BET indefinitely suspends Hip-Hop, “Soul Train” awards
Comes as new Paramount owner Skydance takes over Thursday
Paramount-owned BET announced on Wednesday that it was “indefinitely suspending” the BET Hip-Hop Awards and The Soul Train Music Awards, as the Black-oriented network is figuring out what to do with them.
“So for BET linear, we have suspended the Soul Train and Hip-Hop award shows”, BET President Scott Mills told Billboard. “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 acknowledged the changing landscape of television as more viewers are cutting the cord due to cable and satellite bills’ continued rise: “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?’”
Ratings for both have declined significantly due to cord-cutting. The rise of streaming has been significant, especially among Black households amid the growing number of choices in the marketplace, including free FAST channels. According to a Nielsen report released in January, Black audiences spend 46 percent of their time watching television streaming content, with YouTube being the top destination, with thirteen percent of total TV time, and reaches 63 percent of Black audiences.
BET does have a streaming service separate from Paramount Plus called BET Plus, but it is sold separately.
Soul Train began as a local show here on WCIU-TV in 1970 hosted by Don Cornelius; a year later, it went into national syndication and saw even greater growth after Chicago-based Tribune Entertainment picked up syndication rights in the mid-1980s, where it aired over WGN-TV and its national superstation starting in 1978. The franchise expanded with the inaugural Soul Train Music Awards in 1987 and the Lady of Soul Train Awards in 1995 and airing through 2005. Soul Train ended original production in 2006, but reruns continued through 2008, a year after Tribune declared bankruptcy and closed its syndication division. After several ownership changes, Paramount’s predecessor Viacom bought the rights in 2016 and the awards show continued, but the last Soul Train Awards show took place in 2023. A writers’ strike and Tribune Entertainment’s closure derailed the 2008 show.
The BET Hip-Hop Awards began in 2006 and was held most recently last October in Las Vegas, hosted by Travis Scott.
While those two are suspended with no timetable for their return, BET plans to continue The Stellar Awards, The NAACP Image Awards, and The BET Awards.
The move comes as Skydance is set to officially take over Paramount Global effective on Thursday, but it isn’t clear if the ownership change has anything to do with the hiatus. Founded in 1980 by Robert Johnson, BET was sold to Viacom in 2000, and throughout much of its existence, the network has been criticized for its programming, including eliminating its news division and airing mostly sitcom reruns stuffed with commercials, a common trait with Paramount’s cable networks. The practice is one of the reasons why cable has lost subscribers.
It’s not known what impact the moves would have on Black artists, who appeared on the award shows. It’s tricky to gauge the impact, given there are so many ways to access content now. But with the loss of these two awards shows, even temporarily, means one less avenue to perform.