by Tavis Smiley
I felt I had done my due diligence after CBS told me “no” for the third time. My contract allowed me to produce and sell anything I wanted, so I called ABC. Diane Sawyer loved the piece. ABC bought it, and it aired on Primetime Live.
The show killed in the ratings, leaving in its wake a brandnew program CBS had been promoting in that time slot for weeks. The next morning, CBS executives reviewed the ratings and realized they had been killed by ABC’s Primetime Live.
Well … let’s just say … the stuff hit the fan.
What About Bob?
From what I gathered, Viacom executives had a few words with Bob Johnson who, in turn, cursed me out. My rebuttal? I had a valid contract that allowed me to produce independently. It wasn’t my fault Viacom didn’t review the fine print of my deal when it bought BET.
There was nothing Viacom could really do about it. But Bob decided to exercise his executive privilege and fire “uncontrollable” me. The official response was that my contract, which was due to expire in September—some six months away—was not going to be renewed.
I had been with BET for five years. My show was the most substantive of any on the network. When word leaked about my upcoming dismissal, all hell broke loose. Bob Johnson and BET were flooded with letters. People not only called Tom Joyner’s show to vent, they also called Viacom so much that they shut down the company’s switchboard. When then Viacom CEO Mel Karmazin came to a meeting in LA, he found himself confronted by a crowd of angry picketers demanding that he keep me on the air. Indeed, my abiding friend, Dr. Cornel West, helped to organize a small protest directly in front of BET’s corporate headquarters.
Bob, sensing how ugly the whole episode had become, decided he wasn’t going to wait until September. I received a letter stating that my contract was immediately revoked.
Thankfully, there was a clause in my contract stipulating that if I were ever fired without cause—which contractually they didn’t have—I had to be bought out.
I won’t divulge the amount, but I will say it enabled me to get into commercial real estate investing and to secure the building that houses The Smiley Group, Inc.
Move On!
Tom Freston—the entertainment executive who made MTV and Nickelodeon two of the most powerful cable networks in the history of television—was shocked, embarrassed, and angered when Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone abruptly fired him in 2006. The two had worked together for 19 years.
“When I got fired, I had a feeling of loss because Viacom had been a passionate, long-term relationship. But I got my balance back. I guess it’s like getting jilted by a girlfriend, a serious girlfriend. You move on,” Freston said.
When pushed into the unknown, Freston embraced it. Rejecting numerous offers from his well-connected friends, he wandered the globe, visiting Singapore, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand, Afghanistan, Rwanda, and the eastern Congo, where millions died in genocidal wars. He volunteered to help musician/activist Bono restructure his humanitarian organization, ONE, and his fundraising campaign, Product (RED).
Media mogul Oprah Winfrey campaigned hard to bring Freston onboard as she developed OWN (the Oprah Winfrey Network). When Freston signed on as a consultant to OWN, Winfrey defined him as her “business soul mate.” The new venture has rekindled Freston’s early passions similar to when he had joined a group of dreamers trying to start the MTV revolution. OWN, he told Fortune magazine in 2009, is about “empowerment and life purpose.” The new network is “as big an idea now as MTV was then,” he said. OWN launched in January 2011 with 13 million people tuning in, according to OWN CEO Christina Norman.
Had Freston not been fired, he might have missed the forward motion signal. When he delivered the undergraduate commencement speech at Emerson College in 2007, he urged the students to reincarnate themselves when necessary and not to worry about setbacks: “You will look back on setbacks and be grateful for the catalyst that came not a moment too soon.”
Being booted from BET was my catalyst. Sometimes, you have to get pushed or you may never leave. If I had not been pushed out, who knows how much longer I would have stayed. I was riding so high at BET, I might have settled for that opportunity and missed the chance to apply myself more fully.
My dismissal was undeniably public: Major networks and news magazines covered the story. I was self-conscious and devastated by all the media coverage. At the time, I didn’t realize it had played out in the best possible way. It created a kind of firestorm that I never could have sparked had I just resigned.
