Former MSNBC anchor Carlos Watson allegedly duped celebrity guests by falsely claiming he had an A&E show

The New York Times

Over the past week, Watson has seen his Ozy media company melt down after The New York Times' Ben Smith revealed on Sunday that his fellow co-founder Samir Rao impersonated a YouTube executive during a conference call to secure funding from Goldman Sachs. In his latest reporting, Smith reports that Watson and Smith recruited people to work on The Carlos Watson Show, a daily half-hour interview show currently on YouTube that they said would be shown on A&E. The problem is A&E has nothing to do with the show. Yet the booker told celebrity guests -- from Andrew Yang to Terry Crews to Malcolm Gladwell -- that The Carlos Watson Show would be on A&E. An A&E spokesperson says A&E Networks had a prior relationship with Ozy, having broadcast a special produced by the company and hosted by Watson in 2020, but it said no to The Carlos Watson Show before taping began.