Americans Divided on Wokeness, GOP Blames DEI For Train Derailment, MI Rep Calls Out white supremacy

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Reconstruction where I will lay out to our audience how
black media, black owned media is being starved to death
by corporate America and largely white ad agencies. We'll talk
about the hoops we have to jump through. We'll talk
about how black ad agencies are being frozen out of
the money. Will also show you, folks, the answers all

(00:22):
these companies that have made commitments to spend with black
owned media, and they're all claiming if they are meeting
or exceeding their goals, but where's our money. Something that's
not right here. So we're gonna 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.

(00:47):
It's time to bring the thought. I'm rolling Martin unfiltered,
I'm the black started network. Let's go, Okay, how much
time and when the briefs? He's right on time, and
it's rolling. Best believe he's going putting it down from

(01:07):
his last news to politics with entertain then just books.
He's strolling, roll Rolling. It's rolling Martell rolling with Rolling.
Now he's Booky's fresh, he's real compession though, he's rolling

(01:32):
Martell Martell. All right, folks, you've heard me talk a

(02:13):
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 of months ago, when the Tory Lane's
trial was taking place, when he was on trial for
shooting a Megan the Stallion, there are a lot of
people who are on social media saying, why is it

(02:35):
black media covering this? You know, 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 around meetings and CBC members and we come
around meetings and and there no black owned media out there.

(02:56):
And I said, we can't afford to pay somebody eight
one hundred thousand 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,

(03:21):
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 what I'm seeing ads run on MSNBC where they
give opinion, and I'm seeing ads run on Fox News
they give an opinion, what is that? See? What they've

(03:44):
constructed is a world where black owned media it's pretty
much focused on sports, entertainment, gossip, makeup, hair, lifestyle stuff.
But even with that, what we're seeing is that black
owned media is withering on the vine. Well, the next
two hours, we're gonna break this thing down for you.

(04:05):
We're gonna go historical to what took place where Dona's
Johnson Abny magazine had to put out a video to
teach advertisers how to sell the black people. We're gonna
show you how Ebony Jet was cheated out of billions
of dollars because of the black tex We're gonna show

(04:27):
you how b Et was cheated out of billions of
dollars because of the black tax. And we're also going
to do is show you all 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,

(04:48):
but black on media, how no one wants to put
a number to what that is. And so we're gonna
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,

(05:14):
you out here begging. Disney doesn't have to because they're
pulling down seven billion dollars in nine billion dollars. 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 gonna explain with our experts what the upfronts are,

(05:34):
and we're gonna show you how in the main upfronts
now the secondary at 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

(05:58):
how corporations and add 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 the place where you trust

(06:19):
your information more than anywhere else. So we're gonna go
to a break and we come back again. We're gonna
walk you through this, and trust me, you're about to
get a lesson that a lot of other black owned people,
black owned media people are scared. To tell you, what
did I always say, black owned media? We cannot be scared.

(06:41):
We cannot be afraid to speak truth to power. Or
doctor King said, we must maintain our militancy as protest
organs and forming the public of what's going on. You're
watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, a special edition of this show
on the Black Start Network. Back in a moment hatred

(07:13):
on the streets, a horrific scene white nationalist rally that
descended into deadly violence. White people are losing their their
minds as an angry approach, Trump moder storms the US capital,
who sent We're about to see the rids of what
I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks

(07:34):
in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.
I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of
violent denials. This is part of American history. Every time
that people of color and progress, whether real or symbolic
there has been the Carold Anderson at every university calls
white rage as a backlash is the wrath of the

(07:56):
proud boys and the boogaloo boys America. There's going to
be more of this problem. Would have God. This country
is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitude
because of the fear of white people, the feel that
they're taking our job, they're taking our resources, they're taking
our women. Diff in white Field, pull up a chair,

(08:33):
take your seats. The Black Tape with me, doctor Greg
car 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
Chriss That Michelle All, I'm Chayley Rose, and you're watching

(08:54):
Roland Martin Unfiltered. Y'all have always heard me say, if

(09:25):
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 could concerned African Americans. Education, mass incarceration,
criminal justice, reform, housing, you name it. But every eel

(09:48):
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 government contracts. Right now, the
federal government spends five hundred and sixty billion dollars a
year on contracts, and African American business has received one

(10:13):
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 jural
a County office commissioned by Congress want of Elinor Holmes Norton,

(10:36):
black owned media got fifty one million out of the
nearly one billion. That means that here we are getting
the folks elected, getting Biden and Harrison the White House,
and yet the dollars are not coming back to black

(10:58):
owned media. But when they get in trouble, oh, they
know how to call Black on media for help. They're
going to call us to actually covered event or have
an administration official arm And So I'm walking y'all through
so you can understand how this works. Now, I'm gonna

(11:19):
get you something that you probably never heard before. So
when BT was sold for three point three billion dollars,
more black millionaires were created as a result, because at
one point BT had it was private. They had gone
public employee's own stock. And so those who did not

(11:40):
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 BEET should
have been sold for anywhere from ten to twelve billion dollars?
Let me unpack it this right here, y'all, is a
book by Brett Pulley. It is called The Billion Dollar Bet,

(12:06):
Robert Johnson and the Inside Story of Black Entertainment Television. Now,
in this book, he talks about the sale of BEET,
and 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. Going to

(12:29):
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, BT was never able to
demand that advertisers pay rates comparable to the rates that

(12:51):
they were paying preparing mainstream companies. All right, at the
time of the acquisition MTV, which reached seventy million Households
was selling a thirty second ad for eight thousand dollars.
B ET, with just eight million Feral Households was selling

(13:16):
the same amount of ad time for a mere fifteen
hundred quote. BT has been pricing itself at a discount
to vhe MTV, according to Mail Carmerazon, who was the
CEO of Viacom. This is where Mail Carmerazon Carmerazon was wrong.

(13:38):
See he said that BET was pricing itself wrong. No,
the industry was refusing to pay b et it's fair
value because they, let me be real clear, Corporate America
and ad agencies do not value black consumers as much

(14:03):
as they value white consumers. Because of the inequality of
income white corporations and largely white ad agencies, they will
they want to appeal more to white consumers than black consumers. So,
due to math, fifteen hundred, eight thousand dollars. So if

(14:28):
BT was able to get eight thousand dollars versus the
fifteen hundred dollars, that means BET would have been worth
four times more than what it was sold. It was
sold for three point three billion dollars. So imagine if
BEET had always been treated fairly by Corporate America and

(14:53):
the agencies and gotten its fair share. That means that
Bob and Sheila Johnson could have actually retained majority ownership
of b ET by selling the company for anywhere between
ten and twelve billion dollars, which means that if they

(15:13):
chose to sell twenty five percent of the company that
was three billion dollars, they could have literally, I need
you to follow me here BT Baba Sheila Johnson, who
the co founders of BAT, could have literally sold b
ET or twenty five percent of BT for the same

(15:38):
amount of money and they sold the entire company. But
they couldn't because b ET 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

(16:05):
might see it here and say, Walker, who has b ET?
The exact same thing happened at Ebony magazine? Oh I know,
Oh my goodness, Johnny's Johnson. He was on the Forbes
list as one of the four hundred richest Americans. Ebony
should have been a billion dollar company. It never was.

