M+E Connections

The ongoing efforts by Black Entertainment Television (BET) to empower and measurably impact the Black community have faced and overcome new challenges in 2020 that have been created by the COVID-19 pandemic and ramped-up social justice movement, according to Jeanine D. Liburd, the network’s chief social impact and communications officer.

The ViacomCBS-owned network is focused on empowering, engaging and entertaining the audience, she said, speaking Oct. 7 at the SoCal Women’s Leadership Summit, presented by Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH).

During the afternoon keynote session “Driving Social Impact and Empowering Women of Color in the Media and Tech Worlds,” she discussed how she is working with the network’s corporate communications, social responsibility and events teams to drive change.

Liburd has worked at Viacom about 20 years and took on her social impact role about a year ago, she noted.

She and her team at BET are always thinking about how it can engage the audience in ways that will make their lives better, while focusing on issues that are important to them, she said.

She herself had long been focused on issues in her community and BET has always been focused on what’s happening in the community, including civic justice, police shootings and what can be done to strengthen relationships between communities and the police for many years, she said, noting the network had been reporting on these issues before the social justice movement grew this year.

BET was, therefore, prepared for the various events this year affecting the Black community — as much as it could be anyway amid a pandemic, she said.

The network also tries to make sure that what it’s providing to audiences is what viewers need at any particular moment in time, she said, pointing as an example to the information it felt audiences needed in the early days of the pandemic. What audiences need continually changes and evolves based on where viewers are, she noted. Despite the fact that COVID-19 has been impacting communities of color more than others, that fact was not – at least initially – reflected by what was shown on other networks, she said.

BET attempted to provide information to its core audience on what it could do to prevent getting the virus but, at the same time, it wanted to lift peoples’ spirits and not just focus on all the bleak news of the past several months, she told viewers, explaining the challenge of balancing those needs. The COVID specials shown on TV tended to be very serious initially but BET tried to provide humor in certain pandemic-related programs, she noted.

Of late, the network has been focused on getting out the message to viewers that they should vote early and have a voting plan overall, she went on to say, noting it gets a bit tricky as BET must provide local information to viewers in each market because voting rules change from state to state in the U.S.

Challenges that BET faced in the wake of George Floyd’s death included making sure the 2020 version of its annual BET Awards respected the moment but also uplifted the audience, she pointed out. When it comes to its annual BET Hip Hop Awards, which will be airing Oct. 27, just a few days before the Nov. 3 election, the network is including info on how it can get out and vote, she noted.

For organizations still looking to tackle diversity initiatives, her advice was to look internally at what it could do to make changes, starting with trying to figure out what standout employees you have within the organization who may have been overlooked.

Conduct a survey to figure out what’s happening within your organization among employees and gauge their thoughts about your brand and the work they do, she suggested. Otherwise, an organization may end up creating policies and practices that fall short of dealing with important issues, she warned. She also suggested organizations be open to turning to third parties who are experts at diversity initiatives.

Organizations should also be sure not to rush such initiatives, she warned, suggesting it’s important to take time to be thoughtful in these initiatives.

It is , meanwhile, critical for BET’s team to reflect what’s going on in the world among the various different segments of the population – not just when it comes to race, but also age groups and even within different time zones, she told viewers. Having a diverse range of people within one’s personal life is enormously helpful also, she said.

Liburd concluded by urging viewers to not just vote but also fill out the U.S. Census if they haven’t already.

She was interviewed by Lori H. Schwartz, principal at StoryTech, who noted there was still a lot of education that needs to happen within the industry when it comes to even the words used when trying to be socially aware.