I always tell people, “Value is not what you think of yourself, it’s what others think of you.” You can’t confirm your value until it’s tested in the marketplace. If I were a can of Coca-Cola®, I may think my fizz is the best in the soft drink biz, but if I’m placed on the grocery shelf and nobody ever comes along to purchase me, I have no value. My value is determined by someone coming along, taking a swig, and agreeing to take me home—for a price. That’s value. I would have never known my true value if BET hadn’t placed me on the grocery shelf.
After I was officially let go, I literally had more than 30 offers within 24 hours—everybody called. Prior to being pushed out, I didn’t know they even knew my name, let alone were interested in working with me. And so I was knee deep with my lawyer and my staff sorting through all the radio, TV, and print offers.
In short order, I went from BET to NPR (National Public Radio). Talk about cross-over: I went from the blackest media network in the country to the whitest media outlet with my very own show. With this forum, I was able to talk to everybody—Black folks, white folks—everybody.
This can of Coca-Cola had value indeed.
A Lesson Before Flying
More important than the unfolding opportunities, the BET debacle solidified my resolve to never, ever be an “employee” again. Up until that point, I had never really thought about being an entrepreneur. After my termination, I vowed that I would never go back on television unless I owned the production rights. Today, I own everything. I often joke that when I awake in the morning and look in the mirror, it’s nice to know that all of my shareholders love me. PBS distributes my show, but I own the rights. The same rule applies to both of my radio shows from PRI (Public Radio International).
With the buyout money BET had to pay me, we purchased a headquarters for my holding company, The Smiley Group, Inc. Fortunately, I no longer have to sweat eviction notices. We started our own book publishing company, speaker’s bureau, and a music publishing company, among other enterprises. It doesn’t make sense to pay royalties to others for the music used on our shows. Now, we can create the music and pay ourselves.
Entrepreneurism isn’t for everybody. Ownership is. Whether you become an entrepreneur or not, take ownership, literally and figuratively. Rethink where you want to go, take control of your future, and experiment with the idea that you have the ability to structure your life and draft your destiny. And remember, content is king. In other words, he or she who controls the content controls the cash.
When director Woody Allen fired actress Annabelle Gurwitch, she turned depression and devastation into forward motion. Realizing she was not alone, she went out and interviewed the famous and not-so-famous—everyone from Tim Allen, Sarah Silverman, and Felicity Huffman to GM workers and her rabbi and her gynecologist. Gurwitch’s best-selling book, Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, & Dismissed, challenged readers to consider the possibility that being fired may be a disguised blessing.
As a guest on my television show in April 2010, Maria Bartiromo suggested that we use our moments of uncertainty to make ourselves adaptable to burgeoning opportunities:
“Use this time right now where you’re uncertain about your next move to make sure that you are positioning yourself as best as possible to where the jobs and the growth are right now and where they will be in the next ten years,” Bartiromo advised. We should also remember Darwin’s words, Bartiromo continued: “It’s not the fastest person; it’s not the s
martest person that will eventually win in the end. It’s the person that will be adaptable and flexible to change.”
Although Larry King, Tom Freston, Annabelle Gurwitch, and I, for that matter, experienced success after receiving our pink slips, happiness is not determined by money alone. In these times of mass displacement, the goal is to rekindle that American spirit of innovation. Embrace your own adventure. Define your own unique brand of success and sense of ownership.
I love the metaphor, “When you get pushed off a cliff, it reminds us that we have but two choices—flop or fly.”
My fervent hope is that this chapter serves as the wind to lift your wings.
CHAPTER 7
REMAIN DIGNIFIED EVEN
WHEN YOU’RE JUSTIFIED
It’s hard for me to judge James Willie Jones of Sanford, Florida.
