#RolandMartinUnfiltered - I'm Not Satisfied: How Corporate America And White-Run Ad Agencies Are Destroying Black-Owned Media

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

3.1.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: I'm Not Satisfied: How Corporate America And White-Run Ad Agencies Are Destroying Black-Owned Media My panel of black-owned ad agencies and media companies join me in deconstructing how corporate America and the white-dominated advertising agencies intentionally and systematically limit, dominate and destroy Black-owned media. We'll look at how the black consumer is targeted and how black-owned media companies have been cheated out of millions of advertising dollars throughout history. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. We talk about how black ad agencies are being frozen out of the money. We'll also show you folks the answers. All these companies that have made commitments to spend with black-owned media, and they're all claiming that they are meeting or exceeding their goals. But where's our money? Something is not right here. So we're going to break this thing down for you on today's show. Trust me, this is one of the most important shows we have ever, ever done. It's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Let's go. Okay, how much time? He's on it, whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling, best believe he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for kicks. He's rolling. It's Uncle Roro, y'all.

It's rolling,' Martin Yeah, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martin Now Martin Martez! All right, folks, you've heard me talk a lot about black owned media, how why black owned media matters and really what we need to do to build this ecosystem. And a couple months ago, when the Tory Lanez trial was taking place, when he was on trial

for shooting Megan Thee Stallion, there were a lot of people who were on social media saying, why isn't black media covering this? Why aren't they on top of this story? And I said, black-owned media can't be there covering the story because we don't have the resources to dedicate to covering a story like that. I've talked to members of Congress, and they say, we come out of our meetings, and CBC members, and we come out of our meetings, and there are no black-owned media out there. And I said, we can't afford to pay somebody $80,000 to $100,000 to be a

congressional correspondent. The fact of the matter is, folks, when you look at most black-owned media today, they're aggregating content. You don't actually have news reporting. You don't have them doing what we do, broadcasting live on the scene when it comes to different things. It's because the advertising ecosystem doesn't reward that. In fact, I've had agencies tell us, oh, no, it's brand safety, brand safety. Brands don't want to be associated with news. Really? So when I'm seeing ads run on MSNBC, well, they give opinion. And I'm seeing ads run on Fox News.

They give an opinion. What is that? See, what they've constructed is a world where black-owned media is pretty much focused on sports, entertainment, gossip, makeup, hair, lifestyle stuff. But even with that, what we're seeing is that that black owned media Is withering on the vine Over the next two hours We're going to break this thing down for you We're going to go historical To what took place

Where John H. Johnson, Ebony Magazine Had to put out a video To teach advertisers How to sell to black people We're going to show you how Ebony Jet Was cheated out of billions of dollars how to sell to black people. We're going to show you how Ebony Jet was cheated out of billions of dollars because of the black tax.

We're going to show you how BET was cheated out of billions of dollars because of the black tax. And what we're also going to do is show you all of these companies and agencies that have made these commitments to spend two and three and four and five and eight percent of their advertising budget. Black on media. How no one wants to put a number to what that is. And so we're going to unpack this thing for you because you need to understand that without advertising dollars

you're dead as a media company media survives off of advertising dollars so some black people say oh man you out here begging disney doesn't have to because they're pulling down seven billion dollars and $9 billion. We can go on and on and on what's happening because right now in the media industry, the upfronts are taking place. And we're going to explain with our experts what the upfronts are. And we're going to show you how in the main upfronts now the secondary ad market in September how we basically are completely frozen out of that and we're left in the scatter

market so we're gonna walk y'all through what all this stuff means so you have an understanding of how corporations and ad agencies want you to keep buying their products, to keep driving their market share, but they in turn do not want to reciprocate and invest in black-owned media, which is a place where you trust your information more than anywhere else. And so we're going to go to a break and we come back again. We're going to walk you through this. And trust me, you're about to get a lesson that a lot of other black-owned media people are scared to tell you.

What do I always say? Black-owned media, we cannot be scared. We cannot be afraid to speak truth to power. Or as Dr. King said, we must maintain our militancy as protest organs informing the public

of what's going on. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, a special edition of this show on the Black Star Network back in a moment. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. You will not. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.

We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this.

Here's all the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is Whitefield. Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network.

I'm Chrisette Michelle. Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. filtered. Y'all have always heard me say if we are not having a money conversation, we're not having an American conversation. All too often, we love to focus on other issues, and I get it. There are so many issues that concern African Americans. Education, mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, housing, you name it. But every eel that impacts the black community goes directly back to the money. How we have been frozen out of corporate America.

How we've been frozen out of corporate America, how we've been frozen out of government contracts. Right now, the federal government spends five hundred and sixty billion dollars a year on contracts and African-American businesses receive one point six seven percent of all federal contracts. In our business, nearly a billion dollars is spent every year on advertising by the federal government. Based upon a GAO study, Journal of Accounting Office, commissioned by Congresswoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, black-owned media got $51 million out of the nearly $1 billion. That means that here we are getting the folks elected, getting Biden and Harris in the White House, and yet the dollars are not coming back to black-owned media. they get in trouble oh they know how to call black on media for help they know to call us to actually cover the event or have an administration official on and so i'm walking y'all through so you can understand how this works. Now, I'm going to give you something that you probably never heard before. So when BET was sold for $3.3 billion, more black millionaires were created as a result

because at one point BET was private. They had gone public. Employees owned stock. And so those who did not sell it back to Bob Johnson when it went back to being private, they made a lot of money when it got sold. But are you aware that BET should have been sold for anywhere from $10 to $12 billion? Let me unpack it. This right here, y'all, is a book by Brett Pulley.

It is called The Billion Dollar Bet, Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of Black Entertainment Television. Now, in this book, he talks about the sale of BET. He talks about the multiple in which they were sold at and the value. But here's something that you may not realize that was in the book. Go ahead and pull it up, y'all. This is what it says. In addition to having the highest profit margins in the business, BET had lots of room for increasing its advertising rates as a standalone black company. BET was never able to demand that advertisers pay rates comparable to the rates that they were paying mainstream companies. All right. At the time of the acquisition,

MTV, which reached 70 million households, was selling a 30-second ad for $8,000. BET, with just 8 million fewer households, was selling the same amount of ad time for a mere $1,500. Quote, BET has been pricing itself at a discount to VH1 and MTV, according to Mel Karmazin, who was the CEO of Viacom. This is where Mel Karmazin was wrong.

See, he said that bet was pricing itself wrong no the industry was refusing to pay bet its fair value because they let me be real clear corporate corporate America and ad agencies do not value black consumers as much as they value white consumers. Because of the inequality of income, white corporations and largely white ad agencies, they want to appeal more to white consumers than black consumers. So do the math. $1,500, $8,000. So if BET was able to get $8,000 versus the $1,500, that means BET would have been worth four times more than what it was sold.

It was sold for $3.3 billion. So imagine if BET had always been treated fairly by corporate America and the agencies and gotten its fair share, that means that Bob and Sheila Johnson could have actually retained majority ownership of BET by selling the company for anywhere between $10 and $12 billion, which means that if they chose to sell 25% of the company, that was $3 billion. They could have literally, I need y'all to follow me here. BET, Bob and Sheila Johnson, who are the co-founders of BET, could have literally sold BET or 25% of BET for the same amount of money they sold the entire

company but they couldn't because BET was being cheated out of the money the entire time. Because the agencies and the corporations

did not fully value the black consumer. Now, you might sit here and say, well, that's BET. The exact same thing happened at Ebony magazine. Oh, I know. Oh, my goodness. John H. Johnson. He was on the Forbes list as one of the 400 richest Americans.

Ebony should have been a billion dollar company. It never was. Do you know why? Because Ebony was being paid sometimes 10 times less for a full page ad than GQ or Esquire was being paid because the same agencies and the same companies did not

value the black consumer at Ebony like they did the white consumer at GQ or Esquire. And that is one of the reasons why when John H. Johnson died, the company was in such a difficult situation and they had financial problems and then got sold because they had been cheated out of their fair share for all of those years. We're going to further unpack this because, folks, it is still happening. The loopholes that we in black-owned media are made to jump through, other white companies don't have to do that. When we come back, I'm going to have my panel here.

And I'm going to tell you all about a company that was launched during COVID that raised nearly $2 billion. and they sold out $150 million of their ad inventory, and they never had any metrics or numbers to prove it was a smart plan. The ad community just gave this company $150 million. And Black-owned media, we're always been told, prove your numbers, show us you're legitimate. But this company that lasted six months, got $150 million before they ever opened their doors.

