Tenderfoot TV & Campside Media Ink Multi-Show Deal; Set First Slate Led By ‘Radical’ Documentary
EXCLUSIVE: Tenderfoot TV, the podcast company behind series such as To Live and Die in LA and Up and Vanished, and Campside Media, the company behind the Chameleon podcast franchise, have closed a multi-show deal and announced their first slate. Their first two series, Radical and Cop City, are focused on stories from Atlanta, GA, and intersect social justice, true crime and journalism.
Investigative documentary podcast Radical, distributed by iHeartPodcasts, premieres December 5. It tells the story of Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a Muslim leader who was convicted of shooting two sheriff’s deputies — one fatally —in 2000, outside a mosque in one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods. Prior to converting to Islam, Al-Amin was known as the Black Power activist H. Rap Brown, and was one of the most polarizing figures of the movement, gaining a reputation as a charismatic orator and passionate revolutionary. H. Rap Brown was an honorary officer in the Black Panther Party, and like his peers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King JR., and Stokely Carmichael, was a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO surveillance program.
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The trial for the shootings took place just months after the September 11 attacks — a time of unprecedented anti-Muslim fervor in the United States — and Jamil Al-Amin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. However, the evidence proved shaky and Al-Amin, who remains in prison, has maintained his innocence. By 2020, a “conviction integrity unit” began to reexamine the case.
Radical is hosted by Mosi Secret, a former reporter for The New York Times and ProPublica who grew up in Atlanta’s African-American Muslim community. Secret takes listeners through the odyssey that spans the Jim Crow South, the Civil Rights Movement, the War on Drugs, and post-9/11 America.
“Jamil Al-Amin was a crucial figure in Black history, and a vibrant leader who played an integral role in establishing a religious community in one of Atlanta’s oldest neighborhoods, yet many people do not know his story,” said Secret. “This podcast is not just a story of a brutal murder and a manhunt, but a complex historical and political story, and one that showcases the consequences of violence for a small community of African American Muslims in the South.
Listen to the Radical trailer here.
As previously announced, Tenderfoot TV and Campside Media have teamed with Ventureland on documentary Cop City, along with an eight-episode investigative podcast on Atlanta’s controversial proposed police training facility. The indie podcast will cover the protests, violence, arrests and accusations of domestic terrorism that erupted last year in response to the proposed $90M, 85-acre ‘Cop City,’ which is set to become one of the largest militarized police training centers in the United States. The narrative will center specifically on the death of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, a young activist killed by police in January of 2023.
“Atlanta’s cultural and political influence is unmatched both nationwide and globally. The stories and figures that have shaped Atlanta — both historical and present-day — are as complex as the city itself,” said Donald Albright, CEO of Tenderfoot TV. “We’re proud to partner with Campside Media to take a deeper dive into the events taking place in our own backyard and told through the voices of our neighbors.”
“Tenderfoot is a leader in the podcast space for a reason: This is a company with tremendous reach, a massive audience, and a bold, aggressive approach to the market,” says Matthew Shaer, co-founder of Campside Media. “I’ve been wanting to work with Donald and his team for a long time now – this is a dream come true for us.”
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