BONUS: Byron Allen & Ari Melber on MLK, Wall St. & media in the MAGA era

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0:39Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Koepp starring Emily Blunt, Josh O 'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required. also in theaters. Welcome to the Summit Series with Ari Melber, where we go in-depth with leaders at the summit of their fields. My next guest is Byron Allen, a media mogul who started out in comedy. Allen Media Group owns dozens of known brands, from the Weather Channel to its new acquisition, BuzzFeed.

1:15Allen started as the youngest comedian to ever appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His long-running show, Comics Unleashed, has been back in the news, airing on CBS Late Night. He's very busy, got a lot going on, and has made time for us today. Byron Allen, thanks for being here. Are you kidding me? First of all, I watch you all the time. I just want to say, Ari, I am totally flattered that you shaved for this interview. You were clean shaven today. I mean, sometimes I watch your show, I go, did he just come back from camping? But no, today you shaved for me, and I have to tell you, I am just honored.

1:54You're proving that you are a regular viewer. I only save a couple times a week, and I save for you. So there we go. Let me tell you something. That's a couple times a week. Sometimes I see your growth. I go, no, no, that's a month. That's a month. Dude, it's like, phew. And then, look at you. Look at you. Look like you're trying to get a job. You already have the job. You already have the job. You got to dress for the job you want. So we're going to get to all the reasons you've been in the news, including the way you're building business and media, which is really interesting in a time of great shifts.

2:28But with where you started, you started out on stage as what they call the talent. How did that inform how you've built your own business to become an owner? You know, I quickly learned that it's it's business show, not show business. You don't want to be out here and people, you know, deciding what you're good for, not good for. You're good enough, not good enough. And I just always appreciated the business side. as much as the show side. And I knew that if I learned the business side, I can do as many shows as I wanted. And I was fortunate enough to start that, you know, when I was 18, 19 years old, that put me on the path to where I am today.

3:06Yeah. You mentioned that age, uh, really young. We pulled it. Let's take a look at you. 1979 tonight show. I'm 18. Favorite class is algebra. Oh, see, because I have a real hip teacher. Gives us problems we can relate to. It's like, if Bob has a hundred holster's Twinkies, eats 87 of them, how many joints did he smoke? Study Thomas Jefferson, and guy wrote the Declaration of Independence. It's like, oh, I'm in a created equal. While he was writing, he had three slaves in the background going, yes, um, uh-huh, uh-huh, that's right.

3:50Tell us about the confidence, what today they sometimes call the swagger, to just be out there that young on that kind of intimidating stage. And what do you know that that young guy might not have? Oh, wow. You know, I was 18 at the time. It was something I started doing stand-up when I was 14 in the summer of 75 at the Comedy Store. And my mom, you know, my mom used to give tours of NBC. And, you know, my mom's beautiful, brilliant. And she and I came out from Detroit, Michigan, when I was seven years old to L.A., summer of 68. And she ended up getting into UCLA and getting her master's degree in cinema TV production.

4:32And she went around looking for jobs. And she went to NBC. And she asked for a job. They said, we don't have any jobs. And she asked, do you have an intern program where I could work here for free? They said no. and then she asked a question that changed our lives forever. She said, will you please start one with me? And they said, yes. And so she started giving tours. She was a tour guide there and later worked in the publicity and marketing department at NBC. But, you know, she started there giving tours of the NBC studios in Burbank and she could not afford childcare. So I used to go to work with her after school quite often and during the summer and on the weekends.

5:11And that's when I saw Johnny Carson tape The Tonight Show. And then I walk across the hall and I would watch Flip Wilson tape his show and Red Fox do Sanford and Son and Freddie Prince do Chico and the Man. And I thought, what a wonderful way to go through life, making people laugh. So I started doing stand up when I was 14 years old at the comedy store. There was a comedian on the Gladys Knight and the Pip Summer Show. And I knocked on his door and I I said, how do you become a comedian? And he said, go to the comedy store. And I go, what's the name of that show that's going to start in the fall that you created?

