With two latest offers, Byron Allen has elevated his profile in each late-night TV and the digital media house. He’s about to take control of struggling media company BuzzFeed, and subsequent week he’s getting the the CBS time slot that’s being vacated this month by “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” after the network canceled it.
Allen, a former slapstick comedian whose Allen Media Group owns 13 native TV stations, The Climate Channel and different media properties, earlier this week introduced a deal to acquire a 52% controlling stake in BuzzFeed. He’s paying $20 million in money up entrance, plus $100 million in a promissory observe due in 5 years.
When the deal closes (anticipated by the tip of this month), Allen will change into BuzzFeed‘s chairman and CEO, changing co-founder Jonah Peretti, who will change into president of BuzzFeed AI. Since its IPO in 2021, BuzzFeed has languished in crimson ink and struggled with debt commitments. Briefly, it’s nicely previous its peak viral-content period a decade in the past.
How is Allen going to show issues round at BuzzFeed? “I’ve carried out a lot more durable issues. They don’t have issues which might be that massive,” he stated. “The cash is the simple half. The technique is to essentially develop this.”
Right here’s the plan, based on Allen: He’s going to carry BuzzFeed and HuffPost “to your front room” — by extending their manufacturers into what he claims will change into a “premier international free streaming service,” incorporating professionally produced content material and user-generated movies.
“We are able to put them within the streaming enterprise,” he stated.
To do this, Allen stated he’s going to leverage the Climate Channel’s Native Now streaming service, which he stated offers “super-hyper-localization all the way down to your Zip Code” to offer information, climate, sports activities and visitors content material. Native Now ingests about 5,000 items of video per day. Native Now, which additionally offers free, ad-supported TV reveals and flicks, is a “best-in-class streamer,” based on Allen.
BuzzFeed and HuffPost are globally acknowledged manufacturers and “have huge visitors,” he stated. However they aren’t positioned as streaming-video manufacturers. To listen to Allen inform it, Native Now’s aggregated content material and localized platform plus unique programming from BuzzFeed and HuffPost will likely be a robust mixture. “We are able to instantly assist them usher in advert {dollars},” he stated. “Free streaming is the fastest-growing factor. The advert {dollars} are transferring quickly from cable to streaming… The 2 greatest phrases on the planet are ‘free’ and ‘streaming.’”
The brand new streaming platform additionally will likely be house to user-generated content material, and Allen stated the corporate can pay a income share with creators who need to host their content material there. “We’re chasing YouTube,” he stated “They’re the last word streamer. That very same content material sitting at YouTube will also be distributed with us.”
With BuzzFeed, Allen was leaping on a fire-sale alternative within the hopes of turning it into one thing greater.
“It was positively a distressed sale — definitely,” Allen stated. “They advised the world they had been about to expire of cash!” He added: “On the finish of the day, when an organization is mendacity on its again, you’ll be able to’t fall off the ground. The error some folks make is, they purchase corporations within the penthouse then it begins happening a pair flooring.”
Previous to Allen’s deal to take over BuzzFeed, the corporate had advised traders on March 12, “There’s substantial doubt in regards to the firm’s potential to proceed as a going concern.” As of the tip of Q1, BuzzFeed had about $30 million in present debt. For full-year 2025, the corporate posted a web lack of $57.3 million (vs. a web lack of $34 million in 2024) as income declined 2% to $185.3 million. BuzzFeed was once valued at $1.7 billion.
Allen stated he known as Peretti after BuzzFeed issued its “going concern” warning. “I had lunch with Jonah. I actual like him. I stated, ‘Look, let’s do it, let’s get it carried out.’” The plan is for BuzzFeed’s Tasty meals model and BuzzFeed Studios to spin off right into a separate entity, separate from the BuzzFeed and HuffPost companies that Allen will management.
Allen is taking a look at different media offers: In March, his investment arm acquired a 10.7% stake in Starz Entertainment for $25 million in a personal transaction with Liberty Steve Mnuchin’s Liberty 77 Capital. Shortly afterward, Starz adopted a “poison tablet” shareholder-rights plan — designed to fend off a hostile takeover by making such a deal extra expensive. Beneath that plan, if any investor acquires greater than 17.5% of Starz shares, different traders will be capable of purchase shares at a 50% low cost (thus diluting the possession curiosity of the potential takeover participant).
Starz would symbolize a subscription-streaming video piece of Allen’s media holdings, alongside the free, ad-supported streaming companies.
Gained’t Starz’s poison tablet make any try to purchase it prohibitively costly? Allen claimed it received’t deter him from his objective of ultimately taking up the corporate. “The poison tablet, that was a silly transfer. They didn’t want to do this… After I determine to purchase them, I’ll do much more than what they’re doing now – I could make Starz infinitely greater.”
He’s beforehand made big-media overtures that haven’t panned out. Allen in 2024 had floated a $30 billion bid for Paramount Global (in partnership with unnamed monetary backers), earlier than David Ellison’s Skydance Media received the deal. In late 2023, he offered Paramount Global $3.5 billion for BET.
In the meantime, Allen has leased a two-hour nightly comedy block on CBS. After “Late Night time” ends (the ultimate present will likely be Might 21), two episodes of Allen’s “Comics Unleashed” will air in that point slot back-to-back. Allen will proceed to lease the 12:37 a.m. hour, which can run his comedy recreation present “Humorous You Ought to Ask.” Allen’s cope with CBS for the late-night airtime runs via the 2026-27 TV season, and his firm is dealing with all advert gross sales for the packages. (He declined to say how a lot he’s paying CBS.)
Allen known as CBS’s determination to cancel Colbert’s present “an unlucky occasion.”
“I actually like Stephen Colbert. I believe he’s an impressive human being,” Allen stated. “He’s an excellent expertise, I imagine he’s an American treasure.”
However the cancellation of “Late Night time” was one other alternative for Allen, who identified to CBS execs that not solely would they not should pay to provide a brand new late-night present in the event that they did the “Comics Unleashed” cope with him, Allen’s firm would pay thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the community.
Allen, who has hosted greater than 300 episodes of “Comics Unleashed” with greater than 1,000 comedians, believes the present will be capable of maintain its personal by way of attracting an viewers on CBS within the 11:35 p.m. window. “We’re doing a present with nothing political, racist, sexist or homophobic… simply clear comedy,” he stated.
Allen is taking up Colbert’s late-night slot on Might 22. He stated he insisted on that date, as a result of “my hero Johnny Carson” signed off from “The Tonight Present” precisely 34 years earlier: on Might 22, 1992. Within the first episode airing that evening, Allen stated he’ll “take a minute to share some ideas about late evening and what we’re doing.”
At the same time as he turns into CEO of BuzzFeed, Allen will stay chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, which he based in 1993. The corporate owns and operates 13 ABC, CBS and NBC community affiliate broadcast tv stations in 11 U.S. markets, the Climate Channel, and properties together with Pets.television, Comedy.television, Recipe.television, Automobiles.television, ES.television, MyDestination.television, JusticeCentral.television, TheGrio and HBCU GO.
Requested how he’ll run each corporations as chief government, Allen famous that Peretti will stay at BuzzFeed and that the corporate has a robust bench of managers. He additionally stated that he has owned the Climate Channel since 2018 — and that he’s visited its places of work in Atlanta fewer than eight occasions since then.
“I rent the very best, I pay the very best, and I say, ‘Play your place,’” he stated.
