Sheila Johnson speaks the truth thank GOD!! This business saavy black woman who co-founded BET explains how she thinks BET is negatively effecting our community and how at its inception it was intended to be a TV version of Ebony Magazine of TV. Well unfortunately Sheila its become the Black Mens Magazine of TV! Better yet, the Black Tail Magazine of TV. And yes you Sheila Jackson had a HUGE part in its decline. Its like she took her brain child that she intended to be a debutante and put it in a mini skirt and high heels dropped it off on the corner introduced it to prostitutes and when she left it, she is surprised that it never became her sweet young deb and instead the top earning hooker on the block. Its funny, BET has gotten so bad that I forgot it once was a positive uplifting channel that was safe for my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. Looking at it now its hard to believe any parent would let their children watch its programming. Teen Summit has been replaced by the mindlessly offensive 106th and park that features the same audience demographic(pre-teens and teenagers) but with decidedly more adult content. Midnight Love and Video Soul were once replaced with BET UNCUT, a nightly program featuring local videos and NC-17 versions of popular videos and amounted to little more than softcore porn(the wack cigarette burned country stripper internet kind not the awesome high production value cinemax kind:)...These days The nightly programming on BET is filled with offensively stereotypical reality shows and Jaime Foxx Show reruns. Sadly a lot of this happened on Ms. Sheilas watch(i.e. the end of Teen Summit and the inclusion of UnCut) but don't expect to find any accountability in the former co-founders' little shpiel. I could talk about the negative imagery blasted on this channel until blue in the face but BET although the gate keeper is not solely responsible for the pluthera of luxury car, naked bitches, flashy jewelry, club scene, videos that now dominate a genre that used to feature unique video concepts and flattered the black woman where as now she is a rented prop like the car she gyrates on and the rappers jewelry she bites licks whatever the hell they do. So now BET has become the opposite and thanks to the raunchy vids it has done the opposite of what Sheila Johnson intended by sexualizing an entire generation of children. I can pinpoint the exact moment at which I knew BET was ruining the kids(the real kids not the KiDS;) I saw a 13 year old girl announcing the number one video(for the 8th week in a row 106th & park record) Wait the whisper song. Teenagers screaming for, singing along to, and voting for a song about a man boasting his dick laying skills and telling a young woman, nay, a bitch that he cant wait to show her his dick and he will beat her p**sy up. Good job being responsible to the youth BET(where is Ananda and the panel when you need them). Anyway its become demeaning to watch and Im glad the founder has something to say about what her vision has become, but I still feel like she should have acknowledged the hand she had in creating this moster instead of just talking about all the children its killing. Too bad she hasn't the power to do anything about it, but anyway its a good quote from her and worth the read....ENJOY!!!
Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET along with her ex-husband Robert L. Johnson, cashed out for $1.3 billion in 2000 when they sold it to Viacom. In a recent interview, Shelia Johnson was asked her thoughts today on what help create 30 years ago:
Don’t even get me started,I don’t watch it. I suggest to my kids that they don’t watch it… I’m ashamed of it, if you want to know the truth.
When we started BET, it was going to be the Ebony magazine on television. We had public affairs programming. We had news… I had a show called Teen Summit, we had a large variety of programming, but the problem is that then the video revolution started up… And then something started happening, and I didn’t like it at all. And I remember during those days we would sit up and watch these videos and decide which ones were going on and which ones were not. We got a lot of backlash from recording artists…and we had to start showing them. I didn’t like the way women were being portrayed in these videos.
I just really wish—and not just BET but a lot of television programming—that they would stop lowering the bar so far just so they can get eyeballs to the screen. I know they think that’s what’s going to keep programming on the air; that’s what’s going to sell advertising. But there has got to be some responsibility. Somebody has got to take this over. Because with all the studies that are out there, this is contributing to an atmosphere of free sex, ‘I don’t have to protect myself anymore.
Present day, Sheila Johnson’s on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and chairs the board of governors of Parsons, The New School for Design. She is president and managing partner of the Washington Mystics of the Women’s National Basketball League, and also owns substantial stakes in the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals. The owner of several hotels and a PGA golf course, she is building a luxury spa and convention center on a 347-acre tract in horse country in Middleburg, Virginia, where she also has a farm and indulges her love of all things equestrian.
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