I'm gonna break it down. You're watching this special edition $60 million before they ever opened their doors. I'm gonna break it down. You're watching this special edition of Roller Barker Unfiltered on the Black Star Network back in a moment. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach. The wealth gap has literally not changed in over 50 years, according to the Federal Reserve. On the next Get Wealthy, I'm excited to chat with Jim Castleberry, CEO of Known Holdings. They have created a platform, an ecosystem, to bring resources to Blacks and people of color so they can scale their business.

Even though we've had several examples of African Americans and other people of color being able to be successful, we still aren't seeing the mass level of us being lifted up. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push black people if they're doing a certain thing.

What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle. But when someone comes around and is making other,

oh, we don't, you know, they don't wanna push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ball they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix, too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't got to be a rapper. You don't got to be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer. You can be an opera singer. You can be a damn whatever, you know, showing the different avenues. And that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does it. I'm Bill Duke. This is DeOlla Riddle, and you're watching

Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Stay woke. All right, folks, welcome back. So this is a mural that I have in my office here at our Black Start Network offices here on 63K on Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C. And so I had this done by a Kenan Whiteout graphics designer because this is this is what is owed to black owned media. And so what you see on here, you see, folks, all of these black owned media properties. You see TV one. You see Ebony. You see Black Enterprise. We've got Essence. We've got Jet Emerge. We've got Ida B. Wells Barnett newspaper. We've got all these black Negro Digest. That's that's over here. We've got all these different black media outlets because this is the foundation to why we are here today.

The first black television station, the first black on radio station. We have all of them on this mural. And that's why we did that. one of these companies has never gotten their fair compensation because of how corporate America and agencies, largely white run and white controlled, have completely devalued the black customer. And we're made to jump through hoops. We're made to prove ourselves to get crumbs when others get millions. How many of y'all remember this company here, Quibi?

Jeffrey Katzenberg worked at Disney and also Meg Whitman, who was, of course, the CEO of eBay. They were leaders of Quibi. Went out and raised nearly $2 billion. This was supposed to be a new app that was going to revolutionize the entertainment industry. Before they launched,

all of these corporations gave them ad commitments. Come on, guys. Look at the graphic. All of these companies. Okay? Before they opened their doors, $150 million

was committed by Discover, General Mills, T-Mobile, Taco Bell, P&G, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, Abinbev, Walmart, Progressive, Google, Anheuser-Busch.

Let me be real clear. Leave the graphic right there. They didn't have to prove anything. They had no numbers. They had no research. They had no data. They literally had nothing. They had no data. They literally had nothing. They had nothing. They gave them

the money on the strength of, oh, it's Jeffrey Katzenberg. He can do no wrong. It's Meg Whitman. Oh, she could do no wrong. Oh my goodness. They sold out of their ad inventory before they even launched. Y'all, Quibi lasted six months before they shut down. Do you think they gave the money back? Uh-uh. I don't think so.

I'm bringing my panel right now. Joining me is Todd Brown, founder of Urban Edge Network, Clifford Franklin, CEO of Fuse Advertising out of St. Louis, and also Randy Bryant, diversity and inclusion strategist, speaker, trainer, and writer. Clifford, I'm starting this way because I want to give people, again, a well-rounded understanding of what we're dealing with here, what we're dealing with in terms of this industry and how black-owned media is dismissed, how we are relegated to getting crumbs, and then folk expect us to be excited and treat the crumbs as if it's a whole meal. And I use the example of BET because that literally the cheating BET out of his ad

dollars cheated black America, the black people who own stock in that company, cheated them and their families out of millions and billions because of racism, you know, at the top of the at the top of the food chain. It is so important that we continue to push and fight. As you know, Fuse, we've been around since 1997 and we've been in this fight. aggregate all of the media with these holding companies, it pretty much left it to the device of the major ad agencies to pick and choose where they wanted to spend media. When we were controlling media budgets, money was going to black media outlets. It still was kibbles and bits. It was still crumbs, but we at least had a level of control over what people were able to buy. So now we're in a situation where even when you look at political advertising, the same general, the so-called general consultants who lose election cycle after election cycle get all of the media dollars. Very little goes to the

media outlets. And again, they depend on the black vote. So this continues to be a problem. We're going to continue to keep fighting. But this is just something that, you know, until I guess our consumers say we're going to stop pushing for you, we're going to stop voting for you. They'll keep doing it. But in the meantime, they know that they're going to come and depend on us and we're going to bail them out every time. And when you say we, you're talking about black ad agencies. And so we've seen many of those folks go out of business. Many have to sell to mainstream companies to even stay in business. They're not independently owned businesses. Todd, I talked about Black Enterprise. I also mentioned Ebony.

You ran Ebony. You ran Jet. Walk people through the difference between what Ebony was getting for full-page ads and what they were paying GQ and Esquire when Ebony was much larger. Yeah, thank you, Roland, for having me on the show. And I was the chief revenue officer, EVP, and group publisher of Ebony and Jet for about three years. And our average page rate when I got there was in the $20K range for Ebony and was in the $6,000 to $7,000 range for Jet. Both of the distribution level of those magazines were $700,000 for Jet and $1.2 million for Ebony. And what that really means is how many people were paying to receive the magazine. The trick in Ebony and Jet is it's

not just the people that receive the magazine, but those magazines last sometimes months, even years in their readership. So we were averaging about 10 million in readership. The short answer is like magazines on the print side was getting 5X what we were getting at a minimum, and some were getting 10X. For the same distribution, and the black consumer had a higher propensity not only to read and recall, but to take an action because of those ads. So the same percentage, when I finished the math, and you haven't said this out loud, 78% discount versus market was the general trend that I observed. And not only that, Roland, we had the lowest volume. So we had to fight and beg for a page, and then we got the smallest rate and the smallest number of pages. Which means you couldn't hire additional people.

You couldn't grow. You couldn't build. You couldn't build. You could not market the magazine of the places. So in many ways, you were fighting to survive as opposed to thrive. The only part I would add to that, Roland, is it was not only begging to get basic rates. Then we wouldn't get paid for sometimes up to six to nine months after we actually printed and distributed the magazine, which was costly on the production side, which was costly on the mailing side, not to mention the woes that we had around successfully

and consistently paying our direct staff and our contractors, which were all their writing and that piece was outsourced. So it's a going-out-of-business strategy by a slow stranglehold where you have to leverage everything, which leads you to selling off your assets, which ultimately led to us having to sell off the entire package brand after I left pretty quickly. It's a going-out-of-business strategy. See, very interesting. I was just looking at the YouTube channel there, Randy, and somebody said, oh, Bob Johnson selling BET was the worst thing for our culture. First of all, you didn't build the business.

Bob and Sheila sacrificed to build the business. But the point I'm making to people, if Bob and Sheila Johnson got fair market value for BET, they could have still owned BET and made $3 billion and be just like Sherry Redstone, whose daddy, Sumner Redstone, owned Viacom. He first owned an amusement company, and then they bought Viacom. And so the same reason how Rupert Murdoch and his family owned Fox for a number of for decades before selling it for 70 billion dollars to Disney. See, all these people, I'm trying to get them to understand when we are frozen out of distribution, frozen out of the ad dollars, when we do sell, we can't sell it for what is actually what we should be selling it for.

We're selling it for a fraction. So therefore, we're then caught in this paradox. And this is the problem when we are, frankly, cheated out of resources. And it is pure racism how we are treated by corporate America and these agencies for decades, and there's no doubt about it. There absolutely is no doubt. We've proven it time and time again. The numbers that you've already shown people today just shows how we've proven that we are successful, that we're needed, that people want us, that they should advertise with us, but they're not giving us the money. And the only answer can be that it's racism.

I think the comment that came in on YouTube that said that that was the worst mistake that Johnson made when he sold it really lends into this attitude that when black people are in business, or that black media is somehow a social justice experiment only or it's charity. Black people want to make money as well. We are business people. We need economic growth in order to survive and thrive. And so that attitude really doesn't push us forward. Anyone who was building something as major as BET did, was, deserves to be paid fairly, as these other organizations are, but we're not. And that continues. It has long-term effects on us as a people when we're not paid fairly. And what folks don't understand, when you devalue Black-owned media, when you do not do proper investment, that limits

us to be able to not just hire, but also to give. It limits us from being able to create generational wealth. That's one of the reasons why you don't see multiple generations owning black-owned media properties because, frankly, they go out of business. And they're still struggling. Look, Black Enterprise is not really a magazine. They're an event company. Bush Braden said it.

He said without the summits, the workshops, and the conferences they do, Black Enterprise would not be in business. Essence Magazine, 90% of Essence Communications money comes from the Essence Festival. 90%. Y'all, Disney does not make 90% of its money from a festival. Comcast does not make 90% of its money from a festival. I can run down all the major media companies and they do not make their money from festivals, award shows, receptions, and events.

They make it from advertising. And what we are forced to do, we are forced to have to put on a party, a reception, hand awards out, spend a lot of time and energy and money on an event with a low profit margin when these other companies, these white-meaning companies, oh, they're running ads.

