If you didn’t know, Byron Allen is the black media mogul that always goes unnoted. He moves low-key but has a media empire that just got bigger. Allen’s company Allen Media just acquired the Weather Group, the parent company of The Weather Channel, from The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital and Comcast/NBCUniversal.
“The Weather Channel is one of the most trusted and extremely important cable networks, with information vitally important to the safety and protection of our lives,” said Allen, Founder, Chairman, & CEO of Entertainment Studios. “We welcome The Weather Channel, which has been seen in American households for nearly four decades, to our cable television networks division. The acquisition of The Weather Channel is strategic, as we begin our process of investing billions of dollars over the next five years to acquire some of the best media assets around the world.”
Allen started his entertainment career as a comedian and started the Entertainment Company 25 years ago. The company is 100% owned by Allen, making it a fully black-owned media empire. Allen has become a successful indie film producer and distributor but lost out on Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation to Fox Searchlight even though he offered to buy the rights to the film for $20 million, nearly $3 million more than Fox Searchlight’s $17.5 million dollar tag.
I wish much success to Byron Allen! He’s definitely inspiring me as a young, aspiring, HBCU Educated media content curator!