5:43He said, welcome back, Cotter. It was Gabe Kaplan. And I went to the comedy store. They said, I called him up. They said, we have tryout nights on Monday night. A lot of people get here to try and be a comedian. So you might want to get here early. He said, the doors open at 7 p.m. I got there at 9 a.m. and I sat on the curb and just wrote jokes and waited for the door to open. And I did my first night there and this guy saw me and I just started doing stand-up and he told me Jimmy Walker might be interested. I ended up writing jokes for Jimmy Walker with David Letterman and Jay Leno on Jimmy's writing staff.

6:23I got 25 a joke. They got 200 a week and I never stopped doing stand-up. And it's just something I said, I'll do this for free for the rest of my life. And so when I got on that show with Johnny Carson, it was a dream come true. I'll never forget standing behind the curtain waiting to walk out there. And he stuck his head behind the curtain and said, kid, don't worry, you're going to be great. And the two guys who opened the curtain for you said, we've been opening this curtain for him for years. and we've never seen him get up from his chair and say anything to anybody. And I said, wow. And he introduced me.

7:02I went out and I knew that, you know, what I did the next five minutes was going to change my life and my mother's life forever and hopefully for the greater good. Because up until that point, there were some really lean years, you know, single mom having me 17 days after her 17th birthday, you know, sleeping on a lot of floors and a lot of sofas and spare bedrooms. So it was a dream come true to be able to have that opportunity and change our lives forever. So I had a blast. I had so much fun. It was great. Yeah. You're telling the story of talent mixed with a lot of drive, you know, and basically 9 a.m.

7:45to 7. That's not how everybody looks at a 7 o 'clock call time, if you will. I want to jump to then the media brands you have now. Weather Channel, Local TV, The Griot. You've got 24-hour cable. You've got a film, TV production syndication operation. You recently got BuzzFeed and some control of stars. We're going to show, to remind folks, what else is on other channels. Here's some of what's on stars lately. I know it doesn't make any sense. but I'd seem to have fallen through time. Our goal is the prosecution of one of the most notorious drug traffickers in our hemisphere. We open up a nightclub to hide the money.

8:27What if it could be more than that though, man? He had written a masterpiece and I was nothing but a spectator. Maybe God doesn't speak to you because you owe him. A man must accept his fate or be destroyed by it.

8:46So when you look to acquire stakes of companies or full companies, what are you looking at? Is it different than the metrics others might use? What are you building in your empire here? You know, I'm the second largest stockholder in stars. At this point, I don't have control over their programming or their marketing. What you just showed, that's all them. You know, I think stars is undervalued. I think stars has potential to grow. I mean, I do have some issues with the current management right now. I'm not happy about the fact they don't report the number of subs that they have. I think they should be far more transparent.

9:28I had a breakfast meeting with the management, and I told them I was not happy with the fact that they don't report the number of subs that they have. And, you know, Steve Hirsch said to me, well, others don't report how many subs they have. And I said, well, I said, like who? And he said, Netflix. And I said, you know, I'm sorry, Jeff Hirsch, not Steve Irv, Jeff Hirsch. And I said, so I had breakfast with Jeff Hirsch to talk about the fact that I wasn't happy that they don't report the number of subs that they have. And Jeff Hirsch proceeded to tell me that others don't report and they don't need to report.

10:08it. And I said, others like who? And he said, Netflix. And I said, Jeff, Netflix has 330 million subs. If they lose 5 million subs, I could care less. If you, and you have about 17 or 18 million subs, if you lose 5 million subs, that's an existential threat in my opinion. So there are Things, you know, there's, I would say there's friction between us and the current management of stars. I plan to, I want to control stars. So I plan to do whatever we need to do to take control of it. I think we can do a much better job than currently what's being done. And I think there needs to be more transparency there.

11:00So I'm disappointed that they're not reporting their subs. especially when you have less than 20 million subs. And if you're going to go down two, three, four, five million subs, we want to know about it right away. And part of what you've emphasized both in walking the walk, but also explaining what you're doing, what you're building, is challenging what has been a very white dominant market and capitalist system inside the United States. You've been very direct about that. You recently told the Breakfast Club I saw, you think it's important that, quote, black people are in the publicly traded markets.

