Despite numerous reports, Black Entertainment Television (BET) is no longer be selling to a new owner.
This comes after previous reports posited Group Black, Tyler Perry, Diddy and Byron Allen as competitors who were in the running to purchase the network.
An August 16 report by Wall Street Journal stated that Paramount Global dropped its plans to sell a majority stake in its BET Media Group because ‘a sale wouldn’t result in any meaningful deleveraging of its balance sheet.’
According to the report, bids ranged from around $2 billion to around $3 billion, including Perry’s which was reportedly backed by Ariel Alternatives.
As previously reported by The Wall Street Journal, Perry currently owns a minority stake in the company, which includes BET and VH1, and also produces much of the content available on BET and the streaming service BET+, which he helped launch in 2019.
Perry and BET have been in collaboration for quite some time, as the network helped fund his first feature, 2005’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman. In 2017, Perry inked a long-term film deal with Paramount, with a TV deal that began three years later. The partnership has been a positive experience for Perry, Paramount Global president and CEO Bob Bakish and BET Networks president Scott Mills.
The entertainment mogul has produced several shows for BET, BET+ and Nickelodeon including The Oval, Young Dylan, Sistas, Ruthless, Bruh and Zatima. He has also created projects for Amazon and Netflix; most recently the highly acclaimed A Jazzman’s Blues.