(16:33):
Do you know why? Because Ebony was being paid sometimes
ten times less for a full page ad. Then GQ
or Esquire was being paid because the same agencies and

(16:53):
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

(17:18):
they had been cheated out of their fair share for
all of those years. We're gonna further unpack this because folks,
it is still happening. The loopholes that we in black
on media are made to jump through. Other white companies
don't have to do that. When we come back, I'm

(17:41):
gonna have my panel here and I'm gonna tell y'all
about a company that was launch during COVID that raised
nearly two billion dollars. And they launched this company and
they got at They sold out a hundred and fifty
million dollars of their ad inventory and they never had

(18:06):
any metrics are numbers to prove it was a smart plan.
The ad community just gave this company one hundred and
fifty million dollars. In black owned media, we're always been told,
prove your numbers, show us your legitimate but This company

(18:32):
that lasted six months got one hundred and fifty million
dollars before they ever opened their doors. I'm gonna break
it down. You're watching the special edition of Roller Bart
on the Filter on the Blackstar Network. Back in a moment.

(19:00):
On the next Get Wealthy with me Deborah Owens, America's
wealth Coach. The wealth gap has literally not changed in
over fifty years, according to the Federal Reserve. On the
next Get Wealthy, I'm excited to chat with Jim Castleberry,
the EO of Known Pointings. They have created a platform,

(19:21):
an equal system 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

(19:45):
right here on Get Wealthy only on Black Star Network.
A lot of these corporations are people that are running
stuff push black people if they're doing a certain What
that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any
young kid who you know, wants to leave any situation

(20:06):
they're in, and the only people they see your people
that are doing this or I gotta be a gangster.
I gotta shoot, I gotta sell. I gotta do this
in order to do it, and it becomes a cyclable
when someone comes around is making another Oh, we don't
do you know, they don't want to push them to
put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying
to fix. Two, it's just show those other avenues. You
don't gotta be rapping. I'm gonna be a ball player.
It could be the country scene, can be an operating
or you can be a dam whatever. You know. Don't

(20:27):
showing the different avenues not as possible, and it's hard
for people to realize as possible to someone done, I'm
building a riddle. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay woken.

(21:15):
All right, folks, welcome back. So this is a mirror
that I have in my office here at our Blackstart
Network officers here on sixteenth th k on Black Lives
Matter PLAZID, Washington, DC. And so I had this done
by a Kennan WHITEE graphics designer because this is this
is what it is old to black owned media. And

(21:36):
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 h out of the
Wells Barnett newspaper. We've got all these black Negro Digests.
That's that's over here. We've got all these different black

(21:56):
owned media outlets. Because this is the found day 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.
But the reality is that every single one of these
companies has never gotten their fair compensation because of how

(22:24):
Corporate America and at agencies largely white run and white control,
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
a company, this company here, quimby Jeffrey Katzenberg worked at

(22:49):
Disney and also met Whitman, who was, of course the
see of eBay. They were leaders of Quibi when out
raised nearly two billion dollars. This is supposed to be
a new app that was gonna revolutionize the entertainment industry. Okay,
before they launched, all of these corporations gave them ad committments.

(23:15):
Come on, guys, with the graphic. All of these companies, okay,
before they opened their doors, one hundred and fifty million
dollars was committed by Discover, General, Mills, T Mobile, Taco Bell, PNG,

(23:37):
Proctory and Gamble, PepsiCo, Abenbeth Walmart, Progressive, Google, and Heiser Busch.
Let me be real clear. They didn't leave the graphic
right there. They didn't have to prove anything. They had
no numbers, they had no research, they had no data.

(23:58):
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

(24:21):
their at inventory before they even launched. Y'all. Quibby lasted
six months before they shut down. Do you think they
gave the money back? I don't think so. I'm bringing
my panel right now. Joining me is Todd Brown, founder

(24:44):
of Urban Edge Network, Clifford Franklin, CEO of Fuse Advertising
out of Saint 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

(25:06):
dealing with in terms of this industry, and how black
owned media is disdismissed, how we are relegated to getting
crumbs and being folks. Expect us to be excited and
treat the crumbs as if it's a whole meal. And

(25:26):
I use the example of Beet because that literally, the
cheating be Et 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

(25:46):
of racism by corporate America and the AD agencies and
the devaluation of the black consumer. Roland. You're absolutely correct.
First of all, thank you for keeping this topic at
the top of the at the top of the food chain.
It is so important that we continue to push in fight.

(26:07):
As you know, Feuse, we've been around since nineteen ninety
seven and we've been in this fight. Once they determined
that they would 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,

(26:28):
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 it looks at when you look at political advertising,
the same general the so called general consultants who lose

(26:49):
election cycle after election cycle, get all of the media dollars,
very little goals to the media outlets, and again they
depend on the black vote. So this continues to be
a problem. Um, We're going to continue to keep fighting. Um,
but this is just something that you know, until I
guess our consumers say we're going to stop pushing for you,

(27:10):
we're gonna 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 gonna build them
out every time. And when you say, we are talking
about black ad agencies, and so we've seen many of
those folks to go out of business, many have to
sell to mainstream companies, to even stay in business. They're
not They're not independently owned businesses. Todd I talked about

(27:35):
a black enterprise. I also mentioned Ebony. Uh, you ran Ebody,
You you 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 Rolling for having me on
the show. And I was the chief Revenue Officer e

(27:59):
VP and group publisher of Ebany and Jet for about
three years and our average page rate when I got
there was in the twenty k range for Ebany and
was in the six to seven thousand dollar range for Jet.
Both of the distribution level of those magazines were seven
hundred thousand per Jet and one point two million per Evany.

(28:21):
And what that really means is how many people were
paying to receive the magazine. This trick in Ebany and
Jet is it's not just the people that received the magazine,
but those magazines lasts sometimes months even years in their readership.
So we were averaging about ten million readership. The short
answer is like magazines on the print side was getting

(28:43):
five x what we were getting at a minimum, and
some were getting ten x 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, seventy eight percent discount
versus market was a general trend that I observed. And

(29:06):
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 the higher edition of people.
You couldn't grow, you couldn't build, you could not market
the magazine of the places, So in many ways you

(29:26):
were fighting to survive as opposed to thrive. The only
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 some times up to six
to nine months after we've actually printed and distributed and
distributed the magazine, which was costly on the production side,

(29:47):
which was costly on the meiling 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 without sort. So it took going
out of business strategy by a slow stranglehole where you
have to leverage everything, which leads you to selling off
your assets, which ultimately left led to us having to

(30:10):
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 old Bob Johnson selling BT was the
worst thing for our culture. First of all, you didn't
build the business. Bob and Sheila sacrifice to build the business.

(30:31):
But the point just like but the point I'm making
the people, if Bob and Sheila Johnson got fair market
value for BT, they could have still owned Beet and
made three billion dollars and be just like Sherry Redstone,
who's daddy summed the Redstone owned Viacom. He first we

(30:52):
owned an amusement a company and then they bought Viacom,
And so the same reason how Rupert Murdock and his
family owned for a number for decades before selling it
for seventy billion dollars to dignity. 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.

(31:15):
When we do sell, we can't sell it for what
it 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

(31:38):
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 we are 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

(32:00):
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 its charity.

(32:24):
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 is building something as major as BAT did
was deserves to be paid fairly as these other organizations are,

(32:46):
but we're not, and that continues. It has long term
effects on us as a people when we're not paid
fairly and well, folks don't understand when you devalue black
owned me when you do not do proper investment, that
limits us to be able to not just hired, but

(33:08):
also to give. It limits us for 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 go out of business and they're still struggling. Look,
Black Enterprise, it's not really a magazine. They're an event company.