They're pushing a button. They're not spending energy, time, and money on events and parties. So this system that has been set up is designed to lock us out, and all too often, we're combating black folks who are working in these companies and agencies who literally are defending a situation that they know is wrong. When we come back, Todd's going to share a story with you where a black and African American executive in an agency laid out to him and his business partner exactly how the agencies purposely frustrate us to keep us from being able to tap into the dollars, hoping we'll go away and give up.

I'm gonna also share a couple of stories on what I've had to experience in dealing with agencies, even when the company says, we're gonna do business with Roland. Later in the show, we also going to lay out to you these commitments that many companies and agencies announced a couple of years ago when we put pressure on them

to target money to black owned media. I'm gonna share with you what they responded to me but how well they're doing. Problem is, I don't see all the money. You're watching a special edition of Roller Marker Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. We'll be right back. we have now. We have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned

media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? Next, on The Black Table, with me, Greg Carr. We featured the brand new work of Professor Angie Porter,

which, simply put, is a revolutionary reframing of the African experience in this country. It's the one legal article everyone, and I mean everyone, should read. Professor Porter and Dr. Valetia Watkins, our legal roundtable team, join us to explore the paper that I guarantee is going to prompt a major aha moment in our culture. You crystallize it by saying, who are we to other people? Who are African people to others? Governance is our thing. Who are we to each other? The structures we create for ourselves, how we order the universe as African people. That's next on The Black Table, here on The Black Star Network. What's up, y'all? I'm Will Packer.

Hello, I'm Bishop T.D. James. What's up, Lana Well, and you are watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to Roller Martin Unfiltered. As we do this deconstruction of the media business and how black-owned media is pretty much starved of resources, even though black consumers over-index on the products of many of these companies. Cliff Franklin with Refuse Advertises with me, Todd Brown, Urban Edge Network, Randy Bryant, a DEI specialist trainer is here as well. So Todd, I want you to share this story. I know Cliff has a thousand of these stories as well. And want you and Cliff, I want you to share the one on the political side.

But Todd, there was a black executive of an agency who told you and your co-founder, Hardy Pelt. Oh, no, no, no. The game is to frustrate you. So you give up. Yeah, there's a couple of stories there, Roland. The one that I think is most telling is the conversation starts with an idea around diversity, equity, bring their social justice person, and they start talking about all of the attribution they have around connecting and partying with Black people. But the conversation we got into is that we are a real media company. We're delivering spots and dots. We're delivering the analytics. We're delivering the reporting. And we can also help you reach that customer in the markets that we serve. So what I always say, Roland, first is they want to make sure that we're brand safe. They use that word on you a lot. And as people

know, I represent you in the marketplace because they're afraid of sort of that black, hard truth telling, whether it's BLM or your show or others. But the dialogue that we're in mostly is about HBCUs and the markets that we serve. And then they come to us and start asking us specifically about our ability to deliver media on our specific site and through ad extensions, and can we do the reporting? And like I said earlier, once we go through that process, we're pummeled with no less than 25 to 30 emails about every specification around that delivery. And then at the end of it, they say, oh, by the way, Todd, I wish you would have done something different in the pacing. You would have

done something different in analytics. And we say, we delivered against the brief. We delivered against the analytics. We delivered against the reporting. And we gave you an executive summary. And if you would have told us that in advance, we would have had an opportunity to not only delight you, but get more of your share. Didn't you have one major automaker want you to demonstrate what system you use to run your ads, and

it's the same system they use? Yeah, we were asked to demonstrate DV360, because we're a premier ad network, and they have multiple articles through their agency where they're applying and using the same technology from Google to distribute ads on the buy side, on the sell side, and do ad placement. So it's now a hindrance where they wanted to actually have us demonstrate the keystrokes

as a hindrance to doing business with us. But the long and short of it, Roel, is we bring solutions to the table, and what we get back is pummeling of questions. And we even had agencies say, I want you to do the other distraction that you haven't talked about, which is, I want you to do creative stuff for me, because they're real good at hiring Black people to do creative. That's not media where the bulk of the money is, but it also comes with hooks that require you to distribute media later and pay for the production. Or they'll pay you to capture your content and then run it on someone else's platform

where the money's being made. And this is consistently across five to six of the major holding companies and the brand specifically. And the lion's share of the money we get is from the relationships that I've cultivated through the ELC, which I've been a member for almost 15 years, where one or two black executives take a chance and mandate that they do business

with us. And then the fight is to stop doing business and stop us from having those kind of relationships because the process is set up for us to go out of business. Randy, I've given speeches where I've said to people, I'm not doing a meeting with the DEI person. Right.

Because the DEI person and the foundation person, I guarantee you when Discovery, Warner Brothers, or Disney, or Comcast, when they are negotiating the upfronts, they are not meeting with the DEI person or the foundation person. They're meeting with the CMO. But they literally bring in, I mean, we've been in meetings where they'll introduce, and I'm like, why am I talking to the person running your company foundation? I ain't here for a grant. As a former DEI executive, what I was going to say is I would have had no business in that meeting, the type of meetings that he is discussing, because that's business. And this is my point. Companies see us as social justice, as something that they're doing as a favor to us instead of as charity, instead of respecting us as businesses, as saying this is a business move that we need to do. We need to reach black audiences. We need to reach that $1.6 trillion that we spend per year. But they don't see it as that.

They say, oh, this is us. We have this great corporation. And let us peel off a little bit as charity for these black organizations. But the same black consumers driving their market share. Absolutely driving their market share. They need us. Cliff, you've seen this in the political advertising dealing with these campaigns, especially on the Democratic side. Black women are the highest vote turnout folks for Democrats. Black men are number

two. Yet you have to deal with white ad agencies and white consultants who talk down to you and then want to offer pennies to reach black folks where you're going, but when y'all in trouble, then they were blowing your phone up. Can you quickly get this money out? Same thing happens on the political advertising side that we see in the general advertising market. Correct. Roland, I mean, when you're going to talk about horror stories, you know, on the most historic campaign, which was a well-run campaign. And it was actually some good people on the Obama campaign.

So I want to start by saying I worked with some really good people. But it was interesting. When it was time for budgets, it was a battleground strategy for 12 states. We put together rings of data to justify what we needed for budget consideration and our data came back saying that we needed 26 million dollars they came back with a budget of 10 million I said okay well here's my data for how I can justify 26 million how can you justify the 10 million one of the black executives on the campaign said well this is the most money anybody's ever gotten on a political campaign I

said well he's raised more money than anybody has on a political campaign. So should we get the budget consideration based on the data? And we basically got what was left. And that's what we have to deal with. Even when you look at the congressional and the senatorial campaign committees, the general consultants don't have to go through an RFP process, but all of the black consultants have to go through a sham RFP process. And then they'll pick one that, you know, they've decided they want to handle some of the black media, which is still going to be a very small portion. So this goes on and on every election cycle. I've been doing national political campaigns since 2004 and every cycle.

It's been that way. But note, the last time we've had a national campaign manager, I believe, was the Al Gore's campaign, and that was Donald Brazil. We haven't had a national campaign, black campaign manager, or anybody of a finance or budget in these campaigns. So the same general consultants who eat every election cycle will continue to eat. Now, we're hoping that that changes because there's been a change in the guard with the DCCC. So we hope that there will be, you know, some better opportunities coming up in 2024. But we know we've got a battle on our hands. I call you every election cycle at the last minute with a few crumbs saying, Roland,

can you put this up on behalf of the client? I don't even ask you what metrics you're going to give me back. I just know I need to give you some money, just like I do the other black media outlets. That's exactly what happens. And folks need to understand, this is across the board, folks. This is numerous companies. I can tell you point blank, I had one company that said, we're doing business with Roland. It was a great deal. They said, get hooked up with the agency just for the purpose of getting paid. Well, the agency starts asking me questions. So I answer the question once, and then they

send a second question. Then they answer it again. I said, well, by the third time, I said, what the hell? Am I being vetted again? So I call the client. The client's like, who the hell is this person named Molly? And so they then get on a call the next day, and what ends up happening? They say, so Molly goes, well, are you all aware that he has a segment on his show called Crazy Ass White People?

And the executive said, am I on it? And said, we're doing the deal with Roland. That's how the deal got done. But the agency blocked it. I had another agency very recently that was like, oh, this company wanted to do a campaign quickly. This agency, well, no, our process takes a very long time. And I'm like, your client wants to do the deal. Folks, here's what we have been telling major corporations. It's your money. It's not the agency's money. They should not be controlling

your dollars. That's why we go direct to companies. That's why when Byron Allen sued, he said, I'm ignoring the agencies because if the only way we as Black-owned media are going to move forward is if we put pressure directly on the companies

to spend money with us and bypass these agencies because the games that they play and the hoops they make us jump through are an abomination. And here's the other problem. Most black owned media, they are not me. I'm not even Urban One or Black Enterprise or Essence. And I know that most of these other smaller people, they can't even get in the door. Their emails don't even get returned. So I know what they're dealing with.

