Byron Allen is making it clear that he’s not slowing down anytime soon.
The media mogul’s company AMG (Allen Media Group) has become a behemoth in the space and has quickly acquired a litany of cable channels including the Black News Channel and the Weather Channel in less than five years.
Allen recently hosted a media upfront at Avra restaurant in midtown Manhattan and delivered a keynote to the crowd of media buyers and television personalities that underscores his business approach: aggressive.
“We plan to buy more [local TV stations], we really like that,” Allen said according to the Hollywood Reporter. “We’re going to buy more cable networks. We’re very acquisitive. We’re going to buy whatever we can that makes sense. I will say we are truly aggressive when it comes to acquisitions. If it’s for sale — if it’s a lemonade stand — we want to buy it. It has to have a video monitor, it just can’t be lemonade, it has to have a video monitor so we can program that.”
Allen recently made headlines when his interest in buying BET became public.
“Byron Allen is interested in buying BET, and he will be pursuing the acquisition of the network,” a representative for the mogul said, as previously reported by ESSENCE.
Allen is taking a straightforward approach to continue his mission to scale his empire.
“We have a lot of work to do. There are a lot of folks out there that have made promises and we’re going to help them live up to those promises,” Allen said according to THR. “Now’s the time to not just promise, it’s actually time to do it, increase those allocations. That’s important. Lean in on the sponsorships. That’s important. Increase the investment.”
“We can’t deposit excuses,” Allen continued. “There’s no bank in the world where you can deposit excuses, pledges and promises.”