FYI.....
Jeter

VIACOM CANCELS B.E.T. SHOWS: Ed Gordon, “Lead Story” and “Teen Summit” are gone.


Mr. Bob Johnson
(Dec. 9, 2002) *On January 23, 2001, Bob Johnson sold BET, the company he started in 1979, to Viacom for $3 billion. Johnson remained as chairman and CEO of BET and Johnson's chief operating officer, Debra Lee, said about the sale at the time: “BET will continue to be run by Bob Johnson and myself in the way we have always run it for the past 20 years ... We will continue to have an independent black voice.” Some are now questioning the nature of BET’s voice. Viacom recently announced that it was canceling “BET Tonight with Ed Gordon,” “Lead Story” and “Teen Summit.” “BET Tonight” and “Lead Story” will be off the air by the end of the year and “Teen Summit” will air until early 2003. “This was obviously not Bob Johnson's decision because these were his favorite programs,” a BET executive told BlackPressUSA.com. “It was time to pay the piper and Bobs no longer the piper,” another executive is quoted as saying. These recent cancellations are the latest events in a major restructuring of BET’s programming. Last year the company decided not to renew Tavis Smiley’s contract. In January this year “Lead Story” host Cheryl Martin voluntarily resigned. Then longtime “Lead Story” panelist DeWayne Wickham, a USA Today columnist, resigned. Time will tell whether BET can survive the loss of its news programs along with several well known journalists. “What this means is that BET will have virtually no programming,” said a former BET official. “We were already down to skin and bones and now we don’t have that.”
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