Folks, this is how we stay broke. This is how we stay small. This is how we are unable to build major black-owned media institutions because they basically have imposed how we are unable to build major black-owned media institutions because they basically have imposed economic apartheid against us. And then it's like, oh, we'll do 1% and 2%.

When I come back, we're going to talk about that 1% or 2% thing. And let me show you, when we talk about numbers, what that looks like. You're watching a special edition of Rolling Mark Mark Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We featured the brand new work of Professor Angie Porter, which simply put, is a revolutionary reframing of the African experience in this country. It's the one legal article everyone, and I mean everyone, should read. Professor Porter and Dr. Vletia Watkins, our legal roundtable team, join us to explore the paper that I guarantee is going to prompt a major

aha moment in our culture. You crystallize it by saying, who are we to other people? Who are African people to others? Governance is our thing. Who are we to each other? The structures we create for ourselves, how we order the universe as African people. That's next on The Black Table, here on The Black Star Network. A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push Black people if they're doing

a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle. But when someone comes around and is making other, oh, we don't, you know, they don't wanna push it

or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't gotta be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize that it's possible

until someone does it. Hi, my name is Latoya Luckett. Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Black-ish, and you're watching... Roland Martin, unfiltered. Stay woke. All right, folks, welcome back to Rolling Rock Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. It was a couple of years ago when those of us in black-owned media, we began to make lots of noise, making demands that these companies spend their dollars with black-owned media. Well, as a result, you begin to see announcements made. Here was an example here where one of the largest agencies, Group M, announced that 20 companies committed to spend at least 2% of their total annual media budget in black-owned media through their media inclusion initiative.

And so Group M, of course, is owned by WPP. That's the holding company. And so, those companies, AARP, in fact, y'all may not realize this, if AARP, if they broke out their black membership as a standalone organization,

they would be the largest black organization in America. More than 2 million. So, you got AARP, Adidas, Citizens, Danone, DoorDash, Ferrara, General Meals, that's cereal, y'all, L'Oreal USA, Mars, Candy, MGA Entertainment, Minscon America, maker of Ragu, Nestle, No. 7 Beauty Company, Pernod Ricard, PharmaVite, maker of Nature Made vitamins and supplements, Ring, Target, Tyson Foods, Uber, and WW International Weight Watchers. Folks,

you're talking about significant amount, number of brands there. But some of the brands talked about they were going to be doing, let's say, upwards of 5%. Well, the folks at Group M said that they, there are more companies that have actually signed on. They've actually exceeded their goals. But it was interesting. I reached out. So same thing. So you take publicists.

They made some announcements as well what they were doing. And so I emailed them, and they talked about how great things were going. And in one of the emails that I received from Lisa Torres, she talked about the work that they're doing with HBCUs and Aspire TV. I responded back, Lisa, Aspire is not black-owned. They're black-targeted, okay? And so I reached out to them. Again, IPG, their major company, they announced the same thing, that, oh, right here, IPG Media Brands commits to, let's see here, commits to invest at least 5% in black-owned media

by 2023. Where's the money? And so, y'all, where's the money? I keep hearing 2% and 4% and 5%. Where's the money? All of these different companies, Coca-Cola and McDonald's, I can go on and on and on. Folks made announcements. And so what I did was, again, I sent emails out to a number of different people and they got back to me with regards to that. And let's say, for instance, the statement from Target. This is the, let me see if I can go. Okay. So I don't want to, let's see here. I don't want to show email. I'm just going to read. Don't show my iPad.

In 2021, we pledge, this is Target, we pledge to spend 5% of our annual media budget with black-owned media companies. By the end of 2022, we exceeded that goal and forged successful partnerships with black-owned media platforms, including Revolt and Essence, and with publishers in the Twin Cities area, among others. We recognize the responsibility we have to use our size and scale to have a positive impact on our guests and the communities where we do business. Our commitment to supporting Black-owned media companies allow us to reach our guests through platforms that are hyper-relevant to them and to be a catalyst for change in the media industry. We remain committed to our industry-leading players to spend 5% of our annual media budget with black-owned media companies. I then responded, what's your annual media budget? Let's track the number. They said, we don't divulge that. I'm like, okay, well, how do you measure it? Are you spending $2 billion on marketing and advertising?

What does 5% look like? Okay, same thing. Other companies, Group M, Publicis, IPG, all these companies are literally responding to me saying, hey, we can't reveal the numbers. Here's the deal. We've been getting screwed for all these years. I'm supposed to now trust that y'all are hitting your numbers?

Here's the deal. All of these companies and ad agencies got lots of attention when they made their announcements. Let me tell y'all what I told General Motors. I don't praise you for announcements. I'll praise you for direct deposits. And that right here is a fundamental problem. And so what I've said to every single one of these companies, be transparent. for direct deposits. And that right here is a fundamental problem. And so what I've said to every single one of these companies,

be transparent, because here's the deal, Todd, Cliff, Randy, we also joined by Melanie Spann Cooper, owner of the only black owned radio station in Chicago, WVON. If the companies called me and said, Roland, where's your data? Where are your metrics? I gotta show them.

So they want us to believe every single company I've emailed, Melody, has said they've exceeded their goals of 2%, 4%, and 5%. I'm trying to figure out where the money at. Get them, Uncle Roro, get them. I'm trying to find out where the money is, too. I would love for you to put that graphic up from a group in because they committed to 20.

Was that 20 brands? Look at there. There were 20 brands, and I'm told there are more than 20. Some will remain private. Go ahead. So I would like to use my company as an example. I'm in the third largest market, right? So there would seem that I would at least, after two years, have at least half this list, right,

with the money that they've spent over the two years of that commitment, right? I see one client that has reached us. And quite frankly, we had them before, which is AARP. So I'm wondering, these agencies have so many people working in them, doing so many different things. The brand manager, I mean, all these incredible titles. You've got that many people working for you, and in two years, you cannot figure out how to reach

a legacy company in the third largest market with at least half those brands? Come on now. Come on. When we started this after George Floyd, right, i i asked everyone is this a moment or movement for you yep is this a moment or is this a movement right now i'm not going to sit here and tell you that my numbers are not up they are up right but with the people who came to

the table and the number of commitments that were made, I should at least, my business should have increased threefold, fourfold. And I can't tell you that it's, that has happened. Yep. Look, right. I really appreciate this conversation. I'm going to show you this right here. All right. So Walmart put out this statement, May 21st, 2021 from their CMO, William White.

And this this is what it says. We're committed. We're committing to deeper and longer term relationships with minority owned media partners. In particular, we will spend at minimum two percent of our total budget with black owned media businesses this year and 4% next year. And that figure will continue to grow. Okay, so when I'm reading this story and I'm going through the numbers here, I saw $100 million, $200 million. So I'll start going, okay, well, who's getting it? I'm going to tell you all right now. We have been meeting with various Walmart agencies for two years.

I swear, Todd knows this, it's a new group every other month. We started with Walmart, then they told us to go to Publisys. Then we went to another unit in Publisys. Then another unit in Publisys. We talked to them about our Juneteenth initiatives, our Black History Month initiatives, went through the whole deal. Zero. Now, here's the deal. There is no other black-owned media outlet that has a 24-hour news channel. We're the only one. We're the only one who literally

is doing a daily digital show and has five other shows. So I'm like you, Melanie. I'm trying to figure out where the money at. And hold up, hold up. That list, put it up again. The only, so the only money we got from all of those clients is from Target. That did not come from the agency. That's because I was hitting

Laysha Ward directly at Target and the relationship. Todd, you know this too, in that y'all have a situation, so the agencies aren't necessarily giving us dollars, it's the clients telling them you're going to give them money. Todd, go ahead.

So, what's interesting, and I don't want to make this about Group M, and we know that Group M formed a relationship. I'm going for everybody. They formed a relationship with Carlos Edosi. They formed a relationship with Group Black. They have a strategy of partnering with

who they've decided was Black-owned media. We see them do a lot of work in the creative side. We also see some action at Dentsu, where they actually did some really positive things by paying us in 30 days. And the work that we have with Group M and others, they just told us the average receivable was 120 days. The three accounts we have there, Walgreens, CDW, and Target,

came from relationships that we formed. So by and large, what I find, Roland, is that this used to be a conversation with a bunch of key strategic white executives. Now it's a conversation with the black handlers who are there to tell us no to make sure that no money gets into the black coffers relative to media. So it's not about performance. It's not about delivery. And I like what my friend Byron likes to say. If the number is 13, 14 percent of the country and you owe us from actually putting us in economic genocide for the last 75 years of media, then we should be looking at 15 percent. So we stick to small numbers and we don't come anywhere near them. And we're in businesses, Roland, that is a data business. This is what these companies do for a living.

