August 9, 2025
The changes at BET have likely been triggered by the merger of BET’s parent company, Paramount Global, with Skydance Media, according to reports.
Two staple programs that focus on the impact of Black culture, the BET Hip Hop Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards, have been indefinitely suspended, which BET’s CEO, Scott Mills, hinted in comments to Billboard could return via its streaming platform.
According to Rolling Stone, doubts about the future of the Soul Train Awards began to rise in 2024 when the show, which had aired since 1987, was skipped and its social media accounts went silent in March 2024. The BET Hip-Hop Awards are a newer innovation from BET, that awards show, a show that branched out from its BET Awards show, began airing in 2006, and like the Soul Train Awards, has been aired every year by the network.
“So for BET linear, we have suspended the Soul Train and Hip-Hop award shows,” Mills told Billboard. BET linear refers to the programming on the BET channel, the network’s original cable channel. “But we have a team that’s actively thinking about where those award shows might best live as the media climate continues to evolve. They aren’t gone.”
Mills continued, “I would say that it’s less about them being no longer and more about our team having to reimagine them for this changing media landscape that we find ourselves in. I think what we’re going to see are more people taking franchises and saying, ‘This might have started on linear television, but now I’m going to move it to another space. Do I move it to streaming? Or do I move it to another platform?’”
Although Mills believes that the programming will return, he did note that the BET Hip-Hop Awards’ viewership pattern had been trending down since 2001.
“Viewership was down. However, the cable ecosystem is smaller today than it was a year ago. That’s just the reality of it. It was an extraordinary show. And honestly, I attribute the viewership declines less to the declines in the cable ecosystem and more to the fact that we moved the night of the show,” Mills concluded.
According to Billboard‘s reporting, the changes at BET have likely been triggered by the merger of BET’s parent company, Paramount Global, with Skydance Media. Mills avoided any direct comment about BET’s place in Paramount’s future pecking order, but lauded the company’s position as the leading Black media platform.
In a recent episode of their podcast, “Joe and Jada,” rappers Fat Joe and Jadakiss discussed the situation that started in earnest when BET’s founder, Bob Johnson, sold BET to Viacom, ending the network’s long run as a Black-owned company in 2000.
The company was subsequently acquired by Paramount once Viacom was absorbed by Paramount Global, which had looked to sell the company in 2024, but backed out of the buyer’s market after a potential sale of BET was linked to figures like Byron Allen, BET’s CEO himself and a private equity group, and even Sean Combs and Tyler Perry.
“This is a form of gentrification, what’s going on. I don’t know if you really want to ask me about this sh*t,” said Fat Joe, Vibe reported.
He added, “BET came up as a community station for Black people and urban culture. Our man Bob Johnson took the check…he sold it to Viacom Paramount. MTV and them. VH1 and them. Little by little over the years, quietly, they’ve been firing a lot of people behind the scenes at BET, and everybody who has something to say, they been firing them. And I know ’cause I’ve been working on the BET Hip-Hop Awards for three years. Sh*t was like the budget, not for me, but the budget just kept getting chopped and chopped and chopped.”
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