Jones’s actions might have been justified. His 13-year-old daughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was attending a new school, Greenwood Lakes Middle School, and every day for a month had been terrorized by bullies. Police and media reports say the girl was pushed, poked, spat upon, and smacked upside the head and had her ears twisted. The family’s lawyer said the abuse eventually drove Jones’s daughter to an emotional breakdown and was reason enough to have her placed on suicide watch.
The last straw for the 42-year-old father came when his daughter told him someone on the school bus threw a liquid-filled condom that landed in her hair while the other kids laughed hysterically. The next morning, he stormed on the bus with his daughter in tow.
“Show me which one. Show me which one!” Jones shouted as he thundered down the aisle. The bus video camera captured Jones’s rage: “This is my daughter, and I will kill the (expletive) who fought her!” he bellowed.
Police arrested and charged Jones with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and disturbing a school function.
In an interview with CNN’s American Morning, Jones explained that he snapped when he heard about his daughter’s abuse on the bus:
“She finally opened up and told me what was going on … and from there, you know, being a dad just loving my daughter … and just loving all my kids, you know … [At] that point, my heart broke when I [saw] her standing there … [she] wasn’t going to get on the bus crying. And a dad is a dad. And I was going to be her protector that day.”
The actions of James Willie Jones weren’t at all dignified; you simply don’t threaten, curse, or harm children. However, considering the natural inclination of any good father to protect his child, his frustration and anger were definitely justified.
Bringing Out the Ugly
As I recounted Jones’s circumstances, my good friend, Dr. Cornel West, couldn’t help but smile at me perceptively. After all, he had been with me when I had used his sage words to comfort a diva in distress.
“Even when you’re justified, you have to remain dignified.”
We were having lunch at an upscale Los Angeles restaurant when we recognized a well-known celebrity who had become the entrée du jour in the blogosphere. It was reported that the entertainer spied her husband at a party, snuggled in a corner boldly giving “fever” to another woman. Allegedly, all hell broke loose, fisticuffs ensued, and the husband required stitches.
The media delight in propagating the foibles of celebrities. We’re fed the sensational tidbits but rarely the painfully human backstory or action that instigated the ugly behavior.
The public was horrified in 2007 when news spread that actor Alec Baldwin had called his 11-year-old daughter a “rude, thoughtless little pig.” In a phone message, the actor also allegedly threatened to fly to Los Angeles and “straighten you out.”
In an emotional mea culpa on ABC’s The View, Baldwin attempted to go beyond the headlines and explain his outburst. He and his ex-wife, actress Kim Basinger, were going through a nasty custody battle, he said. In earlier reports, Baldwin’s lawyer said Basinger had ignored a series of court orders granting Baldwin visiting rights and had contaminated the child to the point where she didn’t want to be with her father.
On The View, Baldwin said that he had grown frustrated with his daughter’s refusal to take his calls: “Obviously, calling your child a pig or anything else is inappropriate. I apologize to my daughter for that,” Baldwin admitted. “There’s nothing wrong with being frustrated or angry about the situation. But as people often do, I took it out on the wrong person.”
Actors, entertainers, and all those elevated to celebrity status are human, too. Often what’s exploited and exaggerated in the media is a reflection of pedestrian behavior. What man or woman blatantly scorned hasn’t felt the hair-trigger impulse (fortunately most often suppressed) to whop his or her lover upside the head? “Seeing red” isn’t merely a quaint metaphor.
The Internet speculations of the star’s fall from the stratosphere to the muddy ground must have contained an element of truth because the red-eyed, emotionally spent entertainer sat with a friend who seemed to be comforting her. Dr. West and I felt the need to go over and say something to ease her distress.
She graciously invited us to sit. We all understood that the details of the disgrace had become irrelevant when I interjected, “Even when you’re justified, you have to remain dignified.”
That one little sentence seemed to contextualize something for her. A spark of resonance flashed in her eyes before she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly.
