises such as the music video show 106 & Park and the BET Awards (aka “Culture’s Biggest Night”) — BET has also undergone major owner and leadership changes. Johnson sold the channel to Viacom for a reported $3 billion in 2001, ending its status as a Black-owned company. The subsequent merger between Viacom and CBS Corp. then became part of Paramount Global in 2022. Following Johnson’s exit in 2005, Debra L. Lee succeeded him as president/CEO.
A former member of Viacom’s executive team, Scott Mills, was appointed BET’s president after Lee’s departure and promoted to CEO in 2021. Mills initially began working at BET in 1997 as senior vp of business development and held various posts before advancing to COO. It was on his watch that BET began its media ecosystem evolution.
Mills, together with private equity firm CC Capital, was also reportedly among the suitors eyeing the potential acquisition of BET Media Group from Paramount Global in a deal last year said to be valued between $1.6 billion and $1.7 billion. Sale chatter about BET first emerged in 2023 when Paramount Global was said to be interested in selling a majority stake in the entity for an estimated price tag between $2 billion and $3 billion. Among other possible bidders named in various media reports were Tyler Perry, Byron Allen and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Subsequently deciding not to sell BET Media Group, Paramount Global has announced that its long-anticipated, $8 billion merger with Skydance Media — following the former’s recent $16 million settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS’ 60 Minutes — will become official on Aug. 7.
Mills, who last spoke with Billboard in 2022, addressed what’s ahead for BET Media Group as it moves forward under new ownership. “I would assure everyone who cares about BET that it will continue to be here for our community,” pledged Mills. “We’re all committed to that.”
BET launched its first major content partnership in 2017 with Tyler Perry. What role do such partnerships still play in the network’s current ecosystem?
Our teaming with Tyler Perry started as a content partnership, then he became a partner in BET+ with us. His content [Divorced Sistas and Sistas, among other shows], message and care for the community resonate deeply. That’s a beautiful thing. We have also partnered with Kenya Barris [Diarra From Detroit] and are also in the fifth season of The Miss Pat Show, which was brought to us by executive producer Lee Daniels and executive producer/showrunner Jordan E. Cooper. Another example is Kevin Hart hosting the 25th anniversary of the BET Awards this year. He’s been a great BET partner [Lil Kev, Real Husbands of Hollywood], going all the way back to his hosting the BET Awards over a decade ago. Our entire approach with these partnerships is that we’re part of the broader cultural ecosystem. We get to support and be supported by extraordinary people who are relevant to our community.
How many are straight partnerships versus joint ventures?
I speak broadly of partnerships, meaning that we work together. But some of those partnerships are literally joint ventures, like with Tyler and Kenya, and others are very strong collaborations where we’re working across a multitude of projects, like we are with Kevin Hart and his company Hartbeat. And with Taraji [P. Henson] we had an overall partnership with her through BET Studios.
BET recently announced it will be further traversing the intersection between sports and music with a revamp of the net’s early flagship series 106 & Park.
106 & Sports is a collaboration with Spring Hill Entertainment, and everybody is working feverishly to get it ready to launch in the fall. We’re going to start with a weekly show at that point with lots of wonderful guests. It will apply the best elements of the 106 & Park structure and format to the sports world. Much like Billboard’s role in the music industry, music was the epicenter of what BET did for a long time. As the culture and our community have evolved, music has maintained an extraordinary importance. But it’s really exciting to appreciate the way that sports has evolved to being an integral part of the culture. In addition to 106 & Sports, we’re doing a docuseries with Michael Vick in the fall around his new role as head football coach at HBCU Norfolk State. The footprint that sports has in Black culture is gigantic today. So the docuseries and the decision to take the 106 & Park brand and extend it to the sports space are a reflection of that.
Are you eyeing more on the African music and content programming front?
There’s not a lot of content from Africa on linear television in the States today, though people can access some African content on streaming platforms. But we’ve been trying to crack the code to really understand what content from the continent will resonate here because there’s a lot of great content coming from there. We’ve been bringing series over, one at a time, testing them on linear and streaming to get a sense of what’s resonating and what’s not. And we’ll continue to do that. In fact, we just wrapped shooting on the second season of Average Joe, an original series for BET+, and we shot that season in South Africa.
Can you confirm the chatter that two of the annual shows in BET’s awards franchise, Soul Train and Hip-Hop, are no longer being presented?
I would say that it’s less about them being no longer and more about our team having to reimagine them for this changing media landscape that we find ourselves in. I think what we’re going to see are more people taking franchises and saying, “This might have started on linear television, but now I’m going to move it to another space. Do I move it to streaming? Or do I move it to another platform?” So for BET linear, we have suspended the Soul Train and Hip-Hop award shows. But we have a team that’s actively thinking about where those award shows might best live as the media climate continues to evolve. They aren’t gone. And we also still have the NAACP Image Awards and the Stellar Awards.
However, with the 2025 BET Awards, viewership dropped almost 50% in the key 18-49 demo from last year’s show. Are there concerns about the longevity of that longstanding tentpole?
