chief executive offier; media executive; sports team owner
Personal Information
Born on April 8, 1946, in Hickory, MS; married Sheila (divorced); married Maxine; children: (first wife) Paige, Brett.
Education: University of Illinois, BA, 1968; Princeton University, MA, 1972.
Memberships: Board member of Cable TV Advertising Bureau and Black College Educational Network; National Cable Television Association (NCTA), board of directors, 1982-84.
Career
Cable television executive. Worked for Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Washington Urban League, and as a press secretary; National Cable TV Association, vice president of government relations, 1976-79; Black Entertainment Television (BET), principal shareholder, 1980-98, founder, chairman, chief executive, 1980-; NBA Charlotte Franchise, owner, 2003-.
Life's Work
"We want a broad audience, but we never want to forget our mandate: to give black audiences a full range of black entertainment and information," Robert L. Johnson, the founder and president of Black Entertainment Television (BET), told Christopher C. Williams in the New York Times. Creator of the first cable network to provide solely black programming, Johnson built his nearly $3 billion company on a format that featured black music videos and comedy as its highlight. After selling the company to Viacom in 2000, Johnson became the first African-American billionaire and set his sights on other ventures such as becoming an owner in the airline industry, authoring books, and owning professional sports teams.
Born on April 8, 1946, in Hickory, Mississippi, Robert Louis Johnson was the ninth of ten children born to the relatively poor Johnson family. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Freeport, Illinois, where Johnson grew up and went to school, supported by his father's job at the battery factory and his mother's part time occupation of switch assembly. Johnson learned early on that education was the only way to succeed, telling the Black Collegian, "Going to college is a statement of your determination to get engaged in being exposed to information and how important knowledge is." Since his family would not have the money to support further education after high school, Johnson worked hard on his studies and earned an academic scholarship to Illinois University where he graduated in 1968 with a bachelor's degree. Not wanting to stop there, Johnson applied to Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and after a long drawn out process was finally admitted to the school for graduate work in 1969. Three years later, he earned a master's degree in public administration, graduating sixth in his class.
Developed Cable for African Americans
Johnson's first employment came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which took him on as a press secretary. He would later rise to the position of public affairs officer in the corporation before moving on to various other jobs relating to politics, including press aide for Washington, D.C. councilman Sterling Tucker and director of communications for the Washington Urban League. Then in 1976 Johnson secured a job that would launch him in the direction of his future, as he became the vice-president of government relations for the National Cable and Television Association.
In 1979 Johnson began to examine the new cable network programming that was available to the public and realized that there were few offerings for African-American viewers. Johnson saw this void in the cable marketplace as a large untapped market, and his solution was to create a new cable network: Black Entertainment Television (BET). Johnson soon found that it was very expensive to start a cable company, and he began securing loans from banks and investors. Finally, after a great deal of work and the securing of many resources, BET went on the air on January 25, 1980, with a two-hour movie called A Visit to the Chief's Son. The initial ratings for the station were low, but Johnson continued to improve the lineup, adding talk shows, sports from traditionally black colleges, and most importantly, music videos in 1982, which he received for free from record companies.
By 1982, after two consecutive years of profit loss, BET could no longer survive without additional support, which it found in a new partner, Taft Broadcasting Company. Then, in 1984, Home Box Office (HBO) added its investment to the slowly growing cable station. The viewership began to grow, more cable companies began to broadcast the station, and by 1989 BET was able to pay back all of its investors and start on the road to profit, even though it was still the smallest network on cable. 1989 was also the first year that the network invested heavily in giving broadcast time to music videos as well, raising the ratings for the network dramatically. Then, in 1991, BET made history as it became the first African-American owned corporation to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's stock quickly rose and Johnson found himself a millionaire media executive by 1992.
Grew, Then Sold BET
Johnson knew that he had to continue to expand his media ownership if he expected the BET company to grow. So he ventured into the print publishing world in 1991 by becoming a major investor in Emerge: Black America's News Magazine, and also began to publish his own magazine, Young Sisters and Brothers (YSB). By 1994 he had also expanded to a different medium by developing a BET radio network that was broadcast on nationwide stations that focused on urban music. While some of these investments would fall by the wayside by the end of the decade, they helped the BET company gain a firmer hold as the premier media provider of entertainment for African Americans.
