Key Points
- Paramount is phasing out BET+ starting June 2026, completing by mid-August.
- More than 1,000 hours of programming move to a BET hub on Paramount+.
- Paramount bought out Tyler Perry Studios' stake, secured through a 2019 deal.
- The buyout ends the last direct Black ownership stake in the BET ecosystem.
Paramount is shutting down BET+, the standalone streaming service it ran with Tyler Perry, and folding its catalog into Paramount+. The phase-out begins this month and is set to finish by mid-August 2026; new subscriptions have already stopped. More than 1,000 hours of BET+ programming — original series, films, and specials — will move to a dedicated BET hub inside Paramount+, with select titles also landing on the ad-supported Pluto TV.
What the deal actually moves
As part of the wind-down, Paramount bought out Tyler Perry Studios' minority stake in BET+, the equity Perry secured through his 2019 production deal. What changes is ownership: the buyout removes the last direct piece of Black equity inside the BET ecosystem, the network built as Black America's flagship cable brand.
Why ownership is the story
BET has not been Black-controlled since Viacom acquired it in 2001, and Perry's stake in the streaming spinoff was the final thread of founder-adjacent Black ownership attached to the brand. Folding BET+ into Paramount+ is, on paper, a routine consolidation play — a smaller service absorbed into a larger one to cut costs. But ownership decides which stories get made, how they reach an audience, and who captures the long-term value. A BET hub inside someone else's platform is distribution, not control.
The bigger frame
This lands as Paramount, fresh off its own ownership upheaval, keeps reshaping its portfolio — the same conglomerate that moved to acquire Warner Bros. earlier this year. For Black audiences and creators, the question the BET+ shutdown poses is the one ownership always poses: when the platform you were promised becomes a tab inside a bigger one, what exactly do you still own? The studio also signed Travis Scott's Cactus Jack to a first-look deal.
Source: Yahoo Entertainment
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