Viewership was down. However, the cable ecosystem is smaller today than it was a year ago. That’s just the reality of it. But more importantly, I give [executive vp/head of specials, music programming and music strategy] Connie Orlando and the creative team incredible credit for delivering an amazing 25th anniversary BET Awards show. I’ve been in the BET ecosystem for the full 25 years that we’ve been doing the show. My seat mate at this year’s show was Stephen Hill, the young man who, 25 years ago, created the BET Awards. At the end of it, he turned to me and said, “This is one of the best BET Awards I’ve ever seen.”
It was an extraordinary show. And honestly, I attribute the viewership declines less to the declines in the cable ecosystem and more to the fact that we moved the night of the show. It typically has aired at the end of June on a Sunday. This year, we moved the show to the beginning of June and on a Monday. What you’ll see in 2026 is us moving it right back to its traditional location, the last Sunday in June. And we’ll bring the BET festival back as well. It’s very complementary to the core of that whole weekend experience.
What is your perspective on AI as it relates to the BET ecosystem?
We’re thinking about AI in all the ways that everybody else is. There’s nothing I can share yet. But we’re actively listening and talking to potential partners about how we can use AI and partner with people to use AI in ways that can specifically help our community that have nothing to do with entertainment. It might have something to do with empowerment, engagement or education, because we appreciate the concerns about AI’s impact on unemployment. Equally, however, we believe that AI has the power to help unlock a lot of potential opportunities for our community and help address some of the barriers that exist for our community.
What is one example of a barrier that exists?
I’m a big book reader. So I always say to my 14-year-old twins, “Do you know the reason why there are so many more books than there are movies?” It’s because it’s really expensive to make a movie and really inexpensive to write a book. And there are real concerns about the way AI will disrupt content creation, which is absolutely true. But if we actually appreciate that capital is a barrier for making movies, that means that people who don’t have access to capital often don’t have the opportunity to bring the stories that they’d like to tell in the movie format. Well in a couple of years, that’s not going to be an obstacle. And suddenly, people who didn’t have access to capital, who didn’t have the ability to accumulate the resources required to create and tell their stories via movies, will be able to do so.
Which community has the least access to capital? Our community. There are a number of jobs in which our community is concentrated that are going to be impacted by AI. So we have to think about how we move into other fields and develop those skills and capabilities. But equally, there are a number of places like film where it will actually remove historical barriers to participation by our community. For example, think about the music industry, and the explosion in talent that came from our community as some of the barriers to making and distributing music have gone away.
BET underwent layoffs in July. Were these across all sectors of the ecosystem and how many employees were affected?
As you know, the media industry is going through extraordinary changes, and those changes are impacting every company in the industry. The head count reductions that we had to take at BET were reflective of the impact of those changes on our business. And having been at the BET for over 27 years, the reality is you go through cycles where you hit a kind of an inflection point in the business where everybody has to tighten up, shrink the organization to fit that environment. Then you build out that next aspect of your business, and you’re able to grow. We’re building out our going-forward platforms — streaming, studios and fast business — to support the growth of our organization with those platforms. We had to really make sure that we right-size the organization to reflect that we are really optimistic about all of the opportunities that exist for BET’s growth.
Because at the core, we play this singular role in our community in being able to successfully move and extend into myriad evolving media platforms. We’re not captive: we’ve been able to extend BET into all of these platforms. Black content, Black community and Black culture: At any point where those three things come together, BET can thrive and succeed. We may not know what media looks like 10 years from now. But what I do know is there are still going to be Black folks. That the Black community’s affinity for content anchored in Black culture and from Black creators will exist as strong and vibrant 10 years from now as it does today — and as it did 25 years ago. We’re constantly moving BET forward in a way that we believe is reflective of this intersection of Black content, Black community and Black culture.
Given the approval of the merger between Skydance and Paramount — and the former’s recent announcement about ending DEI initiatives — are you concerned at all about BET’s Black focus being diluted?
I don’t speak to potential corporate outcomes. What I will say is that I believe any entity that’s a steward of BET will see and appreciate how special, valuable and unique BET is with its 100% brand recognition and all the other wonderful things that BET has as a business asset. I’m very optimistic about BET’s trajectory because we really do believe in its mission to serve our community and in the way it resonates with our community. As long as the right decisions are made with respect to BET, it will always be the leading Black media platform for our community. It’s a privilege to serve on its behalf.
Where do you see BET five to 10 years from now?
When I returned to BET in 2018, I told everybody that my focus was on making the right strategic and operating decisions so that BET would still be strong, vibrant and relevant 15 years in the future. I remember going to my grandma’s house and there being an Ebony magazine on the table. The reason why I say that is because the future of brands isn’t guaranteed. Simply because you’re successful today doesn’t mean that you’ll be successful five, 10 or 15 years from now. [Ebony founder and owner] John H. Johnson should have created BET. [BET founder Robert] Bob Johnson loves to tell the story that he didn’t have the money to create BET but he had the idea; he went to other people to ask for money. John Johnson had the money but he didn’t have that idea. Ebony should have moved into all of these different platforms and spaces as its starting platform, print, was shrinking. If he’d made decisions to evolve that platform, Ebony would have been thriving today. And it’s heartbreaking that it’s not because it was such an important part of our culture and community when I was a kid.
My focus at BET is to work with my team and colleagues here in setting up BET such that it will be even more relevant, important and central to our community and thriving 10 to 15 years from now. That’s what I’m working towards.
