Overview
CES Tech Talk podcast, in its sixth season, features interviews with industry experts who bring you an insider’s look at what’s new and trending in the world of consumer electronics, and at CES. New episodes drop weekly. Subscribe via your favorite podcast platform to get the latest. This week’s story explores the meteoric rise of Allen Media Group, the broadcasting behemoth with 36 TV stations and 220 million subscribers.
While Big Streaming adhered to a paid-subscriber model, Byron Allen opted to offer programming for free to viewers. Defying dominant streaming-service practices, the founder and chairman of Allen Media Group invested in highly localized content. The result? Allen’s company is a streaming juggernaut with more than 2400 employees working from offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and beyond. Notably as Black History Month gets under way, Allen Media will soon celebrate 30 years in business as the first African American-owned and multi-platform media company. Allen’s focus on tech for high production values, and on its audiences’ lifestyles and communities, earned him industry accolades and respect across broadcasting’s intensely competitive landscape. Get the rest of the story in episode 18, Allen Media: From Local TV to the Broadcasting Stratosphere, of the CES Tech Talk podcast series.
Takeaways
- For impact and optimal user experience, Allen Media Group leverages augmented reality with AI proprietary software that curates and aggregates local news, weather, sports and traffic; geofencing is used to closely target viewers’ communities
- The Allen Media portfolio contains some 70 shows on television and in syndication, as well as 12 cable networks that include The Weather Channel, a platform that Allen says has been voted the most trusted news brand in America 11 years in a row
- By opting to provide content free to viewers, choosing the AVOD (ad-based video on demand) approach, Allen rapidly grew his reach and audiences as he rejected paid-subscriber models for video on demand, or SVOD
- Allen uses technology to provide high-quality programming that attracts and retains audiences through localism and what he calls “a shared community experience”
They Said It
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We're about to celebrate our 30th anniversary. I started the company from my dining room table…putting on our first syndicated show, Entertainers with Byron Allen, which is still on.
Byron Allen (03:50)
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We own TheGrio. TheGrio has been doing a lot of wonderful things. We just had TheGrio Awards. We've been putting on HBCU Sports. It's the largest supporter of Black college sports. We have Justice Central, Comedy.TV, Pets.TV, on and on and on. We have about 27 ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates that we own around the country. It's one of the largest privately held media companies in the world. And it's been my life's work.
Byron Allen (04:22)
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Allen Media Group at CES 2023
Allen Media Group exhibited at Tech South, ARIA.
Byron Allen, Founder and Chairman, Allen Media Group
Byron Allen got his start in broadcasting as the youngest comedian to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1962 when he was 18 years old. From there, a show that he created, Kickin' It with Byron Allen, was picked up in 1992 and ran for more than 21 seasons. The following year, he founded Entertainment Studios, now Allen Media Group. With acquisitions including The Weather Channel, regional Fox Sports Networks and many more, Allen today is recognized as a broadcasting visionary with numerous awards commemorating his talent and business acumen. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television; it’s located at the storied corner of Hollywood and Vine.
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