(33:31):
What's greater than said it? He's head Without Without the summits,
the workshops and the conferences they do, Black Enterprise would
not be in business. Essence magazine ninety percent of Essence
Communications money comes from the Essence festival. Y'all. Disney does

(33:57):
not make ninety percent of its money from a festival.
Comcasts does not make ninety percent of its money from
a festival. I can run down all the major media companies,
and they do not make their money from festivals, awards, shows,

(34:18):
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,

(34:40):
these these white meeting companies, oh, they run an ass,
they'll pushing a button. They're not expending 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

(35:04):
in these companies and agencies who literally are defending a
situation that they know it's wrong. Come back. Tar's gonna
share a story of you where a black an African
American executive in an agency laid out to him and
his business partner exactly how the agencies purposely frustrate us

(35:29):
to keep us from being able to tap into the dollars,
hoping we'll go away and give up. I'm going to
also share a couple of stories on what I've had
to experience in dealing with agencies, even when the company
says we're going to do business with Roland. Later in
the show, we also are going to lay out to

(35:51):
you these commitments. And many companies and agencies announced a
couple of years ago when we put pressure on them
to target money to black owned media. Gonna share with
you what they responded to me. But how well they're doing.
The problem is, I don't see all the money. You're
watching this special edition of Roland Mark unfilter right here

(36:13):
on the Black Star Network, Live Start Networks. A real
old revolutionary right now. I thank you for me in

(36:33):
the voice of Black Americ, a moment that we have.
Now we have to keep this going. The video look
phenomenal 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 smarting, bring your eyeballs,
get dig. Next on the Black Table with me Greg,

(37:00):
we featured the brand new work a Professor Angie Porter,
which simply put is a revolutionary reframing of the African
experience in this country. It's the one legal article of everyone,
I mean everyone should. Professor Porter and Doctelithia Watkins are
Legal Roundtable team. Join us to explore the paper that

(37:22):
I guarantee is going to prompt a major, a high
mood in our culture. You crystallize it by saying, who
are we to other people? Who are African people to others?
Governance is oward thing. Who are we to each other?
The structures we create for ourselves, how we order the

(37:42):
universes African people. That's next on the black table. Here
on the black start name what's up? Will Pack And
you are watching rolling Martin m m all right, welcome

(38:46):
back rolling my unfiltered as we where we do this
deconstruction of the media business and how black and on
media is pretty much starved of resources, even though Black
consumers over for index on the products of many of
these companies. Cliff Franklin refused advertises with me. Todd Brown,

(39:07):
Urbanage Network Randy Bryant, a d EI specialist trainer here
as well. So, Todd, I want you to share this story.
I know Cliff has a thousand of these stories as well.
I 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 Pell oh no, no, no, the

(39:31):
game is to frustrate you so you give up. Yeah,
there's a couple of stories they're rolling. The one that
I think is most telling is the conversation starts with
an idea around diversity, equity, and inclusion as a budget
as opposed to a marketing and advertising dialogue. So the

(39:53):
first conversation we get into is they bring their foundation person,
they bring their head of diversity, they 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're a
real media company. We're delivering spots and dots, we're delivering
the analytics, we're delivering the reporting, and we can also

(40:15):
help you reach that customer in the markets that we serve.
So what I always say Roland versus 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 truthtelling, whether it's BLM or your show
or others. But the dialogue that we're in mostly is

(40:36):
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 add 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 twenty five to thirty
emails about every specification around that delivery. And then at

(40:59):
the in it they say, oh, by the way, Todd,
I wish you would have done something different in the pacing.
You have done something different than analytics. And we say,
we delivered against the breathing, we delivered against the analytics.
We're delivered against the reporting, and we gave you an
executive summary. And if you would have told us at
an advance, we would have had an opportunity to not
only delight you, but get more of your share. Did

(41:21):
you what did you have? Then you have one major
automaker want you to demonstrate what system you absolutely to
run your ads and it's the same system they use. Yeah,
we were asked to demonstrate DV three sixty because we're
a premier ad network and they have multiple articles through

(41:41):
their agency where they're applying to using the same technology
from Google to distribute ads on the buy side, on
the cell side, and do ad placement, so it's now
a hindrance when they wanted to ask us, have us
demonstrate the keystrokes as a hindrance to do in business
with us. But the long and short of it role
with us, we bring solutions to the table and what
we get back is pummeling up questions. And we even

(42:03):
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 really
good at hiring black people to do create it. That's
not media where the bulk of the money is, but
it's also comes with hooks that require you to distribute
media later and pay for the production, or they'll pay

(42:23):
you to capture your content and then run it on
someone else's platform where the money is being made. And
this is consistently across five to six of the major
holding companies and the brand specifically, and the line share
of the money we get is from the relationships that
I've cultivated through the ELC have been a member for
almost fifteen years, where one or two black executives take

(42:44):
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.
I've given speeches where I've said to people, I'm not
doing a meeting with the d EI person because the
d EI person and the foundation person. I guarantee you

(43:08):
when Discovery, Warner Brothers, or Disney or Comcast, when they
are negotiating the upfronts, they are not meeting with the
d EI 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 introduced it. I'm like, why
am I talking to the person running y'all company foundation.

(43:30):
I ain't here for a grant. As a former d
EI 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 was my point. Companies see us as social justice
as something that they're doing as a favor to us,
instead of charity as charity, instead of respecting us as

(43:54):
businesses as saying this is a business move that we
need to do. We need to reach black Audio and
says we need to reach that one point six trillion
dollars that we spend per year. But they don't see
it is 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

(44:14):
same black consumer was 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
Democratic side, without black women are the highest vote vote
turnout folks for Democrats. Black men are number two. Yet
you have to deal with white ad agencies and white

(44:35):
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, right rolling. I mean when you would

(44:55):
to talk about horror stories, you know, on the emost
historic campaign, which was a well run campaign. It was
actually some good people on the Obama campaign. So I
wanted to start it 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 twelve states.
We put together rings of data to justify what we

(45:18):
needed for budget consideration, and our data came back saying
that we needed twenty six million dollars. They came back
with a budget of ten million. I said, okay, well
here's my data for how I can justify twenty six million.
How can you justify the ten 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,

(45:40):
he's raised more more than anybody has an a political campaign.
So shouldn't 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 RP process, but all
of the black consultants have to go through a sham

(46:01):
RPE process, and then they'll pick one that you know,
they've decided they wanted 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 campaign since two thousand and four
and every cycle it's been that way. But note the
last time we've had a national campaign manager I believe

(46:24):
was the Al Gore's campaign and that was Donna Bizil.
We haven't had a national campaign black campaign manager or
anybody over 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 changing of the guard with the D Triple C.

(46:44):
So we hope that there will be, you know, some
better opportunities coming up in twenty twenty four. But we
know we got to battle on our hands. I call
you every election cycle at the last minute with a
few crumbs, saying rolling, can you put this up on
behalf of the client. I don't even ask you what
matures you're gonna give me back. I just knew I
need to give you some money because I got to
do the other black media outlets. That's exactly what happens,

(47:07):
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 they said we're doing business with
rolland 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 answered the
question once and then they sent a second question. Then

(47:29):
they answered again. I said, well, by the third time,
I said, what the hell am I being vetted again?
So I call the client. The clients 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 while y'all aware
that he hits a segment on the show called Crazy
as White People, and the executive said, am I on

(47:49):
it and said, we're doing the deal with Rolland that's
how the deal got got done, but the agency blocked it.
I had another agency very silly that was like, oh,
this company wanted to do a campaign quickly. This agency
wall nor. Our process takes a very long time. And

(48:10):
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 don't they should not
be controlling your dollars. That's why we go direct to companies.
That's why when Byron Aller suit, he said, I'm ignoring
the agencies because if the only way we as black

(48:34):
owned media are gonna move forward is it 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're
not me. I'm not even Urban One or Black Enterprise

(48:58):
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

(49:22):
are they basically have imposed economic apartheide against us. And
then it's like, oh, we'll do one and two percent.
When I come back, we're gonna talk about that one
or two percent thing. And let me show you we
talk about numbers, what that looks like. You're watching the
special edition of Rolling Back Unfiltered on a Black Star network.

