Robert L Johnson

Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson has formed a film company with Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Weinstein Co. to produce African American family comedies. The joint venture, called Our Stories Films, will be based in Los Angeles and have offices in New York, Weinstein Co. and Johnson's RLJ Cos. said Thursday. JPMorgan Chase & Co. will back the venture with as much as $175 million in financing. Johnson, who also owns a majority stake in the National Basketball Assn.'

Robert L. Johnson's rise to riches is one of those oft-told success tales in entrepreneurial circles. He was a lobbyist for the cable TV industry in the late 1970s when he persuaded communications mogul John Malone to invest in his idea for a television network targeted at African Americans. Thus was born Black Entertainment Television. Johnson sold BET to Viacom Inc. in 2000 for $3 billion, becoming the nation's first black billionaire.

Westwood-based home builder KB Home said Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television and chairman of RLJ Cos., was added as a director.

Robert L. Johnson is hobbling these days, recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon suffered in a Bahamas boating accident over the Christmas holidays. Many who know him are amused that the man who has ruled his business empire with a kind of raw competitive zeal is showing such unaccustomed weakness.

Robert Johnson, owner and founder of the Black Entertainment Television cable network, said Friday that he expects to launch the nation's first African American-owned movie studio by the end of the year. Johnson, whose BET Holdings is one of the most successful black-owned enterprises in the country, plans to produce black-themed movies for release in theaters as well as made-for-TV films for his cable network.

Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson on Monday sweetened his bid to take his Washington-based company private, offering $378 million, or $63 a share, for stock held by public investors. The offer by Johnson and longtime partner Liberty Media Corp., a unit of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., was accepted by the company's board but still requires approval by shareholders.