When Stephen Colbert found out that Comics Unleashed was replacing The Late Show on CBS, Colbert said he wrote you a note referencing that you were the youngest comedian ever, at age 18, to perform on The Tonight Show. What did you reply back?
He and I have been texting quite a bit, he’s just a really good human being, he’s very talented, he’s an American treasure and I really enjoy our interactions. I really like him a lot. He’s a good guy. And I hope, and I believe, he will always be someway-somehow a part of the media landscape, in our homes, because he deserves to be.
What did you think of the CBS logic to ax The Late Show for financial reasons amid reports saying it lost $40 million a year?
I don’t know all the details on that decision, right? I just know the decision was made. And I’ve invested about $1 billion buying ABC-NBC-CBS and Fox affiliates around the country, so if you go to Hawaii I own the ABC affiliate there. Tucson, Arizona, the NBC affiliate. And I know for fact that the networks, all of the networks, not CBS, all of them, are quite frankly — they’re wasting a lot of money.
They’re wasting enormous sums of money trying to win that daypart because that audience is being handed to us at 1:30 in the morning and most of us around the country are running infomercials, half hour shows, “1-800-Spray-On-Hair” or “1-800-Abs-In-24-Hours.” In my opinion, the money invested in a day part is a race to the bottom. If you win, you’ve accomplished nothing. You spent a lot of money to build up an audience to hand it to us at 1:30 in the morning to run a 1-800 infomercial, who cares.
So when After Midnight went away, why would you spend $30 million-$40 million to replace that show? I have a show called Comics Unleashed, it’s been in syndication on the air for 20 years. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. I said, ‘Let me put that show there and let me buy the time period. I can save you $30 million-$40 million.’ They said, ‘Brilliant idea, let’s do it.’”
You’ve produced around 300-plus Comics Unleashed episodes by now. How do you square your comedian side with running a media business?
I started the company from my dining room table in 1993, 33 years ago. I called every television station in the country and — literally all 1,200 of them — to carry my once-a-week show Entertainers with Byron Allen, interviews with movie stars talking about the movies. And literally after they all said “no” 50 to 100 times each and after 50,000 “no’s” I squeezed out 150 “yes’s.”
I didn’t know how to sell advertising. My home went in and out of foreclosure many times. There were days I couldn’t pay my mortgage and there were days they turned off my phone and I called TV stations from the payphone. And I kept smiling and dialing and dialing and smiling, and I kept putting on one show after another after another after another. And got to know advertisers. Before you know it, I have one of the largest privately held television libraries. It’s one of the largest privately held media companies. We have about 74 shows in syndication. We are the largest provider of first-run shows. I have on 13 hours per day of television shows.
Lets go to your latest deal. In 2014, Jonah Peretti rebuffed a reported $650 million offer for BuzzFeed from Disney. You were able to pick up a majority stake in BuzzFeed for $20 million in cash, plus $100 million due five years from now. Where do you see value in the business now?
BuzzFeed is one of the most recognizable brands, as well as HuffPost, and for us — I own something called Local Now. It’s a free streaming app it curates, aggregates and streams super hyperlocal news, weather, sports and traffic, geofenced to the user’s zip code.
One night I had dinner with Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, and I said “Hey, what keeps you up at night?” He said “YouTube.” I said, “YouTube?” He said, “Yeah, Byron, if YouTube starts delivering premium content, how do I get people to pay me XYZ per month?” I said, “Got it.” So, YouTube is the biggest streamer by far. The world’s two favorite words right now: “Free” and “streaming.”
What I can do is I can take BuzzFeed and HuffPost and put it into the free streaming business with this asset that I’ve invested heavily in. And it’s not to replace anything at BuzzFeed or HuffPost, it’s additive, it’s to build on the 20-year foundation that they’ve created.
Over the years, you’ve thrown your hat in the ring to acquire BET in a spin off, buy Paramount in whole from Shari Redstone, take ABC off Bob Iger’s hands, own CNN if it was ever made available and bid on the NFL’s Denver Broncos and Washington Commanders. Some of your bids appear to not have been taken seriously. Why is that?
