Traditional news cycles were focused on ‘red and blue, and nobody was focused on Black’: REVOLT CEO

a Slowdown in ad sales has led to layoffs across the media industry with big companies like alphabet Spotify and Amazon starting the year with cuts Disney just yesterday announcing that it's laying off 7 000 workers and employees at Comcast NBC and MSNBC are staging walkouts as a result of layoffs so our next guest though running a media company that's seeing growth despite all these Macro headwinds for that we want to bring in De tavio Samuels Revolt CEO de tavio it's great to have you on set thanks so much for joining us today thank you for having me good to be here well we just laid out that it certainly is a very challenging environment for media companies right now your company though seems to be growing despite all of these headwinds how so yeah I think you have a couple of things one you have the unfortunate murder of George Floyd and once it happens you have lots of advertisers that come out and make commitments right 350 I think billion dollars committed to Black entrepreneurs black suppliers black media and so what we have on our side is Tailwinds but when you look on top of that what you you have is a Revolt which is an incredible company you're talking about the only black owned Media company with a global icon on top like Sean Diddy Combs we're one of the only video First Media properties that exist in the black owned media space and we are in partnership with hip-hop and so we always say in the same way that hip-hop dominated the audio space we believe that hip-hop is going to dominate the video space and so we have built the number one hip-hop platform in the world when it comes to the video space we are the home to the biggest conversations in Black Culture and Hip-Hop culture and we've created this incredible like expansive ecosystem for black creators who play in our world and the last thing I'll give you is just an example one of my favorite examples is we have a show called karisha please and every time karisha plays heirs she is top five trending on Twitter she has top five trending on YouTube She's number one on Apple podcast in the music category and then also number you know top five and apple podcast globally how essential is so social media for you when it comes to not just traditional media streaming media is social media the most important currency right now well social media is super important on a couple of ways one we know that black folks over index in their use of social media so if you're going to create a black owned Media company and you want to reach that audience you got to be deep in there so we're deep in everything from IG to Facebook to Tick Tock but the other thing is that we know there's an incredible way to not just promote your work but to drive people to see the longer form content that you're creating so social is an incredibly important piece of the pie for us when you talk about growth of Revolt growth of your network and one thing that you're doing you're invest testing in your news division you have plans to grow that where do you see the opportunity there at a time when so many peers out there so many of the larger networks are actually scaling back some of that division yeah look first we brought in an award-winning team to come do that Monique Chanel who's the head of Revolt black news is doing an incredible job we just brought on a new journalist our new anchor global news anchor Mara Campo four-time Emmy winning uh news journalist and where we see the opportunity that so much of the news was split into red and black I mean sorry red and blue and nobody was focused on black and so what are the issues that are important to black people as an example in December we just did an investigative journalism documentary on what we call the real thirst trap and so we go into places Mississippi Compton New Orleans looking at air pollution water pollution in these communities and the effect of black on brown black and brown people those are stories that nobody is telling and that's where we see the opportunity in the white space we started this discussion with you mentioning George Floyd what about Tyree Nichols what has that done for the niche that you are clearly taking advantage of and trying to create content for yeah so back to the importance of having a black news division with a black news perspective I think what it allows us to do is tell the story from a very different perspective from what you're seeing in other places where I'll say that I'm disappointed is where you saw advertisers kind of come to the Forefront with George Floyd they've been much more quiet around Tyree Nichols and again I think that is a function of them seeing it as something that they're viewing as black on black but that's not really what it is the problem that we have in this country is with cop culture right and so if you take the history back into policing there were these things called slave patrols they were out there capturing slaves there were absolutely black people who were there helping to capture slaves and so again the issue is not about the four or five people who got it done it's about cop culture in general and the systemic issues that that exist in that world you guys are about to turn 10 years old is there an enduring lesson that Sean Combs has taught you that's kind of how you've weathered how you've survived how you've grinded through this environment that Shawna mentioned on the introduction yeah Sean Combs has just look that that man is all about just being as disruptive as possible and so that's the lesson never rest on your laurels we have a show and we have a saying no sleeping in the trophy room so yes we're up you know two years we've been killing it and crushing it but we don't get to sleep in the trophy room we got to keep going and going and going I like that Bill Belichick as soon as he wins the Super Bowl he's on the plane thinking about it the next one exactly exactly exactly good to see you man that tavio Samuels Revolt CEO great to have you here in studio thank you for having me take care

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Length: 5min 19sec (319 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023