What took so long? “Empire” is finally getting a knock off series. from black media titan Radio One’s Cathy Hughes.
Hughes is calling her series “Cathy Hughes Presents “Media”– a soap opera about a black family with a media empire called JUMP — Jones Universal Media Productions. (Hughes’ maiden name is Jones.) They have a family company called Intrigue (the knock off of “Empire”).
And true to “Empire,” there’s a matriarch, and a family member returning from a stint in jail “ready to take their place in the family company.” That son, Jabbar, will fight his brother for control of the company, etc.
This could be the story of the radio and TV stations where Lucious and Cookie Lyon get their music played and promoted.
Here’s my note: did we ever think that “Dallas” and “Dynasty” would become the Shakespeare of the 2010s?
Anyway, you know Cathy Hughes’s real story, and that of her son Alfred Liggins III, would make a better soap opera. She is totally self made, inventing the “Quiet Storm” format on R&B radio in the seventies, then creating Radio One, then TV One, and turning her son into a media mogul. If you’re not black, you know nothing about them. But these two are incredibly important figures in the media business. Radio One has $1.4 billion in assets.
“Cathy Hughes Presents Media” is produced by Sheila Ducksworth, Susan Banks, Kevin Arkadie, and Mitchell Galin. Craig Ross Jr. is directing the pilot, written by Kevin Arkadie.