(49:53):
Next on the Black Table with me, Greg car we
feature the brand new work A profess So Anti 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 shouldn't. Professor Porter and doctor Flipia Watkins,

(50:14):
our Legal Roundtable team, join us to explore the paper
that I guarantee is going to prompt a major high
void in our culture. You crystallize it by saying, who
are we to other people? Who are African people to others?
Governance is oward thing. Who are we to each other?

(50:36):
The structures we create for ourselves, how we order the
universes African people? That's next on the black table. Here
on the black start name. A lot of these corporations
are people that are running stuff push black people if
they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it

(50:57):
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 your people that are doing this, or
I gotta be a gangster, I gotta shoot, I gotta sell,
I gotta do this in order to do it, and
it becomes a cyclable when someone comes around is making
another Oh we don't you know, they don't want to
push them to put money into it. So that's definitely
something I'm trying to fix. Two, it's your show. Those

(51:17):
other avenues, you don't gotta be rapping. I'm gonna be
a ball player. It could be from the country scene,
can be an oppersing, or you can be a damn whatever.
You know, I don't trying. The different avenues not as possible,
and it's hard for people to realize that's possible. To
someone done. Hi, my name is Latoy Luckett. Joe's your man,

(51:43):
Dianco from Blackest and you watch Unfiltering, they woke. All right, folks,

(52:15):
Welcome back to Rolling by the Unfiltered on the Black
Start Network. It was a couple of years ago when
those of us in a 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 began to see announcements made. Here was an example

(52:36):
here where one of the largest agencies, Group M announced
that twenty companies committed to spend at least two percent
of their total annual media budget in black owned media.
Through their Media Inclusion initiative, and so a Group M,
of course is owned by WPP, that's the holding company.

(52:59):
And so uh in those companies were AARP. Uh In fact,
y'alla may not realize this. If AARP, if they broke
out their black membership as a stand alone organization, they
would be the largest black organization in America, more than
two million. So you got AARP, Adidas, Citizens, denn Door,

(53:20):
Dash Ferrara, General Mills, that's Serial y'all, Loreal USA, Mars Candy,
MJ Entertainment, Mens Coon America, maker of ragou Netslee Number
seven beauty company, pernod Recard, Farmer Right, maker of Nature
Made vitamins and supplements, RHEM, Target, Tyson Foods, Uber and
uh WW International Weight Watchers. Folks, Uh, you're talking about

(53:44):
significant amount a number of brands there. But some of
the brands talked about they were going to be doing
let's says a five percent. Well, the folks at Group
M said that they these they are more companies that
have actually signed on, they've actually seed they're seeded their goal.
But it was interesting I reached out to the same thing.
So you take publices. They made some announcements as well

(54:06):
what they were doing. And so I emailed them and
they talked about how how great things were going. And uh.
In one of the emails that I received from Lisa Torrez,
she talked about the work that they're doing with HBCUs
and Aspired TV. I responded back, a, Lisa, Aspire is
not black owned, they're black targeted. Okay uh, And so
reached out, reached out to them again. IPG uh their

(54:30):
major company. They announced same thing that old Uh right here,
IPG Media Brands commits to let's see here, commits to
invest at least five percent in black owned media by
two twenty three. Where's the money? And y'all, where's the money?
I keep hearing two percent and four percent and five percent?

(54:53):
Where's the money? All of these different companies, Coca Cola
and McDonald's. I can go on and on and on.
Folks made an announcement. 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

(55:14):
is the ms of messy buck and go Okay, so
I don't want to let's see here, I don't want
to show email. I'm just gonna read it, don't show
my iPad. In twenty twenty one, we Players to target
we Players to spend five percent of our annual media
budget with black owned media companies by the end of
twenty twenty two weeks, we exceeded that goal and forward
successful partnerships with black owned media platforms, including Revote in

(55:37):
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 and 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

(56:00):
five percent of our angle media budget with black owned
media companies. I then responded, what's your angle 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 two million, two billion dollars on marketing advertising?
What does five percent look like? Okay, same thing. Other companies,

(56:23):
Group M, Publicists, IPG. All these companies are literally was
parting to me saying, hey, we can't reveal the numbers.
Here's a 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 a deal. All of these companies and ad agencies

(56:44):
got lots of attention where 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 said that every single one of these companies
be transparent, because here's the deal. Todd Cliff Randy. We

(57:07):
also dropped by Melody's Van Cooper owner the only black
on radio station in the Chicago w b O n
IF the company is called me and said rolland 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 two percent,

(57:30):
four percent to five percent. I'm trying to figure out
where the money at get them, Uncle Road Road, get them.
I'm trying to find out where the buddy is. Cute.
I would love for you to put that graphic up
from a group in because of they committed to twenty

(57:52):
was that twenty brands? Look at THEE brand and I'm
told that more than twenty someone remained 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

(58:13):
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,
you had them before, which is a ARP. So I'm wondering.
These agencies have so many people working in them, doing

(58:35):
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.

(58:58):
When we started this after George Floyd, right, I asked everyone,
is this a moment or movement for you? 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

(59:18):
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. Ye, look right, I
really appreciate this conversation. I'm gonna show you this right here.
All right. So Walmart put out this statement May twenty first,

(59:42):
twenty twenty one, 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 four percent next year, and that figure will continue

(01:00:03):
to grow. Okay, So when I'm reading this story and
I'm going through the numbers here, I saw one hundred million,
two hundred million, So I'll start going, okay, well, who's
getting it? I'm gonna tell y'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.

(01:00:27):
We started with Walmart, then it told to go to Publicist.
Then we went to another unit in Publicist. There's another
unit in Publicist. We talked to him about our Juneteenth
and Juneteenth initiatives, our Black History Month initiatives. Went to
the whole deal zero. Now here's a deal. There is
no other black owned media outlet that has a twenty

(01:00:49):
for our 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, well, let me, let me
say where the money at and whole time that list
put it up again. The only so the only money

(01:01:13):
we got from all of those clients is from Target
that did not come from the agency. That's because I
was hitting lacial war directly at Target and the relationship. Todd,
you know this true and that y'all have a situation
so that agencies are necessarily giving us dollars. It's the

(01:01:34):
clients telling them you're going to give them money. Todd,
go ahead. Yeah, So what's interesting And I don't want
to make this about Group M, and we know that
Group M form relationship. I'm gonna everybody that they formed
a relationship with Carlos at OZ, they formed a relationship
with Group Black. They have a strategy of partnering with

(01:01:55):
who they've decided was group was black owned media. We
shouldn't do a lot of work in the creative side.
We also see some action at DENSU where they actually
did some really positive things by paying us in thirty
days and the work that we have with Group M
and others. They just told us the average receivables in
one hundred and twenty days. The three accounts we have

(01:02:16):
their Walgreen, CDW and Target came from relationship that we form.
So buying large. What I find rolling 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 conference relative media.

