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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