In 1995 BET had expanded not only its holdings in other media, but the BET television network was also expanding. Added to the music videos, comedy shows, and movies, it started airing public affairs shows, town hall meetings, and a children's literature program. In 1996 BET broke into the premium movie industry by partnering with STARZ to create BET Movies, showing mainly African-American focused movies, both contemporary and classics. Johnson continued to grow his empire in 1998 with BET on Jazz, BET Pictures II and BET Arabesque Films, which produced all original programming and films for the African-American community. Johnson continued to work in the world of print as well with BET Weekend magazine, Heart & Soul magazine, and BET Arabesque Books, the only publisher of African-American romance novels. All of this growth was an effort, Johnson told the Black Collegian, to create, "an environment where young African Americans can become executives with tremendous responsibility and who've been able to generate for themselves significant wealth. The real question is have you created a sense of empowerment and I think that's what we've done at BET."
Near the middle of 1998, Johnson took the BET company and made it private once again and by January of 1999, a deal was made to sell BET to Viacom for $3 billion. Johnson signed a contract with Viacom to remain the CEO and chairman of BET until 2005. The reason behind the merger, according to Johnson in Black Enterprise was that BET needed to "address ways to compete aggressively against large conglomerates--leveraging all of their assets. And we concluded that this was an opportunity for us to align our brand with their brand and have access to the resources they would bring to bear." Many people felt that by allowing BET to be bought by a large corporation, a mainly "white" run operation, that Johnson was giving up on his efforts to produce quality African-American programming in lieu of financial gain. Yet Johnson proved many critics wrong by not only staying on as CEO of the company, but also using Viacom's resources to boost viewership nearly 23 percent the year after BET had been sold. A year later, he came under fire again for being under the Viacom thumb when Tavis Smiley, a popular talk show host on BET, was fired after giving an interview to the American Broadcast Company (ABC) before offering it to BET or to CBS, which is owned by Viacom.
Moved on to Other Interests
Since selling BET Johnson has headed in numerous directions, accomplishing some personal goals while still promoting the African-American community. In 2000 he started a plan to create an airline company called DC Airlines, which would service a regional area around the District of Columbia, and more importantly, be the first airlines to be owned by an African American. The airline itself never got off the ground, being tied up in court proceedings and congressional hearings on the nature of the airline business, but Johnson has hope that in the future he will still be able to get himself into this market.
Even though the airline business seemed to be a dead end for Johnson, he did not let it interfere with the numerous other ventures he had on his plate. In 2001 he separated out restaurants owned by the BET company into a new company in an attempt to revamp and remodel the style, theme, and menu of these restaurants. Johnson hoped to have more hands-on experience with these restaurants as they took on a new direction. Perhaps the most notable of Johnson's achievements, however, was his purchase of the National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina, making Johnson, the first African American to own a major league sports team. This came as a shock to many, for most analysts thought the franchise would be given to long time NBA star Larry Bird, but as Johnson told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, "It's no surprise to me when African-Americans ascend to top positions in corporations or in sports because it's long overdue. It's not only good business, it's morally right." In 2003 he expressed interest in purchasing the Montreal Expos, a baseball team.
While Johnson does believe in hard work and earning what is given, he is also not averse to giving back to the community and programs that helped him to succeed in life. In 2003 he donated $3 million to support the National Underground Railroad Museum, $1 million to support the Jazz Project through the Lincoln Center, and $3.5 million to Denver's National Cable Television Center and Museum. Yet Johnson does not always seek publicity for his donations for as he told the Los Angeles Times, "I don't want to be seen as a hero to younger people. I want to be seen as a good, solid business guy who goes out and does a job, and the job is to build a business."
Awards
Presidential Award, NCTA, 1982; Image Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1982; Pioneer Award, Capitol Press Club, 1984; Business of the Year Award, Washington, DC, Chamber of Commerce, 1985; Humanitarian of the Year, T.J. Martell Foundation, 2002.
Further Reading
Books
- Business Leader Profiles for Students. Vol. 2., Gale Group, 2002.
- Who's Who Among African Americans, 15th Edition, Gale, 2002.
Periodicals- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 28, 2001, p. C1.
- Billboard, June 29, 2002, p. 80.
- Black Collegian, October 2000, pp. 141-142.
- Black Enterprise, January 2001, p. 58; August 2002, p. 24; February 2003, p. 19.
- Forbes, October 8, 2001, pp. 42-44.
- Los Angeles Times, February 21, 2003, p. E-1.
- New York Times, September 17, 1989; September 16, 1991.
- PR Newswire, April 13, 2001; January 14, 2003.
— Marjorie Burgess and Ralph G. Zerbonia