(01:02:37):
So it's not about performance, it's not about delivery. And
I like what my friend Buyer lights to say. If
the number is thirteen fourteen percent of the country and
you owe us from actually putting us in economic genocide
for the last seventy five years of media, then we
should be looking at fifteen percent. So we stick to
small numbers and we don't come anywhere near them. And
we're in businesses rolling that is a data business. This

(01:02:59):
is what these companies door living. They measure everything. Except
when I look across the board, I know this is
a problem managed by black people, two 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 company policy, do

(01:03:21):
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 is under owned media
companies account for eight percent of our total annual media
budget in North America by twenty twenty four. The diverse
owned the media company commitment is part of our larger
plan towards the more evolved, an inclusive approach supporting minority

(01:03:42):
owned media companies and partners. The five hundred million over
five years is part of our plan to increase spending
with black owned enterprises. Of course 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 out the agency. That's by going direct to
Coca Cola and now we sold. So we got money

(01:04:04):
from Cocola in two twenty one, two twenty two. So
FO twenty three, 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 den Su Den Sue, You
mentioned Ozzie. Den Sue had a three year partnership with

(01:04:27):
OZI a three year partnership. So if somebody tells me, oh,
we don't do and we don't do multi year deals,
what the hell was that three year partnership with Ozzie,
which we now know was fraudulate numbers from Carlos Watson.
So what I'm trying to get people understand, everybody who's watching,
when you also do multi year commitment, I now can

(01:04:48):
hire people over the next year because I'm projecting my revenue.
If you if you come to me, I told General
motors this. I'm not happy with a single year, al
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

(01:05:12):
staff as opposed to damn new year. Let's see what
the hell comes in and now I'm in survival mode.
What I can keep telling y'all, I'm tired of black
owned media being in survival mode versus thriving mode. And
that's why we're having this conversation. So I'm gonna go
to a break, We're gonna come back pick up this

(01:05:33):
as well. I'm gonna share some more responses that I've
gotten from these agieses and companies where everybody's saying they
meet their goals. Don't nobody want to release no numbers.
Though you're watching rolling my unfiltered Black Sudden network Hatred

(01:05:59):
on the Street, a horrific scene white nationalist rally that
descended into deadly violent White people are losing their das
as a naggory approach. Trump mob storms the US capital.
We're about to see the lives or what I call
white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this

(01:06:20):
country who simply cannot tolerate black folks the voting. I
think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denials.
This is part of American history. Every time that people
of color and nada progress, whether real or symbolic, there
has been the Carold Anderson at every university calls white
rage as the backlashes, as the wrath of the Proud

(01:06:42):
Boys in the Boogaloo Boys America. There's going to be
more of this Proud would have done. This country is
getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because
of the fear of white people, the fear that you're
taking our job, they're taking out our resources, you're taking
our women. This is right. We're all impacted by the culture,

(01:07:17):
whether we know it or not, from politics to music
and entertainment. It's a huge part of our lives. That
we're going to talk about it every day right here
on the Culture with me for Raji Muhammad only on
the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Gavin, Hey, what's up

(01:07:38):
the autist? Your boy Jacob Ladimore And you're not watching
Roland Martin right now? So, folks, this was a response

(01:08:03):
I got from McDonald's that they said, we increased our
total US systemwide advertising investment ambition the fifteen percent with
diverse owned media by the end of twenty twenty four.
In twenty twenty two, increased our investment with several black
owned media partners including Essence Ventures, Blavity, Revote, pot Digital,
and others, and also entered a multi year Endeavorence with

(01:08:23):
three black owned media companies to help scale and sustain
their businesses a long term. Also developed a diversity you
can go to show this you can go to show it,
developed a Diversity Marketing Advisory Council comprised to seven executives
of diverse owned media organizations, including three black executives. That's
from McDonald's. I reach you Coca Cola again. I'm going

(01:08:43):
to reach in a second proctor and gamble before I
do that. Randy, you wanted to say something because you,
as a d EI expert, you're listening to the language
in these statements, right, I mean just the language that
is you saying responsibility. We have a responsibility to do
this work. It's not a responsibility, it's a business decision.

(01:09:04):
If black consumers are spending the money we are one
point six trillion dollars 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 there talking about

(01:09:26):
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 twenty twenty one to twenty one
twenty two. We are attract to double the gain to

(01:09:48):
twenty two twenty three. Laid out the things that they
have sponsored. They mentioned the various different platforms Black Enterprise, Ebony, Essence,
TV one, Urban One, National Association, Black own Broadcasters, Bounce,
Black Doctor, Upscale A you are in more. I ain't
see a Black Star network there. And then of course
there's a different events. But here I'm going back to

(01:10:10):
the basic thing here, Cliff, it's a numbers game and
it's a pr game. This is what I mean, because
if this is just not just this is all the
different companies, nobody wants to say what the two percent represents.
Are you are you're spending up because if you're spending
a billion dollars on advertising and you're promising two percent

(01:10:30):
that being black owned media should be getting twenty million dollars,
if you're spending three billion, I get perfect example, Cliff.
We have been meeting with PepsiCo. Guys, pull the Quibby,
pull the Quibbi graphic up. Okay, this is a perfect example.
These are some of the twenty five advertisers that gave
Quibby one hundred and fifty million dollars and bought out

(01:10:52):
their entire inventory PEPs before they even launched, before the
impressed goal. Pepsi Coort is one of them. We've been
meeting with PepsiCo for two years. I sent an email
or 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

(01:11:14):
the deal. I know black folks drink Pepsi. PEPSI can't
say Rolla's not brand safe. When I've done three years
with a deal with Cocacola, your partner, Pepsi and Coke
do have pouring rights deal with HBCUs And so I'm
sitting here, I gotta ask the question, PepsiCo, how do

(01:11:34):
you give Quibby 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 here because I need people to
understand numbers. The National Urban League, Mark Maria wasn't here

(01:11:58):
I tell about it has an initiative with Pepsi Pepsi
Foundation to stand up black restaurants. It's a five year initiative,
ten million dollars. PepsiCo has an initiative to drive one
hundred million in receipts to black owned restaurants over five years.
The problem is you can't measure. It's a promo code.
Who told me that one of the black restaurant folks

(01:12:19):
on the committee. Now, imagine if PepsiCo gonn go to
your next melody. Imagine if PepsiCo said we're gonna spend
we're gonna do five percent of our marketing budget with
black owned media. Based upon our research, PepsiCo spends about
three billion a year on marketing. That's a hundred and
fifty million. That means over five years, black owned Media

(01:12:41):
will get seven hundred and fifty million. Which one is
bigger the five ten year meta initiative with the Urban
League one hundred million in receipts the black restaurants or
the seven hundred and fifty million. Those are game changing numbers. Cliff,
then Melody. That's how that's what we're talking about here.
That's creasing the multiple, allowing us to build, not remaining small. Cliff,

(01:13:05):
the role and whatever. I'm out pitching Jeff and TV
and we're growing Screaming video network. I used the Quippy
example and everybody gets uncomfortable, But I opened up the
meeting with the Quippy example just so they'll know that
I know so I know what they're capable of doing,
and I know what they want to do. That's why
this is called a media investment. When you can enter

(01:13:27):
into a long term partnership with a platform, it allows
for our platforms to scale. So they were going to
make and then basically a media investment in Quibby and
Quibby failed. They could make a long term investment in
your platform, in my platform and others and allow us
who have proven track records, who have data, who have

(01:13:48):
been around for a number of years now to do
the same thing and make that investment. So as I'm
pitching it now, I'm going beyond spots and dots. Yes
we have data. We have global data because we're global
fue and 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

(01:14:10):
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 less, the agencies run the shower melody, go ahead.
I think he's one hundred and ten percent correct. Not
only that, when you are finding now they're saying that

(01:14:32):
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

(01:14:52):
us that are on this phone who own these assets right,
who may be independent, may be more niche or smaller.
We can team to get overlooked. So really the scale
has not changing. You gotta 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 gonna give you a perfect example,

(01:15:14):
because that which cannot be counted cannot be measured. Right,
blue cross, blue shield, I'm thinking about. I'm in the
third large, I'm in the city with these big companies. Right,
give you a perfect example. They spend fifteen million dollars
in local advertising in Chicago, fifteen million. I got zero zero.

