Byron Allen Explains How Racial Equity In Media Can Help Create 'A Survivable Scenario For America'

Comedian Byron Allen is one of the few Black Americans to own and operate a major media company.

In 1993, Allen founded Allen Media Group/Entertainment Studios, which now includes ownership of the Weather Channel and the production of several popular judge and game shows. And he's now taking on what he says is inequality and racism in the industry — one lawsuit at a time.

This month, Allen filed a $10 billion lawsuit against McDonald's alleging the fast-food company practiced racial discrimination by not advertising on Black-owned media outlets.

And on the business front, Allen is now expanding his broadcast TV empire: This spring, he purchased seven local TV stations for nearly $380 million and launched Local Now, a streaming app for local news, weather sports and traffic.

“I think local media is very important,” Allen says. “As we saw in this last pandemic, it was essential news and information because people needed to know what's going on with COVID-19 in their community.”

And TV stations are “pillars of the community,” he says, so he’s invested close to $1 billion in buying big four — ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox — affiliate stations across the country in the last year and a half.

The local news industry has struggled over the last decade or so. The revenue streams have been hijacked by the ability of local news consumers to get headlines anywhere. And the solution is a code that no one has quite cracked yet.

Allen is investing money in places where a lot of people have given up because he believes local media will always exist.

When he bought the Weather Channel in March of 2018, he found out he owned a system that uses artificial intelligence and proprietary software to curate, aggregate, produce and stream local content based on a person’s zip code. He was told he’d want to get rid of the system because it loses more than $25 million per year, but instead, he chose to keep investing in it.

Now, Allen says he has invested more than $100 million to reposition this asset, which has been in beta for three years. And he decided to make the service free.

Local Now gives audiences access to 10,000 movies and TV shows as well as 300 channels — with big names such as Bloomberg, Kevin Hart, Johnny Carson and People Magazine — all for free, he says.

Things grow more quickly in the digital world compared to television, Allen says.

“If you enjoy the app, you're immediately going to share it with all your friends and your loved ones. And they keep sharing it,” he says. “And it really is amazing how fast it grows with no real promotion of Local Now. Most people don't even know about Local Now.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg did a “terrific job” with the short-form streaming platform Quibi — but “people really love the word free,” Allen says. Media consumers are making choices about what they want to pay for, and Local Now delivers the free content they crave.

“I think that super hyper-local news and information is very important because we do live in a complicated world and you need that information in real-time,” he says.

Allen entered the entertainment industry as a kid when he and his mother moved from Detroit to Los Angeles, where she became one of the first interns for NBC Studios. As she worked her way up to become a publicist, Alan spent a lot of time with her in the studios, getting a crash course in the entertainment industry.