Robert Johnson and his associates took BET back into private ownership in 1998.
In 2001, they sold BET Holdings to the enormous media conglomerate Viacom for about $3 billion, but Johnson continued to serve as BET’s CEO until 2005. He became the first African American billionaire thanks to the transaction.
Is Robert Johnson a billionaire?
Between 1976 and 1979, he worked as a lobbyist for the fledgling cable sector and observed that the sizable African American TV audience was underserved.
Johnson turned BET into a broadcasting behemoth with a claimed audience of more than 70 million households from a little cable station showing just two hours of programming each week in 1980.
BET was the first Black-owned business to list on the New York Stock Exchange in 1991. The 1990s saw BET flourish as it added more cable channels, increased its audience through new publishing and film divisions, music channels, and a website.
Along with the product line’s expansion, viewership increased, and large media corporations started to invest in the network’s expansion.