(01:15:39):
They got a black president, they got a black chair,
that board. They sit me all around for one year,
rolling trying to connect on a proposal. I gave them
that covered both of my talks, my radio stations, my
Spanish station, and my Black station. Might have been three
hundred thousand dollars. They become so eric and they come

(01:16:00):
back and they said, what we'll do is we want
to test case you with twenty thousand dollars. They took
my three hundred thousand dollar proposal and they made it
twenty thousand dollars. 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, you're competing with

(01:16:23):
for PEPSI, You're compete with Urban League, You're competing with
the National Action Network. We are only only group of
people who compete with our social organizations. We have to
stop talking about that. This has been mentioned several times tonight. Tonight.
This is not about social justice. This is somewhat about

(01:16:43):
social impact. It's about investment. Call it what you call
it for the white people, it's me. It's investment. Just
making it. Stop doing charity with us, stop it. I
see you over the amen corner. I'm not just saying
amen rolling. You know, there's budget for social impact and diversity,
and I've never seen it above five hundred thousand dollars.

(01:17:06):
It's for buying tables and giving big checks out. There's
a whole other 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 limit. But the conversations I'm having, they've never gotten

(01:17:27):
the 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 beings
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 Christall and they're strewing over our good

(01:17:48):
friend Kanye with his Jess and the economic impact was material.
So at the end of the day, all of this
stuff we're talking as noise until we yield and start
building our one point six trillions of impact and cost
one or two percent 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

(01:18:10):
hired the agency. The work agency means they've worked 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 spend a two
billion dollar campaign with two black candidates, and you offered
twenty five thousand dollars to roll them and go on

(01:18:30):
the road, and you and you have to boycott to
get that number to seventy five thousand. 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. It was like twenty five thousand for one campaign,
twenty five thousand from the other. And I just want
y'all to know Melody probably didn't do it the way

(01:18:51):
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 y'all can
keep y'all fifty thousand. I said, well, you're not gonna
ask me for a ground game. You wanted me on

(01:19:12):
the road, you wanted me digital ads, you wanted all
this sort of stuff for twenty five thousand each. When
I when Sinclair Television last year did three hundred and
forty million dollars in political advertising. And you think I'm
gonna go out there and be up and be up
for fifty thousand in two states, You're gonna lost your

(01:19:35):
damn mine. And yes, I sent that text to the campaigns,
to the Agency, to Jamie Harrison, to ten Congressional Black
Caucus members and told them, ain't nowhere in the hell
that's gonna 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 I'm gonna be

(01:19:56):
come back. I'm gonna pick up on Melody's point about
civil rights over zations. And I said to them they'd
got to stop accepting small checks and somehow think that's
benefited in the black community when you bypassing hundreds of
millions of dollars and we can be getting in other areas.
And what did doctor King have to say about this? Here?

(01:20:18):
He told us of April third, nineteen sixty eight, I'm
gonna show it to you. You're watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered
on the Black Star Network. I'm doctor Jackie here on

(01:20:39):
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, and
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 authentic self, no matter the room that you're in,

(01:21:02):
discovering the true you and the culture around you. That's
next On a Balanced Life on a Black Start network,
we 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 and a lot of stuff that we're not getting.

(01:21:25):
You get it, and he spread the word. We wish
to plead power 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 ours. So please support

(01:21:45):
us in what we do. Folks. We want to hit
two thousand people fifty dollars this month, waits one hundred
thousand dollars. We're behind one hundred thousand, so we want
to hit that. Y'all. Money makes us possible. Checks some
money orders go to Peter Box Files to the one
ninety six Washington DC two years two or three seven
zero one ninety six hash afters dollar sign Art m
unfiltried paypalas R Martin unfiltried, bevinmo Is art m unfiltered,

(01:22:08):
zeal is rolling at rolling s Martin dot com. Hey,
I'm Dottie, simple, what's up. I'm Lance Gross and you're
watching Roland Martin unfiltered folks. The folks have Verizon hit

(01:22:50):
me and they said they they're gonna be reporting on
their goals annually. They're releasing their twenty twenty two results
in the coming months. And I told you so we're
sitting here hitting all these from people. We hit the difference.
So just so you know, Group M responded to US.
IPG agency has not responded. Publicists responded to US. Omni

(01:23:11):
Coom has not responded to US. Havas has not responded
to US. And so do understand. I'm gonna 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 an American
Games that I'm gonna get that money. Now. I need

(01:23:32):
people to understand. Doctor King understood everything we're talking about.
April third, nineteen sixty eight, Mason Temple, before he was assassinated.
He lays out in a forty three minute, sixteen second speech,
really the blueprint for Black America moving forward. Too many
black people who only hurt the mountaintop part totally have

(01:23:55):
ignored what he said earlier in the speech. He actually
referenced Reverence see Jackson Senior when he talks about responsibility
of Black America holding companies accountable who get our money
for products but do not have reciprocity play it. And
our attender called far withdrawing economic support from you. So

(01:24:30):
as a result of this, we're asking you tonight to
go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca
Cola in mentis. Go by and tell them not to
buy sealed test milk, tell them not to buy what

(01:24:58):
is all the bread Wonder brand and what did other
bread come to? Jesse tell him not to buy Hart Bread,
and Jesse Jackson has set up to Now only the
garbage men have been feeling pain. Now we must kind

(01:25:22):
of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because
they haven't been found out hiring policies, and we are

(01:25:42):
choosing them because they can begin the process, are saying
they are going to support the needs and the rights
of these men who on track, and then they can
move ontown downtown and tell me a load to right now.

(01:26:03):
One of the most one of the reasons they were
so successful Operation bread Basket and the idea they got
the doctor King got for Reverend Leon Sullivan. Martin Depp
was a white passed out of Chicago, was on that
comedian in Chicago, and I referenced this book numerous times.
It's called Operation bread Basket and Untold Story of Civil
Rights in Chicago nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy one.
And what they did is what we're doing with this show.

(01:26:24):
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 they gotta start doing. They didn't
just say hier black people. They told companies deposit money
in black banks. They told them higher black companies when
it came to contracts. They had a very detailed strategy

(01:26:47):
in doing it. Doing so now depth rights. The greatest
failure foe of bread Basket was that they did not
do proper follow up. They had announcements of mus but
they did not come back in terms of forcing them
on the accountability part. What I've said the civil rights organizations,

(01:27:07):
you don't let companies come and give you five hundred
thousand dollars and you don't have a racial index. You
don't have them come to you and you say, 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

(01:27:29):
Fargo was a big presenter of the NAACP Image Awards.
That's great, but how much money that black consumers lose
in the housing crisis as a result of those practices.
Has Will's Fargo properly reinvested in the Black America? I
say the answer is no. We can go company by
company and we and I've said to the NAACP, to

(01:27:53):
the Urban League, to the National Action Network, you should
be making a higher level of demands to say, if
y'all one hours of approval, it has to mean multiple
millions and not just sponsoring an event. Terrell Whit is
the CEO of liquids sol An Agency out of Atlanta, Terrell.
We've talked about this numerous times about what's happening with

(01:28:16):
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 a minuscule. It is small. Yet
we see white company, white media companies right right now.
The upfronts are going on by June. By June, eighty

(01:28:41):
percent of the three hundred and twenty two billion dollars
almost four hundred billions spent annually will be allocated and
black owned media will be virtually nonexistent and at eighty percent.
And then the second wave is in September, and so
the money that we get typically what is in the
scatter market when they go, well, how much money we

(01:29:03):
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 thirty forty fifty thousand to spind Hey man, where
can I spend it? And it's like we've been looking
for y'all for the last DM nine months. Trell, Yeah,
You're exactly right. I mean, there's been a systemic issue

(01:29:24):
that we've dealt with for a very long time. I
think you know, as I listened to Doctor King and
you talked about the follow up with these mus 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

(01:29:44):
I watched the Grammys and some of these award shows
is as we celebrate fifty 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
in totally based off of our culture. It is a
global phenomenon that we don't own. So I look at

(01:30:05):
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 demonstrated

(01:30:26):
and ultimately impact chain so what you're saying and what
you're doing, it's 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

(01:30:48):
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 color, even you mentioned collective. That same speech