They measure everything except this. When I look across the board, I know this is a problem managed by black people to black people. And when there's black executives at the top, I get the most nervous because I know I'm getting nothing but another bunch of meetings. And I'll tell you this here. So Coca-Cola responded saying, as a matter of company policy, we do not share specific numbers around our media spend. However, we are on track to meet our commitment of having our black, Hispanic and Asian-American and Pacific Islander owned media companies account for 8 percent of our total annual media budget in North America by 2024. The diverse owned media company commitment is part of our larger plan towards a more evolved and inclusive approach supporting minority owned media companies and partners. The 500 million over five years is part of our plan to increase spending the black owned enterprises across our supply chain.

Now, I can say this here. Out of all the companies, we've actually gotten more money from Coca-Cola than anybody else. But not the agency. That's by going direct to Coca-Cola than anybody else, but not the agency. That's by going direct to Coca-Cola. And now, so we got money from Coca-Cola in 2021, 2022. So far, 2023, nothing has been budgeted. And so I'm still meeting with them. But that's the other piece as well. In order for how the game works, you need multi-year commitments.

Todd, you mentioned Dentsu. Dentsu, you mentioned Ozy. Dentsu had a three-year partnership with Ozy, a three-year partnership. So if somebody tells me, oh, we don't do multi-year deals, what the hell was that three-year partnership with Ozy, which we now know was fraudulent numbers from Carlos Watson. So what I'm trying to get people to understand, everybody who's watching,

when you also do a multi-year commitment, I now can hire people over the next year because I'm projecting my revenue. If you come to me, I told General Motors this, I'm not happy with a single

year allocation. I appreciate what we got last year. I'm looking for a multi-year partnership and commitment because now I can project my revenue and build my staff and grow my staff as opposed to, damn, new year,

oh, let's see what the hell comes in and now I'm in survival mode. Well, I keep telling y'all, I tired of black on media being in survival mode versus thriving mode. And that's why we're having this conversation. So I'm going to go to a break. We're going to come back, pick up this as well. I'm going to share some more responses I've gotten from these agencies and companies where everybody said they meet their goals. Don't nobody want to release no numbers, though. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn minds there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital we're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash.

This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives.

And we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Gavin Houston. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore, and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. Eee! So, folks, this was a response I got from McDonald's that they said, we increased our total U.S. system-wide advertising investment ambition to 15% with diverse-owned media by the end of 2024. Said in 2022, increased our investment with several black-owned media partners, including Essence Ventures, Blavity, Revolt, Pot, Digital, and others,

and also entered a multi-year endeavors with three black owned media companies to help scale and sustain their businesses long term also developed a diversity you can go ahead and show this you can go to show it developed a diversity marketing advisory council uh comprised of seven executives of diverse owned media organizations including three black executives. That's from McDonald's. I read you Coca-Cola. Again, I'm going to read you in a second. Procter & Gamble. Before I do that, Randy, you wanted to say something because you as a DEI expert, you're listening to the language in these statements. Right. I mean, just the language that is used saying responsibility. We have a responsibility to do this work. It's not a responsibility. It's a business decision. If black consumers are spending the money we are, $1.6 trillion per year, it makes sense that advertisers would advertise with black media. And really the question should be, why does it have to be this big

conversation, this big push, these initiatives? Why are they talking about what they're going to do after George Floyd was murdered? Right? As if, again, it's a social justice issue and not an issue of business. Cliff Procter and Gamble said, y'all can go to my iPad. We doubled our Black-owned media span from 2021 to 2122. We're on track to double it again from 2122 to 2223. Laid out the things that they have sponsored. They mentioned the various different platforms, Black Enterprise, Ebony, Essence, TV One, Urban One, National Association of Black-owned Broadcasters, Bounce, Black Doctor, Upscale, AUR, and more. I didn't say Blackstar Network there.

And then, of course, there's other different events. But I'm going back to the basic thing here, Cliff. It's a numbers game and it's a PR game. This is what I mean because this is just not just – this is all the different companies. Nobody wants to say what the 2% represents. Well, that's right. Because if you're spending a billion dollars on advertising and you're promising 2%, that means black-owned media should be getting $20 million.

If you're spending $3 billion, I'll give you a perfect example, Cliff. We have been meeting with PepsiCo. Guys, pull the Quibi graphic up, okay? This is a perfect example. These are some of the 25 advertisers that gave Quibi $150 million and bought out their entire inventory. Before they even launched. Before they even pressed go. PepsiCo is one of them.

We have been meeting with PepsiCo for two years. I sent an email, a tweet to one of the board members, and then they responded. John Banner, who's now left to go to McDonald's. We've had multiple meetings. Nothing. Nothing. Now, here's the deal.

I know black folks drink Pepsi. Pepsi can't say, oh, Roland's not brand safe. when I've done three years with a deal with Coca-Cola. Your partner, Pepsi and Coke do have pouring rights to deal with HBCUs. And so I'm sitting here, I got to ask the question, PepsiCo, how do you give Quibi money with no metrics, no data. I got four years of data. Four years. Black folks, they know my connection with black people. And literally, nothing so far.

And not only this year. Because I need people to understand numbers. The National Urban League, and Mark Morial was on here, I told him about it, has an initiative with Pepsi Foundation to stand up black restaurants. It's a five-year initiative, $10 million. PepsiCo has an initiative to drive $100 million in receipts to black-owned restaurants over five years.

The problem is, you can't measure it. There's no promo code. Who told me that? One of the black restaurant folks on the committee. Now, imagine if PepsiCo, I'm going to go to you next, Melanie. Imagine if PepsiCo said, we're going to spend, we're going to do

5% of our marketing budget with black-owned media. Based upon our research, PepsiCo spends about $3 billion a year on marketing. That's $150 million. That means over five years, black-owned media will get $750 million which one is bigger?

the five ten year $1 million initiative with the Urban League $100 million in receipts to black restaurants or the $750 million those are game changing numbers Cliff then Melody that's what we're talking about here

that's creasing the multiple, allowing us to build, not remaining small. Cliff? So, Roland, whenever I'm out pitching GFN TV and we're growing streaming video network, I use the Quibi example, and everybody gets uncomfortable, but I open up the meeting with the Quibi example just so they'll know that I know. So, I know what they're capable know. So I know what they're capable of doing. I know what they want to do. That's why this is called a media investment. When you can enter into a long-term partnership with a platform, it allows for our platforms to scale. So they were going to make basically a media investment in Quibi, and Quibi failed.

They could make a long-term investment in your platform, in my platform, in others, and allow us who have proven track records, who have data, who have been around for a number of years now, to do the same thing and make that investment. So as I'm pitching in now, I'm going beyond spots and dots. Yes, we have data. We have global data because we're a global fusion network. But beyond that, I'm pitching the fact that you can do this. You have the power to do that. The problem is sometimes I think the agency has more clout than the client. And correct me if I'm wrong on that, but it just seems like sometimes the client is actually deferring to the agencies. And I see that all the time, even on the political side.

The client lets the agencies run the show. Melody, go ahead. I think he's 110 percent correct. Not only that, what you are finding now, they're saying that they're spending this money and they're being so lazy with it. Listen, you don't have to go far to find Essence, Black Enterprise, Urban One, some of these already scaled companies. And I get it. They're going to get the lion's share of many of these budgets. But here's the problem. Those of us that are on this phone who own these assets, right, who may be independent, maybe more niche or smaller, we continue to get overlooked.

So really, the scale has not changed. And you've got to give credit where credit is due. There are some companies that have really leaned in, like you talked about, GM. On my side, Walmart has really stepped up. But I'm going to give you a perfect example, because that which cannot be counted cannot be measured, right? Blue Cross Blue Shield. I'm thinking about, I'm in the third largest, I'm in the city with these big companies, right? Give you a perfect example. They spend $15 million in local advertising in Chicago, 15 million. I got zero, zero. They got a black president. They got a black chair at their board. They sit me all around for one year rolling, trying to connect on a proposal I gave them

that covered both my talks, my radio stations, my Spanish station and my black station. Might have been $300,000. They become so arrogant. They come back and they said, what we'll do is we want to test case you with $20,000. They took my $300,000 proposal and they made it $20,000. So I told them to keep it, right? I can't perform for that. But when you talk about these numbers, that's the insult level. And the reason that they're doing that is because you know who you're competing with for Pepsi? You're competing with Urban League.

