ViacomCBS’ MTV Entertainment Group has announced the launch of a new initiative to boost the number of Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) and women-owned and operated production companies in the media industry.
The Group has committed to invest $250 million over the next three years in production to bolster the next generation of creative leaders and business owners. The initiative is one of the “first-of-its-kind” endeavours to generate more diverse content and provide funding, infrastructure, services and staff.
As part of this newly formed Studio, MTV Entertainment, whose portfolio includes MTV and VH1, will provide funding, production infrastructure, services and staff to foster new creative, formats and ideas that “will fuel the unscripted content needs of today and tomorrow”.
GENERATING NEW TALENT
MTV brought unscripted executive producers Lashan Browning and Adam Gonzalez in-house last year to pilot this initiative. And since then they have been producing and creating unscripted content for the Group. They will also form their own respective third-party production ventures with an equity investment made by MTV Entertainment, according to the media firm.
Browning began her career working for Spike Lee and went on to become an integral part of the start-up team for Oxygen, EP’d, the previous season of Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and Cartel Crew. Gonzalez executive produced VH1’s Teyana & Iman in addition to America’s Next Top Model and Mob Wives where he first worked with Nina L Diaz, MTV Entertainment’s President of Content and Chief Creative Officer.
NEW CREATIVE POWERHOUSES
“As a former showrunner, this endeavour is something very close to my heart,” said Diaz. “Having come up on the production side where this kind of pipeline didn’t exist, it is a great privilege to help launch a new generation of creative powerhouses into production ownership.”
MTV is widely credited for creating reality television. It launched The Real World back in 1992, which was one of the first shows to tackle critical issues of HIV/AIDS, race, gender and LGBTQ+ equity through real life characters. As a genre, reality TV is noted for its diversity and increasing roles for women and people of colour both in front of and behind the camera. This new initiative builds on MTV Entertainment’s founding legacy and takes it one step beyond the screen, with ownership opportunities for its diverse partners.
This announcement follows the Group’s commitment to a ‘Culture Code’ – a comprehensive diversity, equity and inclusion initiative (DE&I) – for its entire creative community, as reported.
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