(01:31:10):
King King gave he talked about the power of the
black collective. That's grect. Oh wait, wait wait wait, come on,
control rule, let's go here play always I called our
external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. And

(01:31:38):
we are poor people individually, we are poor. When you
compass with white society and America, we are poor. Never
stop again that collectively. That means all of us together, collectively,

(01:32:05):
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, Rist Germany, France, I can named others. The

(01:32:28):
American Negro collectively is richer and most nations of the world.
We have an annual any come 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

(01:32:50):
right there if we know how to fool it. So Todd,
I believe what has to happen. I'm gonna g everyone's
comment on this is we have to move again as
it collected, because we've seen it. We've seen how the

(01:33:10):
agencies and the companies will pick off this group or no,
we're not gonna meet with y'all together. We're gonna 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 an important role. And I actually shouted

(01:33:30):
out Mark Pritchard from Procter and Gamble when they made
a commitment of five hundred million dollars to something called
Group Block 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 Roller, we have

(01:33:52):
to deal with the reality of the least s affordable
negro to quote my friend Byron again, and whoever that is.
Whether it's an average advocacy group, whether 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 rolling is us and understanding how this game works.

(01:34:15):
So the collective hath could 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, Acrotech is a huge event,
Essence is a huge event. You know Black Enterprise has

(01:34:35):
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 collected 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 a two percent and bar north to twenty percent
of most of these major brands. And that demand is

(01:34:55):
on our ability to say we're going to stop doing
what doctor King talked about, which is integrate myself 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 was that who was about trying
to protect their job without realizing you literally are screwing

(01:35:18):
black folks out of millions of dollars. I see you
over there with the amen melody, go ahead, go ahead.
The tokennized 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 we had
one sister who tried to jam up me and Todd

(01:35:38):
and we said, full were the reason you got hired.
Agency was nearly all white. We put them on blast.
She gets hired and she trying to tell we like,
how you think you got here? Go ahead? Right. They
make us so desperate that you have certain people who
will sell out their own people who will sell out

(01:35:59):
us getting an opportunity teacher making 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, you had a
grocery chain that was the white folks in the company
wanted to do a deal with y'alls, an HBCUs, And

(01:36:21):
there was an HBCU DEI person who were like, nah,
we've done enough for HBCUs. That's right. There was a
huge grocery chain here in Texas, and he said, we
already gave perie View a ten year commitment for some
scholarships forgetting that we're fifteen twenty percent 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.

(01:36:44):
And the big thing role 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 dan and
around it. But at the end of the day, they
can continue to do window dressing if we don't pull

(01:37:04):
in the economic power. And the thing I wanted to say, Roland,
my company is probably one hundred acts what the average
American company with one entrepreneur is a revenue basis, and
we're thankful for that. And because of that, Grammlin University
has benefited thirteen students and interns from the Gulf Coast
Atlantic Conference, which is a NAIA set of schools in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkatas,

(01:37:27):
and Texas. They now have paid internships and we're able
to broadcast their 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 at me and in four
years we've grown this to a three million dollar year business.
And guess what Black Engineering Company did the control room,
black lighting company, black set design, a black art black

(01:37:50):
the green screen was done by Black Drake Company. Right,
that's exactly what we do. But what and again we
can grow We've lost our twenty for our channel. We're
gonna be on three different distribution platforms by the end
of next month. We're talking to five others. The story
just came out today saying black people are underrepresented on
fast channels. We are creating a twenty four our black
news information network, but we cannot grow if we are broke.

(01:38:13):
I gotta go to a break. We come back next steps.
Everyone will weigh in on that. You're watching Rolling Mark
un tilted on the Black Star Network. A lot of
these corporations or people that are running stuff push black

(01:38:35):
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 your people that are
doing this. Or I gotta be a gamester, I gotta shoot,
I gotta sell, I gotta do this in order to
do it, and it becomes a cyclable when someone comes
around is making another Oh, we don't get you know,
they don't want to push the they put money into it.

(01:38:55):
So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix. Two, it's
just show those other avenues. You don't gotta be rapping
gonna be ball player, can be the country scene, can
be an oppersinger, you can need it them whatever you know,
I'm trying the different alvenue's not as possible, and it's
hard for people to realize as possible to someone done.

(01:39:22):
I'm doctor Jackie here on a balance. We 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. It's just a genuine people power movement. A

(01:39:43):
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

(01:40:03):
to cover ours, So please support us in what we do. Folks.
We want to hit two thousand people fifty dollars. This
month waits one hundred thousand dollars. We're behind one hundred thousand,
so we want to hit that. Y'all. Money makes this possible.
Checks some money boarders go a few box files to
the one ninety six Washington d C two zero zero
three seven dash zero one nine six had apples dollars
signed R m Unfiltried pay palace are Martin Unfiltered? Venmo

(01:40:26):
is far m Unfiltried zeal is rolling at Rolling s
Martin dot com. Hey, I'm Donnie Simp. What's up? I'm
lands Gross and you're watching rolland Martin unfilter. Hey, Okay's

(01:40:58):
book is phenomenal. And that, of course, where do we
go from here? Chaos or community? I mentioned Operation Bread
Basketball 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.

(01:41:20):
So the question, Cliff, when it comes to this issue,
where do we go from here? Roland? As you were
playing the morn luth King video, I always like to
go back to a Malcolm X quote and it says
the media is the most powerful entity on earth. There
is the power to make the innocent guilty and to

(01:41:42):
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 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 Alan

(01:42:04):
and your 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
spokespostion and we have to get beyond that and have
us again go in as a collective and make our

(01:42:24):
demands and then take those demands basically to our people,
as you said, and educate so that there is an
action plan. People are on the chap wondering what can
they do, and we 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

(01:42:46):
organizations in every city and nationally. Got it. So these
are the things that we have to deal with. Meldie,
you know, I am and As I've grown older, I
really have start studying Martin Luther King. So I so
appreciate how you put him as part of this conversation,

(01:43:08):
but I want you to think about something rolling. 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 had fallen out with the
American public, white folks. Who has done with him? You
want to know why? The money? As he started talking
about money, he started talking about money, right, And so

(01:43:31):
I've come to understand that his conversation some fifty sixty
years ago as the same conversation we're having now. 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 realized,
we've become teachers. When we go into these rooms. We

(01:43:52):
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 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 Yeah, I'm gonna give you guys a little bit

(01:44:14):
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

(01:44:35):
how can I build equity, how can I support how
can I create M and A opportunities within my community?
How can I raise funds? And the key here is,
and I ask God, what do we own? What industry,
what space, what product? Where is our ownership? And how

(01:44:56):
are we funneling that to our children and our children's
child 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.

(01:45:18):
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

(01:45:42):
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 in

(01:46:04):
centrofold over time you could begin to expand. But as
we stay dispersed, I feel we stay separated from each other,
and ultimately we don't be enough shifted change Randy. You know,
advertising agencies control image. That's what they're hired to do,
is to control a brand's image. And what I don't

(01:46:26):
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.

(01:46:48):
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, and 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

(01:47:12):
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 in our
image and not them. Yeah, there's a couple of things, Roland.

(01:47:32):
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 one hundred and one HBCUs.
I think thirty or so are on my platform, and
we represent seventy percent of where black people are. I've
never seen an HBCU in a white neighborhood. White people
love HBCUs. Most of them have ten twenty some fifty

(01:47:54):
HBCU initiatives and all it's about is paper checks and scholarships.
So when I talk about the 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 Walgreen, where we
want to drive traffic in the communities that they live

(01:48:14):
in with products from a company like Procter and Gamble
and represent a welcome map to folks because at the
end of the day, fifty percent of all advertising is
wasted and fifty percent 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

(01:48:34):
it consistently. So we have to build smart pilots rolling,
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 seventy years. So we have to demand that
they partner in a different way and get out of
the di business and get into the business of advertising

(01:48:58):
and delivering media and deliver in our audience where people
actually drive commerce transactions, because that's where at one point
six trillion violence shows up. Folks end doctor King's book,
Whether we Go from here a chaos or community? He
said that they're Herber said as many times. He said,
they're already structured forces in the Negro community that can
serve as the basis for building a powerful united front.

