BET Networks Acquires Soul Train

BET Networks, a division of Viacom (Nasdaq:VIAB, VIA), today announced it has acquired Soul Train from InterMedia Partners and The Yucaipa Companies. The acquisition, which brings together two quintessential African American brands, represents an investment in an iconic franchise that uniquely lends itself to providing fans with a wide range of experiences across multiple platforms, beyond the television programs that audiences have enjoyed for decades. The transaction serves to further strengthen BET’s investment in content and underlines the network’s leadership in music-related content.

Owning Soul Train’s intellectual property will allow BET to further build on the success of the Soul Train Awards, which BET re-launched in 2009, and strengthens the network’s commitment to original content. The assets acquired include one of the largest libraries of African American, music-oriented content in the world, including over 1,100 television episodes and 40 television specials. Beyond television, BET will grow the ways in which audiences of all ages are able to interact with this iconic brand, creating a host of ancillary revenue opportunities ranging from live events to consumer products.

“BET Networks is honored to have acquired a brand with such a rich history and unique content that is forever relevant to all segments of our audience,” commented Richard Gay, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Operations at BET Networks. “With a Broadway play and a concert tour as examples of opportunities in the works, we look forward to finding engaging and smart ways to grow the brand while preserving its heritage and legacy in music, dance and fashion.”

About BET Networks

BET Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIA, VIA.B), is the nation's leading provider of quality entertainment, music, news and public affairs television programming for the African-American audience. The primary BET channel reaches more than 90 million households and can be seen in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and sub-Saharan Africa. BET is the dominant African-American consumer brand with a diverse group of business extensions: BET.com, a leading Internet destination for Black entertainment, music, culture, and news; CENTRIC, a 24-hour entertainment network targeting the African-American Woman; BET Music Networks - BET Jams, BET Soul and BET Gospel; BET Home Entertainment; BET Live, BET’s growing festival business; BET Mobile, which provides ringtones, games and video content for wireless devices; and BET International, which operates BET around the globe.

View source version on businesswire.com:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160404006149/en/

Contact:

BET Networks
Terrece Walker, 212-205-3264

New Book: Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

National Book Award winner James McBride goes in search of the “real” James Brown after receiving a tip that promises to uncover the man behind the myth. His surprising journey illuminates not only our understanding of this immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius but the ways in which our cultural heritage has been shaped by Brown’s legacy.

Kill ’Em and Leave is more than a book about James Brown. Brown’s rough-and-tumble life, through McBride’s lens, is an unsettling metaphor for American life: the tension between North and South, black and white, rich and poor. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts, in the dead of night, a fuller history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood, which until now has been a mystery. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for forty-one years, and interviews Brown’s most influential nonmusical creation, his “adopted son,” the Reverend Al Sharpton. He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown’s first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.

James McBride is one of the most distinctive and electric literary voices in America today, and part of the pleasure of his narrative is being in his presence, coming to understand Brown through McBride’s own insights as a black musician with Southern roots. Kill ’Em and Leave is a song unearthing and celebrating James Brown’s great legacy: the cultural landscape of America today.

BUY THE BOOK

My issue with the "Why don't more black kids play baseball" conversation

Baseball season has started, so that means that it's time for the "Why don't more black kids play baseball conversation". One element of this conversation always bugged me because it plays right into stereotypes about black fathers. Listen to my thoughts in the video below.

Baseball season has started, so that means that it's time for the "Why don't more black kids play baseball conversation"...

Posted by George L. Cook III on Friday, April 8, 2016

Black Lives Matter protesters and Bill Clinton repeatedly clash in Philadelphia

Bill Clinton traded verbal shots in a feisty 15-minute exchange with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia on Thursday. Bill Clinton attempted to defend his wife's use of the term super predators and his 1994 crime bill that put more non-violent offenders in prison for longer stays.Watch the video of that confrontation below.

Ted Cruz Bronx school visit canceled after students plan walkout

Malaika Mataba (l.) and Shula Selby helped draft the letter that led to Bronx Lighthouse Charter School to cancel Ted Cruz's appearance Wednesday.

Ted Cruz has gotten a lesson in "New York Values".

Ted Cruz came to New York Wednesday to talk about education. Unfortunately for the republican candidate his idea to use a charter school as a prop didn't go as planned.

Cruz was scheduled to speak at Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy until students wrote a letter to the principal asking her not to let Cruz come, prompting staffers to cancel the appearance.

Read the full text of the students' email below:


Hello Ms. Duggins,

A group of students will be leaving during 4th period, as act of civil disobedience in regards to the arrival of Ted Cruz to BLCPA. We have all considered the consequences of our actions and are willing to accept them. We respect you and all the staff at BLCPA as well as the expected guests. But we want you to understand that as passionate students, we have ideas and principles that should be heard and respected. This walk out isn't a reflection of our discontent with BLCPA but our opportunity to stand up for our community and future. This walk out is taking place because we as students all share a common idea.

The presence of Ted Cruz and the ideas he stands for are offensive. His views are against ours and are actively working to harm us, our community, and the people we love. He is misogynistic, homophobic, and racist. He has used vulgar language, gestures, and profanity directed at a scholar and staff members, along with harassing and posing threats to staff and scholars according to the Disciplinary Referral slip. This is not to be taken kiddingly or as a joke. We are students who feel the need and right to not be passive to such disrespect.

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