Louis Carr is ensuring BET remains at the “cutting edge” of technology and the creator economy.
To those who know him well, Carr’s title doesn’t come to mind first, but rather, who he is at his core: a Black man from Chicago who is “authentically, unapologetically Black” year-round, with a deep appreciation for the Black community. This has informed his leadership as the current president of BET a role he assumed in December 2025. He has been with the company for 39 years.
“For the last four decades, a lot of people said that I have sold advertising. I don’t say that. I said I’ve educated corporations, white people and Black people, on the value of Black consumers,” Carr said at the 2026 AFROTECH™ Conference. “We have this thing at BET where we say, what Black people do today, the world does tomorrow. And we believe that in our core. That’s what I said I’ve done for the last four decades is make people really feel and understand that whether they are creative, whether they are in technology, understand the impact and the influence that you are having.”
Speaking about his personal legacy at BET, both individually and on behalf of the brand, Carr said it will center on community, culture and connection. Specifically, he said that vision will come through social platforms, live events, social impact initiatives and linear television, including the Soul Train Awards, which will be taped in Chicago this year.
Excellence and remaining at “the cutting edge” remain the gold standard. Carr also shared how BET is leveraging AI and the measures it is taking to ensure Black creators and communities remain at the forefront of the evolving landscape.
“We’re not looking at AI as something to sort of put anybody out of work. We don’t want to do that. We want to use AI to enhance the things that we’re already doing,” he explained.
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Examples he shared included using an AI app to assist with seating arrangements for the BET Awards, a process he acknowledged can typically take days. The technology also helped the team with finding individuals who had died within the past year for a memorial segment.
“There were more people that we had just forgotten,” he mentioned.
AI was also used to identify the “top 25 creator influencers in the Black space.” Carr noted one prominent name was missing from the list: Druski, who would be selected to host the 2026 BET Awards, which became the highest-rated BET Awards telecast on BET since 2019, according to a press release. The comedian has used social media to create skits and secured an exclusive multi-year deal with Netflix.
“We know we wanted to bring people who normally don’t watch television to television. We knew we wanted an overall younger audience. We knew that we had to show up a lot differently than what we had in the past. You have to be courageous enough to take risks. And here was a young man who had tons of followers, who clearly was creative, and we wanted to give him a shot. And clearly it worked out,” Carr said.
Carr also noted this year’s awards were a case study for influencers, with an estimated 120 invited the night before the BET Awards for a special red-carpet event, which he said is normally private.
“They could use their phones, their cameras to do whatever else, to capture content. Then the final thing is we did not air our pre-show on linear. We aired our pre-show on YouTube…it was a whole planned strategy around making the show younger, bringing people who normally don’t watch linear television to television, and that’s how we were able to be so successful,” Carr explained.
Carr’s embrace of the digital era also comes from personal experience. He said he had to adapt to social media firsthand when he launched his brand, Waymaker, a magazine, newsroom, live summit, podcast and community at the intersection of Black culture, business and purpose, according to its website.
“I didn’t have any money, so I really had to really embrace social media. There’s no secret to it…I hated social media,” he explained, then described his evolved mindset and left a note to the audience adding, “You’ve got to use your creativity and what you have at hand, and use your personality and your influence on the people around you. But don’t believe you don’t have any power because you do have power.”