(01:49:20):
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 substitutive and the militant.

(01:49:43):
That's what he wrote nineteen sixty seven. This was his
last book, and it wasn't published for teen 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 already Pelt, his co founder, wondering what
I was gonna say today. They have all been worried

(01:50:06):
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 should 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

(01:50:32):
us the numbers, show us who's getting what. Literally, oh,
now rolling two of them rolling. You know you know
that we can't reveal who gets what. Why not if
you want us to actually believe if you're hitting the goals,

(01:50:53):
be transparent. Because you demanded I be transparent with my numbers.
You demanded I be trans parent when it comes to
your metrics. The same thing must apply. Because I'm simply
sitting right here at eight to one, I'm over time
with this. But at eight to one on March first, two,

(01:51:14):
twenty three, I am unconvinced that all of these agencies
and 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 in marketing, and your commitment is five percent what

(01:51:36):
the money at because guess what, ass can't eat all
of it? Urban one can't eat all of it Black,
it can't eat all of it. And if I actually
had to start naming companies, y'all, they're really only five
major Black owned media companies. Urban one as his communications

(01:51:59):
Black have an E Black enterprise. That's four ty. Who
would you say is the fifth? I say, I'm Urban
Edge Network. Okay, you got Urban Edge, you got revolved,
three hundred and three million devices, Okay, you got revoked. Okay,
that's that's now we have the six. All right, y'all.
We ain't talking about a lot of companies here, all right.

(01:52:23):
I know for a fact there's nobody in our space
a million YouTube subscribers, one hundred thousand dollars of an
app on three major platforms from twenty four hours streaming channel.
So who are you spending the money with? I'm confused,
where is the money going and how much? When folks

(01:52:44):
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 quibbing. What
do we do next? Here's what we do next, Black America.

(01:53:06):
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 a hundred and fifty
million dollars to Quiby before they launch, and we're gonna say,
where's our money? Discover, General Mills, T Mobile, Taco Bell,

(01:53:31):
Procter and Gamble, PepsiCo, ABInbev, Walmart, Progressive, Google, and Heiser Busch.
If you could commit a hundred and fifty million dollars
to a digital platform that had no metrics, no data,
no research, no numbers, all because Jeffrey Katzenberg launched it,

(01:53:57):
well the hill on that Hell can you deny w
O N has been there for decades? How can you
deny clips AD agency? How can you deny this platform?
Four years? I got four years of data, they had zero.
I need the folks watch you to understand, and you

(01:54:19):
cannot be innocent bystanders in this battle, because see, you
want your children higher. Pre COVID, we had two point
six million black owned businesses in America. Two point five
million had one employee you're an average revenue of fifty
four thousand dollars. That means we only had one hundred
thousand black owned businesses that we're doing that had more

(01:54:42):
than one employee. Ninety five percent of all black owned
businesses in America do less than five million dollars in revenue. Folks,
This is about scale. Now, I'm a close on this here, Stars, Showtime, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, Peacock,

(01:55:08):
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

(01:55:28):
to be on my network and my show, why is
it I never hear from your advertising people, discover on
I go down the line, all of these networks, Lifetime,
We Bravo, all of these folks advertise all over the place.

(01:55:51):
Star's got more black shows, more fifty cent shows than anybody.
But I never see the ads. But y'all love trying
to send your stars to come on the show. This
is what I'm saying. You gotta draw the line, and
I've drawn the line. I will not allow any black

(01:56:13):
celebrity from Showtime Hulu, Peacock, HBO, Netflix, Stars Own or
any other network to come on this show if they're
spending zero money. We got teen grand from Netflix because

(01:56:33):
I called him out on Twitter. That's it. We got
two and fifty thouand dollars. We're young, Your ruber can
for the census to put them on blast. Why should
I have to do that? Melody and Todd and Terrell
and we should not have to publicly call people out

(01:56:54):
to do what's right. Somebody told me, they said, well, man,
why are you always got it going off? I said,
why can't you do the thing quietly? We have. We've
met with publicist for two and a half years. I
know my show's met with group Him. We've met with IPG,
we met with Media Com, We've met with Omni coom.

(01:57:15):
You'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 with holding dollars and saying, oh
you're not brand safe. Well, I can create customized content.

(01:57:39):
I done it for SQ America, I done for Coca Cola,
done 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
gonna hit this every single day. Last night in Austin,

(01:58:01):
I asked Houston Tillison in their business school to launch
an accountability initiative to target all of these companies that
promised fifty billion dollars to Black America at a George
Floyd's death. I'm not 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

(01:58:25):
companies demanding how are you spending the money, Where are
you're spending the money, who you're spending the money with?
Because I am sick and tired of corporate America giving
us press releases and Instagram post in tweets. I'm tired
of Negro organizations giving them plaques and trophies for sponsoring

(01:58:48):
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 standing with us, will

(01:59:11):
not lead us, because only black business can lead this fight.
You should be allied 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

(01:59:32):
Motors when I met with them, I said, I don't
have to boycott everything. If I knock off one percent
of your market share, a bunch of y'all gonna lose
your jobs to all of these companies. We don't want
to have to go there, but if we have to,
we will. And trust me, if I got no money

(01:59:56):
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 will not praise

(02:00:19):
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.

(02:00:42):
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

(02:01:05):
as well. You should download our Blackstart Network app Apple
Phone and rud phone, Apple TV and rud tv, Roku
and was on Fire Tv, Xbox one, Samsung Smart Tv
also join. I'll 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 two million dollars to
this show, which is more than what a corporate America

(02:01:29):
has provided for us in advertising. Direct checking money orders
go to peel Box five seven one ninety six, Washington
d C two zero zero three seven days zero one
ninety six cash chap dollars signed, r M Unfiltered, PayPal,
R Martin Unfiltered, venmo is, R unfiltered, zeal Is rolling
at Rolling s Martin dot com, rolling at Rolling Martin

(02:01:49):
unfiltered dot com. Folks. I'll see you tomorrow right here
on the Blackstart Network. Oh, don't forget to give my
book White Fear, How the brownie of Americans thinking white
folks lose their minds Apple Phone and First Well all
of bookstores. Target downloaded from Audible as well. That's it.
I'll see you all tomorrow. Black Star Network is here,

(02:02:19):
a real old revolutionary right now. Cloud work this man
Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told.
I thank you for being the boys of Black America
rolling moments that we have. Now we have to keep
this going. The video looks phenomenal between Black Star Network
and Black owned media and something like CNN. You can't

(02:02:41):
be black owned media and be scaped. It's time to
be smart. Bring your eyeballs, hold your dig pull up
a chair, take your seat the black teeth with me,
doctor Greg car here on the Black Star Network. Every

(02:03:01):
week we'll take a deeper diet into the world we're
living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network.
I am doctor Jackie Ed Martin, and I have a
question for you. Ever feel as if your life is
teetering in the play and pressure of the world. It's
assistently on your shoulder. So let me tell you, living

(02:03:21):
a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on
Black Star Network for a balanced life. But doctor Jackie,
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

(02:03:43):
me for Roger Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network.
I'm Jubba Owens, American Wealth Coach, and my new show,
Get Wealthy focuses on the things that you're financial advisor
and bank isn't telling you what you absolutely needs. Another

(02:04:05):
to watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network.

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Roland Martin

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