You're competing with the National Action Network. We are the only group of people who compete with our social organizations. We have to stop talking about that. This has been mentioned several times tonight. This is not about social justice. This is not about social justice. This is somewhat about social impact. It's about investment. Call it what you call

it for the white people. It's investment. Just make them stop doing charity with us. Stop it. Todd, I see you over there with the amen corner. I'm not just saying amen, Roland. There's a budget for social impact and diversity, and I've never seen it above $500,000. It's for buying tables

and giving big checks out. There's a whole nother hundreds of billions of dollars in the marketing budget and the conversation that we're at war. And we're at war right now with a number of black social and event companies and people who throw parties because that budget is sacred to them. That's how they make their living. But the conversation I'm having, they've never gotten a check from any of the six holding companies or any of their affiliates. So we have to shift this dialogue from a couple hundred thousand dollars and small beans and the throwaway budget to a conversation about what's really going on. And at the end of the day, the last two big impacts economically happened by Jay-Z and Kanye.

Stop buying Cristal, and they're screwing over our good friend Kanye with his Yeezys. And the economic impact was material. So at the end of the day, all of this stuff we're talking is noise until we yield and start wielding our 1.6 trillion of impact

and cost one or 2% impact on some of these brands. And I disagree with everyone. This conversation is not about a fight between the agencies and the brands. The brands hired the agency. The word agency means they work for them. So that's not a debate. It was set up that way. So I really think we have to get to the brass tacks of the fact that this is a problem of us not calling the question. You spent a $2 billion campaign with two black

candidates and you offered $25,000 to Roland to go on the road. And you have to boycott to get that number to 75,000. Let's call them what it is. This is what it is. And Todd is absolutely right. and I can tell y'all I got that call and it was like $25,000 for one campaign, $25,000 for the other, and I just want y'all to know Melody probably didn't do it the way I

did it, but I sent them a text and I said, quote, fuck that. And I said, I will keep my black ass at home. Good luck in your campaign. But I was not going, and I told them y'all can keep y'all 50,000. I said, but you're not going to ask me for a ground game. You want to be on the road.

You want to be digital ads. You want all this sort of stuff for $25,000 each? When Sinclair Television last year did $340 million in political advertising, and you think I'm going to go out there and be up for $50,000 in two states? You lost your damn mind. And yes, I sent that text to the campaigns, to the agency, to Jamie Harrison, to 10 congressional black caucus members, told them ain't no way in the hell that's going to happen. Y'all, the only way this game changes is when black owned media refuses to accept crumbs as a meal. That has to stop. And when we come back, I'm going to pick up on Melanie's point about civil rights organizations. And I've said to them, they've got to stop accepting small checks and somehow think that's benefiting the black community when you bypassing hundreds of millions of dollars that we can be getting in other areas.

And what did Dr. King have to say about this here? He told us on April 3rd, 1968. I'm going to show it to you. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. I'm Dr. Jackie here on A Balanced Life, and I've got a pop quiz for you. Who are you? Where are you? And how are you doing? These are three important questions that you should be asking yourself every day. I can't be authentic with you if I'm not being authentic with myself. I know who I am and I know whose I am.

And when you know that, you're unstoppable because you're going to show up as your authentic self no matter the room that you're in. Discovering the true you and the culture around you. That's next on A Balanced Life on Black Star Network. When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture, you're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us.

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Waits $100,000. We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Your money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Folks, the folks at Verizon hit me and they said that they're going to be reporting on their goals annually. They'll be releasing their 2022 results in the coming months. And I told you, so we're sitting here hitting all these different people. We hit the different. So just so you know, Group M responded to us. IPG agency has not responded. Publicis responded to us. Omnicom has not responded to us. Havas has not responded to us.

And so do understand, I'm going to get the answers. And so, again, I'm here every day, and I own it. And if I got to do this every day, I'll do it every day. As Frank Lucas said in American Gangster, I'm going to get that money. Now, I need people to understand Dr. King understood everything we're talking about. April 3rd, 1968, Mason Temple, the night before he was assassinated, he lays out in a 43-minute, 16-second speech, really the blueprint for Black America moving forward. Too many Black people have only heard the mountaintop part, totally have ignored what he said earlier. In the speech, he actually referenced Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr.

where he talks about the responsibility of black America holding companies accountable who get our money for products but do not have reciprocity. Play it. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you. So as a result of this, we're asking you tonight to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy sealed test milk. Tell them not to buy what is the bread? Wonder bread. And what is all the bread come

to Jesse? Tell them not to buy hard bread. As Jesse Jackson has said up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain. Now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they have been found out how and policies and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on track and then they can move on town downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right. Now, one of the reasons they were so successful was Operation Breadbasket, an idea that Dr. King got from Reverend Leon Sullivan. Martin Depp was a white pastor out of Chicago, was on that committee in Chicago,

and I've referenced this book numerous times. It's called Operation Breadbasket, an untold story of civil rights in Chicago, 1966 to 1971. And what they did is what we're doing with this show. They first educated African-Americans first about the issue. Well, here's what they did, which I've been telling these civil rights groups they got to start doing. They didn't just say hire black people. They told companies deposit money in black banks. They told them hire black companies when it came to contracts. They had a very detailed strategy in doing so. Now, Depp writes the greatest failure, though, of Breadbasket was that they did not do proper follow-up. They had announcements of MOUs, but they did not come back in terms of

forcing them on the accountability part. When I've said to civil rights organizations, you don't let companies come and give you $500,000 and you don't have a racial index. You don't have them come to you and you say, well, wait a minute, what about transportation contracts, catering contracts, event planning contracts, PR contracts? Who are your bond companies? What about your attorneys? Literally the entire professional services and black-owned media. Wells Fargo was a big presenter of the NAACP Image Awards.

That's great. But how much money did black consumers lose in the housing crisis as a result of those practices? Has Wells Fargo properly reinvested in black America? I say the answer is no. We can go company by company. And we, and I've said to the NAACP, to the Urban League, to the National Action Network, you should be making a higher level of demands to say, if y'all want our stamp of approval, it has to mean multiple millions and not just sponsoring an event. Terrell Whitley is the CEO of Liquid Soul, an agency out of Atlanta. Terrell, we've talked about this numerous times,

about what's happening with these companies when it comes to these agencies, when it comes to these folks. You've had to walk companies through who didn't get it. But the issue that we still are dealing with is that the amount of money that they are spending is minuscule. It is small. Yet we see white media companies. Right now, the upfronts are going on. By June, by June, 80% of the $322 billion, almost $400 billion spent annually, will be allocated. And black-owned media will be virtually nonexistent in that 80%. And then the second wave is in September.

And so the money that we get typically is what is in the scatter market when they go, well, how much money we got left over? We got to spend this money in the last quarter. So all of a sudden, Melanie phone rings, my phone rings, and it's like, hey, Cliff knows I got 30, 40,000, 50,000 to spend. Hey, man, where can I spend it? And it's like, we've been looking for y'all for the last damn nine months. Terrell? Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, it's been a systemic issue that we've dealt with for a very long time. I think, you know, as I listened to Dr. King and you talked about the follow-up of these MOUs, it really rested on my heart how sometimes we are, we're kind of scattered and not focused collectively on shifting an agenda.

One of the things that I talked about, even as I watched the Grammys and some of these award shows, is as we celebrate 50 years of hip hop, do we still own hip hop? Who owns hip hop? They do. We created it. It belongs to us. It is completely and totally based off of our culture. It is a global phenomenon that we don't own. So I look at this equation on both sides. I look at what is it that they're doing and what is it what's the equitable level position of engagement,

knowing that from a marketplace perspective, we know that we deliver power. But then the other side of the coin is how do we control, manifest, and effectively pull our power together to show it, demonstrate it, and ultimately impact change. So what you're saying and what you're doing is very key for others to understand that you can't be out here alone. We have to find spaces and places where we have a united front, where we connect and lock arms, and we say no more, you will not go past this line without us. And it has to be at the equitable position of engagement for us to participate properly, financially, in the decision-making, in the executives in the room and representation. And ultimately, we have to be able to carry that through, follow it through, and see systematic change from top to bottom.

You mentioned collective. That same speech King gave, he talked about the power of the black collective. That's correct. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Come on, control room, let's go. Hit play. Let's go. Hit play. Always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now, we are poor people. Individually, we are poor when you compare us with white society in America.

We are poor. Never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively we are richer than all the nations in the world with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, so that Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I can name others, the American Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. We have an annual income of more than thirty billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada.

Did you know that? That's power right there if we know how to fool you. So, Todd, I believe what has to happen, and I'm going to give everyone's comment on this, is we have to move again as a collective because we've seen it. We've seen how the agencies and the companies will pick off this group. Or, no, we're not going to meet with y'all together. We're going to meet with y'all separately. And they give somebody a little extra.