I’m glad you asked. Let’s just be clear, when I went to Shari Redstone, a private equity firm, which manages over $100 billion, let her bankers know, “We’re backing Byron Allen.” I then brought them a second private equity firm to buy all of the real estate and lease it back for $4 billion. That’s in writing. Then a streamer told my bankers “if you get Paramount, we will buy everything in their vault for $10 billion and you can keep the name Paramount and you can keep the real estate.” We had raised the money. For whatever reason, she did not want to engage with me. There were others that she did not want to engage with, which is fine. It was her prerogative to sell to whoever she wanted to sell to. But I did raise the money to buy it.
There are a lot of people going after a lot of things that don’t get done and don’t close. It’s just not written about. Bob Iger said, “I don’t want to sell it.” First, he was on CNBC saying, “I’m open to selling.” I actually have a text from Bob Iger saying “we are going to have the book ready and you will be one of the first to see it after Labor Day.”
ABC, you’re talking about.
ABC, yes. He changed his mind, he had every right to change his mind. Anybody could’ve raised money to buy ABC owned-and-operated networks. What people don’t realize, there’s trillions of dollars out there looking for good deals. If you have a good deal, the money is easy. How do you think I ended up buying The Weather Channel? I literally raised that money in one day.
As of 2024, Bloomberg had estimated your net worth at $735 million. How has it changed since then?
I didn’t even know that, is that what they did? I’ve never given that any thought, to be honest with you.
Your company went through major layoffs in 2024 and sold off about a third of its TV station portfolio for $171 million last year, sparking speculation about a cash crunch for your businesses with the decline of linear TV. What do you say to that line of thinking?
That’s just rightsizing, I’m no different than any media company that’s going through a transition. If we have declines in linear spending, then we rightsize it. We made significant cuts, but these were cuts that were never made before. When I started the company from my dining room table it was go-go-go, grow-grow-grow. Now it’s very different. During the pandemic, what people forget, is I didn’t lay anyone off during the pandemic, not one soul. I said, “People before profits.” So the economy comes back, plenty of jobs out there, so I knew if we lay people off there was a safety net, and that people would be OK. So we did it in a very thoughtful, humane way.
Are you also looking for buyers for the other 13 of the ABC-CBS-NBC affiliate stations you own?
We got a really great deal on those TV stations. Now, if I can get a high multiple for the remaining markets, great, if I can’t, I’m happy to keep. Why? Because these are in the markets that do very well in the political cycle. We make a lot of money off the TV stations we kept because, remember, we own TV stations in Arizona, Iowa, Michigan.
Battleground states.
In the last political cycle we did almost $100 million just in politicals. Get your mind around that. It’s not that big of a station group and the stations that I’m keeping they did 93-94 percent of that nearly $100 million in political money the last political cycle in 2024, the presidential one. We’re gonna do very well this year.
In March you spent $25 million to acquire Steve Mnuchin’s 11 percent stake in Starz. What’s your thinking behind that buy?
I want to control Starz — I am the second largest stockholder. I have a good relationship with Steve Mnuchin. He used to be my banker when he controlled OneWest Bank and I saw that he owned 11 percent, called him up and asked him if he wanted to hold on to it cause I had interest. He said, “I’m not interested in selling at these prices.” I said, “I didn’t give you a price, just tell me what you want.” And he said, “I want $25 million.” I said, “OK, I’ll take those shares for $25 million and we bought them.”
Starz adopted a “poison pill” plan shortly after your buy in to ward off hostile or unwelcome acquisition efforts. How should that be read?
You have to ask them. But it doesn’t matter. When I decide to buy the whole company — I will buy the whole company — I do plan on controlling Starz.
I want two streaming platforms. One that’s SVOD, and one that’s AVOD. I’m the largest in what I believe is an AVOD platform, free streaming. That would be BuzzFeed and HuffPost. And I want an SVOD, so that’s Starz. I’m going to do whatever I need to do to control Starz.
What would that be?
I don’t know, that depends on how they play the game. They may say “Byron, you can come in here and put capital in here and you can be the largest stockholder,” which would be my preference. I’d like to keep it public. They may resist. If they resist, that may force me to buy the whole damn thing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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