August 9, 2025
The modifications at BET have probably been triggered by the merger of BET’s mum or dad firm, Paramount International, with Skydance Media, in keeping with reviews.
Two staple packages that concentrate on the impression of Black tradition, the BET Hip Hop Awards and the Soul Practice Music Awards, have been indefinitely suspended, which BET’s CEO, Scott Mills, hinted in feedback to Billboard may return by way of its streaming platform.
In line with Rolling Stone, doubts about the way forward for the Soul Practice Awards started to rise in 2024 when the present, which had aired since 1987, was skipped and its social media accounts went silent in March 2024. The BET Hip-Hop Awards are a more recent innovation from BET, that awards present, a present that branched out from its BET Awards present, started airing in 2006, and just like the Soul Practice Awards, has been aired yearly by the community.
“So for BET linear, now we have suspended the Soul Practice and Hip-Hop award reveals,” Mills informed Billboard. BET linear refers back to the programming on the BET channel, the community’s authentic cable channel. “However now we have a crew that’s actively fascinated about the place these award reveals would possibly finest stay because the media local weather continues to evolve. They aren’t gone.”
Mills continued, “I might say that it’s much less about them being not and extra about our crew having to reimagine them for this altering media panorama that we discover ourselves in. I feel what we’re going to see are extra individuals taking franchises and saying, ‘This may need began on linear tv, however now I’m going to maneuver it to a different area. Do I transfer it to streaming? Or do I transfer it to a different platform?’”
Though Mills believes that the programming will return, he did notice that the BET Hip-Hop Awards’ viewership sample had been trending down since 2001.
“Viewership was down. Nevertheless, the cable ecosystem is smaller in the present day than it was a yr in the past. That’s simply the fact of it. It was a rare present. And actually, I attribute the viewership declines much less to the declines within the cable ecosystem and extra to the truth that we moved the night time of the present,” Mills concluded.
In line with Billboard‘s reporting, the modifications at BET have probably been triggered by the merger of BET’s mum or dad firm, Paramount International, with Skydance Media. Mills averted any direct remark about BET’s place in Paramount’s future pecking order, however lauded the corporate’s place because the main Black media platform.
In a latest episode of their podcast, “Joe and Jada,” rappers Fats Joe and Jadakiss mentioned the scenario that began in earnest when BET’s founder, Bob Johnson, bought BET to Viacom, ending the community’s future as a Black-owned firm in 2000.
The corporate was subsequently acquired by Paramount as soon as Viacom was absorbed by Paramount International, which had regarded to promote the corporate in 2024, however backed out of the client’s market after a possible sale of BET was linked to figures like Byron Allen, BET’s CEO himself and a personal fairness group, and even Sean Combs and Tyler Perry.
“It is a type of gentrification, what’s occurring. I don’t know in case you actually need to ask me about this sh*t,” mentioned Fats Joe, Vibe reported.
He added, “BET got here up as a neighborhood station for Black individuals and concrete tradition. Our man Bob Johnson took the examine…he bought it to Viacom Paramount. MTV and them. VH1 and them. Little by little over time, quietly, they’ve been firing lots of people behind the scenes at BET, and all people who has one thing to say, they been firing them. And I do know ’trigger I’ve been engaged on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for 3 years. Sh*t was just like the funds, not for me, however the funds simply stored getting chopped and chopped and chopped.”
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