And they're happy without realizing we could take down billions together. Yeah, I think that's important, Roland. And I actually shouted out Mark Pritchard from Procter & Gamble when they made a commitment of five hundred million dollars to something called Group Black. And that's of their choosing. That wasn't of our choosing. And when we are assigned a collective, that's a false narrative. There's no collective in the white space. They just do business with them. But I do think there's a concert of conversation. But first of all, we have to deal with the reality of the least affordable Negro, to quote my friend Byron again, and whoever that is, whether it's an advocacy group,

whether it's somebody willing to take a big paper check, whether it's a conference that wants to be part of an economic system that's on a white platform that's black targeted. So part of this conversation, Roland, is us and understanding how this game works. So the collective has to be a conversation about the power of assigning this set-aside in a real monetary way and distributing it in a way that actually executes the media game plans and get out of the business of events and parties. You know, Afrotech is a huge event. Essence is a huge event. You know, Black Enterprise has great events, but that doesn't connote the kind of media things you talked about earlier. So we can't be lulled into this word collective because we're only asked to aggregate and get

everybody to agree. The reality of it is, is they should be doing business because we over-index, not at 2%, at far north of 20% of most of these major brands. And that demand is on our ability to say, we're going to stop doing what Dr. King talked about, which is integrating ourselves into a burning house. Randy, we've experienced this. Some of the biggest obstacles that we have had has been the Negro in the room. Who is that who is about trying to protect their job without realizing you literally are screwing black folks out of millions of dollars. I see you over there with the amen melody. Go ahead. Go ahead. The tokenized Negro is an absolute problem.

I mean, the person that they hire that they can get just to say, look, we have a black person here. We had one sister who tried to jam up me and Todd and we said, fool, we the reason you got hired. That agency was nearly all white.

We put them on blast. She gets hired, and she's trying to tell us. We like, how you think you got here? Go ahead. They make us so desperate that you have certain people who will sell out their own people, who will sell out us,

get an opportunity to make any progress just so they can pay their mortgage in a nice neighborhood and send the kids to private schools. And don't get me wrong, of course, we all want nice luxuries. We all want these things. But it does come at a price that I don't think that we realize. Well, hell, Ty, you had a grocery chain that the white folks in the company wanted to do a deal with y'all and some HBCUs. And it was an HBCU DEI person who were like, nah, we've done enough for HBCUs. That's right. That was a huge grocery chain here in Texas. And he said, we already gave Prairie View a 10 year commitment for some scholarships, forgetting that we're 15, 20% of all buying

of that grocery chain. And so they reached out to the CEO and said, no, you don't have to. I'm a director. And so we already did our black thing. And the big thing, Roland, that we keep going to is that this is a largely black problem of will. We have to say we demand that you're going to either do right by us or we're going to withhold our economic power. That's the whole story. We're dancing around it. But at the end of the day, they can continue to do window dressing if we don't pull any economic power. And the thing I wanted to say, Roland, my company is probably 100x what the average American company with one entrepreneur is on a revenue basis. And we're thankful for that.

And because of that, Grambling University has benefited. 13 students and interns from the Gulf Coast Atlantic Conference, which is a NAIA set of schools in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, they now have paid internships, and we're able to broadcast our games. So what happens is that we re-matriculate that money into our community, and we're trying to grow our base and tell our own story. And that's the point here. Look, I mean, in four years, we've grown this to a $3 million a year business. And guess what? Black engineering company at the control room,

black lighting company, black set designer, black art, black, the green screen was done by a black drape company. Right, that's exactly what we do. But what, and again, we can grow. We've lost our 24-hour channel. We're gonna be on three different distribution platforms by the end of next month. We're talking to five others. A story just came out today saying black people are underrepresented on fast channels.

We are creating a 24-hour black news and information network, but we cannot grow if we are broke. I've got to go to a break. When we come back, next steps. Everyone will weigh in on that. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this.

So I got to be a gangster, I got to shoot, I got to sell, I got to do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle. But when someone comes around and makes another, oh, we don't, you know, they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix, too, is just show there's other avenues.

You don't got to be a rapper, you don't gotta be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does. I'm Dr. Jackie, here on A Balance. When you talk about blackness and what happens in black culture,

you're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. A lot of stuff that we're not getting, you get it, and you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in Black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks.

We want to hit 2,000 people, $50 this month, raise $100,000. We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to Peel Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered. PayPal is R. Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. MLK's book is phenomenal, and that, of course, Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community. I mentioned Operation Breadbasket when he talked about what they do. He said the first step is negotiation. If negotiations break down, the step of real power and pressure is then taken. And he said the last thing is withdrawing our support of various businesses.

So the question, Cliff, when it comes to this issue, where do we go from here? With Roland, as you were playing the Martin Luther King video, I always like to go back to Malcolm X quote, and it says, the media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. And that's power. Media has a power to influence minds, ideas, behaviors and attitudes of the masses. And that goes to say, if we if we're not controlling media, we're not controlling the image of African-Americans all over the black people all over this world. I think the collective piece is very important. I respect what Byron Allen and you brothers have been doing. But one of the things I would say is, you know, when we're going to these corporations, we have to gather more black

voices so that is, so it does look like it's more of a united front. Black folks have always had a spokesperson and we have to get beyond that and have us, again, go in as a collective and make our demands, and then take those demands basically to our people, as you said, and educate so that there is an action plan. People on the chat are wondering what can they do, and as we give them information, that strategy will then be developed to say, hey, we may have to shut them down. We may have to boycott them. But at the same time, we got to balance out the tables and tickets that happens with all of our organizations in every city and nationally. Got it. So these are things that we have to deal with. Melody? You know, I am, as I've grown older, I really have started studying Martin Luther King. So I so appreciate

how you put him as part of this conversation. But I want you to think about something, Roland. It didn't get real about Martin Luther King. When he was talking about racial equality, everybody, oh, they loved him. When Martin Luther King died, he was had fallen out with the American public. White folks was done with him. You want to know why? The money is he started talking about money. Boom. He started talking about money. Right. And so I've come to understand that his conversation some 50, 60 years ago is the same conversation we're having now. That's it. So this is not a sprint. It's a marathon. We have to continue to put foot on neck.

We do have to go in collectively. But you know what I realize? We've become teachers. When we go into these rooms, we are teaching and continue to teach over and over again because the room continues to change, right? But we just have to keep hammering away with it. Because the one consistent thing is that is we are black, we are authentically ourselves, and

we are the only one who can tell our authentic story. And that's the value of us. That is our value. Terrell? Yeah, I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a slightly different perspective that I'm sitting on is I really am about ownership and

I am past the point of just taking any handout or trying to scrap for these crumbs. Roland and I have had these conversations time and time again. You know, I'm about figuring out how can I build equity? How can I support? How can I create M&A opportunities within my community? How can I raise funds? And the key here is, and I ask you, what do we own? What industry, what space, what product, where is our ownership? And how are we funneling that to our children and our children's children? So the problem I have sometimes is, and I agree with our collective brilliance, what I would love is to see how we can create that into a centerfold and then drive change from our vantage point, from our position, with leverage that we control and that we own.

So within the space, let's be specific. When you talk about black media, you know, I know, we know. Whether it's television, whether it's music, whether it's fashion, streaming, we set culture. The problem sometimes is our ability to own, manifest, and monetize the culture and keep it within our community and circulate these dollars so that we see economic change and then we create the leverage that we want to see long term. So I would love to see us pick a point, pick a space, pick a place and dive in and go hard. Now, can we boil the entire ocean? That becomes difficult.

