What’s going on, folks? So, a lot of you don’t know about the history of BET Network, or you probably think you do, but a lot of you don’t know this. Robert Bob Johnson, the creator of BET, didn’t actually fund the network himself. The money behind BET came from John Malone.
If you’re not familiar, John Malone helped launch major media ventures. He advised Ted Turner or helped Ted Turner when he was in a financial crisis with CNN. And he helped Rupert Murdoch in regards to helping him with strategies to starting Fox News. Malone gave Robert Johnson $500,000 to start BET. At that time, Johnson had no business experience, no entrepreneur experience. He was a lobbyist. Malone’s goal was to support young entrepreneurs with big ideas, helping them launch media channels, he says.
Many wonder why Johnson eventually sold BET, which was one of the few Black-owned cable network channels at the time. In interviews, he explained that Malone liked working with him but didn’t want to work with Johnson’s kids who would have inherited the business. Johnson sold BET at what he felt was the company’s peak value.
Here’s the financial breakdown. So, John Malone always owned 35% of BET, right? So he had a large share of BET. When BET was sold to Viacom, the sale was over three billion. Malone got around one billion in stock. Johnson received a little over one billion in stock. And Debra Lee got millions as well, and… from Viacom.
So, while BET was Black-owned in, in name and face, it wasn’t fully Black-owned financially. John Malone provided the capital, and Bob Johnson was the public face of the network.
And then a lot of people don’t understand that the reason why BET came to fruition was it allowed advertisers to have, like, a pretty much instant access to all of those viewers in order to sell products to those individuals. That’s why you saw them partnering up with the Army and, you know, these brands, alcoholic beverages and sports and, you know, et cetera. That was the reason for that, to have access to those viewers.
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