Glancing over her shoulder, I noted Dr. West’s smile of approval. It was as if he remembered how much his short pronouncement had once meant to me.
Outside, Listening In
As a child growing up in an authoritarian Pentecostal household, I knew that cursing was strictly forbidden. I avoided the use of foul language until my sophomore year at Indiana University. That’s when I shared a house with some of Bobby Knight’s basketball players, who were just as foulmouthed as their coach. It seemed they couldn’t communicate with one another or me, even in jest, without an expletive as a punctuation mark. To get my point across to them in conversation, I found myself imitating their crude language.
The players got a kick out of me—the religious kid from Kokomo—who could debate with the best of them but managed to mangle curse words. Apparently, my cussin’ linguistics were way off, and they taunted me until I learned how to swear like a construction worker.
The habit stayed with me long after I left college. Not only did I have a cussin’ problem, I also had a temper problem. I could go from zero to 90 in a New York minute, especially after my career started to take off.
Sheryl Flowers was the propulsion behind my take-off. In 2001 she became my radio producer and the guiding force of my public radio career. When she passed away in 2009, after a courageous two-year battle with breast cancer, a part of my soul went with her.
If you’ve read about the legendary fights between Don Hewitt, the producer who created 60 Minutes, and correspondent Mike Wallace, you might have an idea of my relationship with Sheryl. We spent all our time together and, as producers and talent often do, we went back and forth all the time. She’d quit ten times and I’d fired her 12 times. But, at the end of the day, neither of us ever went anywhere. We created, argued, and loved with equal passion and forgiveness.
It was Sheryl who tried to corral my foul mouth. Over and over again she’d say: “Tavis, you’re talented, disciplined, dedicated, loyal, and organized, and you don’t mess around with your money. But there’s a chink in your armor. The thing that’s going to trip you up is all the cursing, screaming, and yelling you do when you get upset.”
To no avail, she counseled me about my temper. Sheryl insisted that I had to be more circumspect about my language. One day, she warned, I would curse out the wrong person at the wrong time and wind up paying a heck of a price.
Her prediction came true. But I had no idea that Sheryl Flowers would be that “wrong person.”
One morning we were in the NPR studio going at it. There was a technical glit
ch that should have been edited out of a pretaped segment that I kept hearing on-air. It happened one time too many, and I had had it. We were off-air, the studio doors were closed, and I was at my extreme—cursing, flailing my arms, slapping the wall, and pounding the desk—I mean, it was not my finest moment.
Unbeknownst to either of us, an engineer outside the studio could see us through the glass partitions. From his booth, the technician had the ability to turn on the microphone in our studio and record our heated conversation.
I knew nothing about this until the next day. The engineer turned the recorded argument into CDs and passed them all around NPR. One of those CDs made its way to management. I was called on the carpet for mistreating and cursing out an employee. To my rationalizing mind, my explosion was just another series of steps in the Sheryl and Tavis tango that we’d quickly get over. But to NPR management, it was serious enough to involve lawyers and to add a behavioral clause to my contract.
After the dust settled and I had endured the snickers, jabs, and suspect looks from colleagues who heard the tape, I decided to listen for myself.
I knew I had a foul mouth, but I’d never actually heard myself curse. But that day, sitting in the studio with my headphones on, listening to my voice, I was shocked beyond belief. The person who sounded like me was enraged and erratic.
That was it for me, man. I called Sheryl, apologized deeply, and promised to stop cursing. I couldn’t promise that the perfectionism that sometimes fuels my anger and disappointment about all things work-related would disappear, but I assured her that she would never, ever hear me curse again.
“Never?” Sheryl’s response reminded me of Chris Rock’s joke about Tiger Woods’s promise to never stray: “Tiger don’t say never; just say you gonna do your best!”
Sheryl simply asked that I do my best.
Listening to my raging, vulgar voice on that CD set me straight.
It’s been seven years, and I’ve kept my promise.