Do we have all of the upfront resources? Absolutely not. But if you take a space and you create a level of focus and centerfold, over time, you can begin to expand. But as we stay dispersed, I feel we stay separated from each other, and ultimately, we don't see enough shifted change. Randy? You know, advertising agencies control image. That's what they are hired to do is to control a brand's image. And what I don't think people are talking about is that what advertising agencies are saying is we don't like what black media is saying about black people, which is absolutely ridiculous. They feel as if they should control the image of black people. And we need to reject that and say, you know what? I don't see myself reflected at all within this

brand. And so, yes, we are going to leave it alone. We're not going to support it any further. And it's not just about who we don't support, but it also is about who we do support, right? We need to provide people like Roland Martin and other news media with the numbers to say, listen, you are losing as they are. You are losing black followers every single day because you are not at all reflecting who we are. Because guess what? This ad agency has ignored who we are. They've ignored black people. They've ignored, they're trying to speak for us. And we need to stop that. It should be our voices. We should control our voice and our image and not them. Todd? Yeah, there's a couple of things, Roland. I don't really get involved in the fantasy or Pollyannish conversation about aggregating

and getting a collective of black people to agree. I work with 101 HBCUs. I think 30 or so are on my platform. And we represent 70% of where black people are. I've never seen an HBCU in a white neighborhood. White people love HBCUs. Most of them have 10, 20, some 50 HBCU initiatives. And all it's about is paper checks and scholarships. So when I talk about the economic impact of HBCUs and their ability to actually drive economic impact in the communities that they serve, it becomes uncomfortable. We have a deal with a major, I'll tell you, it's Walgreens, where we want to drive traffic in the communities that they live in with products from a company like Procter & Gamble, and represent a welcome mat to folks. Because at the end of the day, 50% of all advertising is wasted, and 50% is directional. That's an old trope. But the reality of it is they've turned it into a data business, and they've eliminated

us from the data business because we don't have the ad technology to deliver it consistently. So we have to build smart pilots, Roland. We have to execute within those pilots. And we have to have a demand conversation about our ability to drive commerce for these brands because they can do a substitute for everything we're doing. And they've been doing that for the last 70 years. So we have to demand that they partner in a different way and get out of the DEI business and get into the business of advertising and delivering media and delivering our audience where people actually drive commerce transactions, because that's where that one point six trillion dollars shows up. Folks, in Dr. King's book, Where Do We Go From Here? KSO Community, he said that there are y'all heard me say this many times.

He said there are already structured forces in the Negro community that can serve as the basis for building a powerful united front. The Negro church, the Negro church, the Negro press, the Negro fraternities and sororities, and Negro professional associations. But this is what he said about the Negro press. He said, too many Negro newspapers have veered away from their traditional role as protest organs agitating for social change and have turned to the sensational and the conservative in place of the substantive and the militant. That's what he wrote in 1967. This was his last book, and it wasn't published for 10 years after his death. All of these agencies and many of these corporations

that we deal with, they have been calling Todd, they've been calling Hardy Pelt, his co-founder, wondering what I was going to say tonight. They have all been worried. Here's the deal. If you are doing what you're supposed to do, why are you worried? See, if you actually are spending the money, you shouldn't be worried about what I have to say

because there will be the results to actually show it. The fact of the matter is for all of these agencies and all of these companies to say, oh, we're exceeding our goals. Prove it. Show us the numbers. Show us who's getting what. Literally. Oh, now Roland Two of them, Roland You know that

We can't reveal who gets what Why not? If you want us to actually believe That you're hitting the goals Be transparent Because you demand that I be transparent With my numbers You demand that I be transparent

When it comes to your metrics. So the same thing must apply. Because I'm simply sitting right here at 8.01. I'm over time, but at 8.01 on March 1st, 2023, I am unconvinced that all of these agencies and all all these companies are meeting or exceeding their goals. Because I know how much money is in the marketplace. And if

you're a company that's annually spending a billion dollars on marketing and your commitment is 5%, where the money at? Because guess what? Essence can't eat all of it. Urban One can't eat all of it. Urban One can't eat all of it.

Blavity can't eat all of it. And if I actually had to start naming companies, y'all, there are really only five major black-owned media companies. Urban One, Essence Communications, Blavity, Black Enterprise. That's four. Tyler, who would you say is the fifth? I'd say I'm the fifth. Urban Edge Network.

Okay, you got Urban Edge. You got Revolt. On 303 million devices. Okay, you got Revolt. Okay, now we're up to six. All right? Y'all, we ain't talking about a lot of companies here. All right. You y'all, we, we ain't talking about a lot of companies here. All right. I know for a fact, there's nobody in our space, a million YouTube subscribers, a hundred thousand downloads

of the app on three major platforms and 24 hour streaming channel. So who are you spending the money with? I'm confused. Where is the money going? And how much? When folks start giving me percentages, that's always a way of saying, I ain't trying to really give you the real number. Because if you're

spending one, two, and three billion, then where is it? Pull up the graphic of Quibi. What do we do next? Here's what we do next. Black America, we're going to call every, this is what this show is going to do. We're going to call every single one of these companies that committed $150 million to Quibi before they launched, and we're going to say, where's our money? Discover, General Mills, T-Mobile, Taco Bell, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo,

Ab & Bev, Walmart, Progressive, Google, and Hydro Bush, if you could commit $150 million to a digital platform that had no metrics, no data, no research, no numbers, all because Jeffrey Katzenberg launched it, well, how in the hell can you deny WVON has been there for decades? How can you deny Cliff's ad agency? How can you deny this platform four years?

I got four years of data. They had zero. I need the folks watching to understand you cannot be innocent bystanders in this battle. Because, see, you want your children hired. Pre-COVID, we had 2.6 million black-owned businesses in America. 2.5 million had one employee.

Your average revenue of $54,000. That means we only had 100,000 black-owned businesses that were doing, that had more than one employee. 95% of all black-owned businesses in America do less than $5 million in revenue. Folks, this is about scale. Now, I'm going to close on this here. Stars, Showtime, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock,

all the streaming channels. I get all of your emails trying to get your talent on my show and on my network. Now, if my show is good enough and my audience is large enough

that you want your talent to be on my network and my show, why is it I never hear from your advertising people? Discover Own, I go down the line all of these networks Lifetime, We, Bravo all of these folks advertise all over the place stars got more black shows

more 50 cent shows than anybody but I never see their ads but y'all love trying to send your stars to come on the show. This is what I'm saying. You got to draw the line, and I've drawn the line. I will not allow any black celebrity

from Showtime, Hulu, Peacock, HBO, Netflix, Starz, OWN, or any other network to come on this show if they are spending zero money. We got 10 grand from Netflix because I called them out on Twitter. That's it.

We got $250,000 from Young and Rubicam for the census to put them on blast. Why should I have to do that? Melody and Todd and Terrell, we should not have to publicly call people out to do what's right. Somebody told me, they said,

well, man, why you always got it going off? I said, why can't you do the thing quietly? We have. We've met with publicists for two and a half years. I know my shows met with Group M. We've met with IPG. We've met with Mediacom. We've met with Omnicom.

We've met with all of these folks. Where's our money? You cannot say you want to invest in black-owned media when you're literally withholding dollars and saying, oh, you're not brand safe. Well, I can create customized content. I've done it for SQ America. I've done it for Coca-Cola. I've done it for SQ America. I've done it for Coca-Cola.

I've done it for General Motors. So why not you? So here's my message to every agency, and I know you're watching, and to all the companies. I'm not going away. I'm going to hit this every single day. Last night in Austin, I asked Houston Tillerson and their business school to launch an accountability initiative to target all of

these companies that promised $50 billion to black America after George Floyd's death. I'm now going to expand that. I want to see every HBCU in America with a business school launch an accountability project to call every one of these companies demanding, how are you spending the money? Where are you spending the money? Who are you spending the money with? Because I am sick and tired of corporate America giving us press releases and Instagram posts and tweets. I'm tired of Negro organizations giving them plaques and trophies for sponsoring a dinner. Black America would not change unless we change the economic paradigm.

And that means dollars. This is silver rights, not just civil rights. And so I dare say to every civil rights group, you better stand with us, but not lead us, because only black business can lead this fight. You should be allies with us. But this is going to require black people to make a level of demand that we have not done before. And it might mean us not buying y'all products. And as I told General Motors when I met with them, I said, I don't have to boycott everything. If I knock off 1% of your market share,

a bunch of y'all gonna lose y'all jobs. To all of these companies, we don't wanna have to go there. But if we have to, we will. And trust me, if I got no money last year, and I got no money last quarter, and I got no money last month, and no money last year and I got no money last quarter and I got no money last month and no money last week and no money yesterday and I got no money today, it's a damn good chance I ain't getting no money tomorrow. I will not praise your announcements.

I would not praise your announcements. I will not praise your press releases. I will judge every company and every agency based upon your direct deposits. Now is the time for y'all to do right and stop offering excuses. Because we are coming. Because I own this and I control it. And if it's just me

standing in front of one camera and I got to get rid of all of this, I will reign holy hell as long as there's breath in my body because what the hell do we have to lose? Let me thank Cliff, Todd, Melody, Randy, Terrell for joining us.

Folks, thank all of you for watching as well. Be sure to download our Blackstar Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Also, join our Bring the Funk fan club. Your dollars have made it possible. Here's what's so crazy.

My fan base has contributed in excess of $2 million to this show, which is more than what corporate America has provided for us in advertising direct. Check your money orders. Go to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. Cash app, Dollar Sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com.

Folks, I'll see you tomorrow right here on the Black Star Network. Oh, don't forget to get my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. Apple Phone, Android. First of all, all those bookstores, Target, download it from Audible as well. That's it. I'll see y'all tomorrow. Holler!

Holler! Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. I'm proud. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Rollins.

I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig?

Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy join me each tuesday on black star network for a balanced life with dr jackie we're all impacted by the culture whether we know

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