Remembering A Legendary Journalist: 5 Things To Know About The Founder Of Tony Brown's Journal Photo: YouTube screenshot
Tony Brown, 88, is a pioneer in TV programming for African American audiences. His long-running show on PBS, “Tony Brown’s Journal,” was on the air for 40 years offering thought-provoking and informative episodes for Black viewers.
Here are five things to know about the legendary journalist.
Brown, who was born April 11, 1933, in Charleston, West Virginia, was involved in the civil rights movement. In June 1963 he helped organize the “Walk to Freedom with Martin Luther King.” He was in the U.S. Army and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1959, and a master’s psychiatric social work in 1961 from Wayne State University.
In 1963 Brown began working at the Detroit Courier newspaper as a drama critic and worked his way up to city editor by 1968, according to Black Past. He began to get involved in TV and he took a job as public affairs programmer at WTVS, Detroit’s public TV station.
Brown produced the station’s first show for African Americans — “CPT,” or “Colored People’s Time.” He also hosted “Free Play,” another program targeting the city’s African American population.
In 1971, Brown was appointed the founding Dean of the Howard University School of Communications.
He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and a prominent Republican who believed in Black people empowering themselves economically.
While “Tony Brown’s Journal” was groundbreaking, it was years in the making.
In 1970, Brown joined PBS’s 2-year-old ”Black Journal” as producer and host. Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the show focused on political and social issues concerning African Americans. “Black Journal” had won Emmy and Peabody awards before Brown’s arrival.
When Brown came on board, he resonated with his controversial style and candor. He wasn’t afraid to tackle difficult topics and he boosted the show’s ratings. By 1971 the show began went from monthly to weekly.
For the 1973–1974 season, the CPB withdrew its funding of “Black Journal” and viewers were outraged, according to Black Past. CPB caved in and funded the show with reduced airtime. By 1977, Brown had negotiated a contract with the Pepsi Cola Company to sponsor the show.
Brown changed the program’s name to “Tony Brown’s Journal” and syndicated the show. It began airing in 85 cities nationwide. Brown initially raised $225,000 to underwrite the program for one season on public TV from Pepsi and by 1980, funding increased to $2 million. For a few seasons, Brown took the show to commercial TV but in 1982, he moved the show back to public TV. By the mid-’90s, Brown had increased his weekly audience to more than 5 million viewers, Black Past reported.
The show attracted higher white than Black viewership.
”We have three white viewers for every Black viewer,” Brown told The New York Times in 1982 at the New York City office of his company, Tony Brown Production. “Even dealing with our subject matter, we’ve been able to attract whites. You tell the story in its broadest possible aspect — that’s mass media.”
The show signed off in 2008.
Brown strove to encourage Black self-sufficiency, though at times he got pushback on the notion.
”I used to believe, when I started off in ‘Black Journal,’ that all Black people responded to the same stimuli,” Brown told The New York Times. “That is, that all of us believed if we unified and worked hard and collectively organized, we could have the freedom we wanted.”
Brown wanted a revolution in Black thinking, but he realized that would be a major hurdle.
“Well, I think I’ve learned that that’s not true. All Black people do not want to be free in the same political sense,” Brown said. “Many Blacks are pretty pleased with their condition. They have accepted oppression as normal. They say: ‘It’s not worth it in life to risk my mortgage and my ‘status’ to change this condition. I’ve learned to adapt to it.’ Some Blacks can’t adapt for whatever reasons, and they rebel against it in a variety of forms.”
He concluded, ”We’re not a monolith. I try to put in something for all segments of the population.”
“Tony Brown’s Show” was always ahead of the curve.
As early as 1970, 10 years before the ascent of Robert Johnson’s BET, Brown predicted that cable TV was the future for Black TV. He also advocated in 1996 for a computer to be in every Black home and took his show online that same year. For perspective, Yahoo! was launched in 1995, Medium reported.
“Tony Brown’s Journal” addressed topics from Black theater to the disproportionate rate of Blacks being diagnosed with cancer, interviewing controversial figures such as Imam W Deen Mohammed, a son of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
One episode, ”Crisis: Blacks Killing Each Other,” examined Black-on-Black crime. In another episode, Brown interviewed President Ronald Reagan on his “positions on tax exemptions for segregated schools, South Africa, equal employment, the Voting Rights Act, and the number of Black men and women working in high posts in his administration,” The New York Times reported.
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Brown had various ventures in addition to “Tony Brown’s Journal.”
In 1982, he launched “Black College Day,” in what was described as a one-man effort to save and support Black colleges. In 1985, Brown founded the Council for the Economic Development of Black Americans, a group that encouraged Black consumers to buy from Black-owned businesses.
Brown also hosted a syndicated radio show called “Tony Brown” on WLIB AM New York.
In 1988 when he released a cautionary film about cocaine abuse titled “The White Girl” that he wrote, directed, produced, and distributed.
Starting in the 1990s, Brown began writing several books on self-sufficiency and self-respect to African Americans, among them “Black Lies, White Lies: The Truth According to Tony Brown,” “Empower the People: A 7-Step Plan to Overthrow the Conspiracy That Is Stealing Your Money,” and “What Mama Taught Me: The Seven Core Values of Life.”
Brown, 88, is active on social media, selling and promoting episodes of his show and his book on his website and Facebook.
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