Business
Robert Johnson: BET founder to venture into online distribution
Robert Johnson. PHOTO/File
Robert Johnson, the first African American billionaire, has invested in professional basketball teams, real estate, mortgage-backed securities and midsize hotels. Now he is returning to his old stamping grounds: media.
Johnson, the founder of BET, the first cable television network specifically targeted to African Americans, is rolling up a pair of small video firms to form a new publicly traded venture, RLJ Entertainment. The 66-year-old entrepreneur plans to create an online distribution company that syndicates programming, including titles made by producers and directors who have been unable to penetrate the barriers of Hollywood.
“The Internet changes that paradigm,” Johnson said in an interview last week. “The gatekeepers have been, for practical purposes, disassembled. If you can identify and curate the content, there is nothing keeping you from reaching a global audience.”