11:34That's where you create great wealth. And that the greatest trade deficit is actually between what you call white corporate America and black America. Go ahead. What does that mean to you? What are you doing through your own work on that? Well, thank you for asking me that question. You know, when Martin Luther King was assassinated in April of 68. I was seven years old. And it was devastating for the nation, quite frankly, the world. And I've never seen my mom and my grandmother be in such emotional pain. And it was a mark in my life that will always remain. And I made it a point to get to know Coretta Scott King, Martin's widow, and to look at Martin through her eyes as only she could share.

12:24And I learned so much by getting to know her. And she said to me, you know, Byron, as black people in America, we've had four major challenges. Number one, end slavery. Number two, end Jim Crow. Number three, achieve civil rights, which I was born without. And number four, and she choked up and she said the real reason they killed my Martin. achieve economic inclusion. She said, Byron, they didn't kill my Martin over the I have a dream speech or civil rights. They killed him over the speech he gave in February of 68 at Sanford University, the other America. And in that speech, the other America, he said, there are two Americas.

13:14One America has access to opportunity, economic inclusion and education, and the other America does not. Let me jump in and show a little bit of that for your exposition. Since you say you watch the V, you know we try to do our homework, and I know that address interests you. So let's take a look at the exact MLK speech that Byron's mentioning. There's a great deal that the Negro must do and can do to amass political and economic power. But it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. And that is a great deal that the society can and must do if the Negro is to gain the economic security that he needs.

14:01That economic pillar was so important. And you've spoken about this in a way different than even some people who may support civil rights, but have a different emphasis. You've described slavery, of course, as rooted in economics and the economic control, both both immoral, but also an economic plan. And what MLK started with voting and civil rights was, of course, a prerequisite to involvement. But as you say, that fourth pillar, we're not there yet. I mean, it's become very common these days in certain circles to say, well, things are a lot better or we're basically past that. We'll just let the numbers show and you'll respond.

14:39Forbes looked at the 400 richest Americans, there's only four black people on that list, 12 percent of the country. But on that list, that's not five percent. It's not one percent. It's it's point zero one percent, Byron. Yeah, I mean, it's not it's, you know, the Forbes 400 list. I mean, that's one indicator. But you can just look at the average household income for black America versus white America. You know, there's a huge gap, especially in the education gap. And we have to close that gap first. We have to make sure. And I've always said, look, you know, black America, you know, they're killing us in the school room by making sure we don't get a proper education.

15:25They're killing us in the boardroom by making sure we don't have real economic inclusion. They're killing us in the hospital room by making sure we don't have real access to good health care. And they're killing us in the courtroom by making sure we don't have equal justice long before they kill us in the streets, long before we die in the streets. What's really happening is the genocide is occurring in those four rooms. And until we make sure every American has access to a great education and access to equal justice and access to economic inclusion and access to health care, then we won't have the one America that the great prophet Martin Luther King Jr.

16:17spoke about. And I think what we have to do is we have to look at ourselves as to the numbers as to the way they really exist. You know, you have over 8 billion people on this planet. And America is a small little tribe of only 300, approximately 330 million people. And unfortunately, because of social media and different groups, we're being divided and at the same time conquered. And we have to become one tribe so we can compete for this great country we call America. We don't have enough intellectual capital to compete with other countries who are investing more and developing far more intellectual capital than us.

17:02China has millions, like 10 plus million kids mastering STEM. Unfortunately, we're not investing enough for our kids to even understand anything about STEM. And whoever masters STEM will master the world. So where does that fit into? Let me put you on that. Where does that fit into sort of what leadership is telling the country? Because we've had these political upheavals and they're going to continue to play out. You're doing your thing through media and business. You've seen the program. I brought you some bars, OK, on the point of black equity. This is from Hove. You know Hove. Yes. Yeah. So I'm going to read you.

17:41I'm going to read you, Jay-Z, and then get your response. This is from What's Free. And his point is to draw the link that I think you've drawn between the original civil rights struggle and actually having black ownership and success today. He says in the land of the free, where the blacks enslaved three fifths of a man, I believe, is the phrase. And then he talks about what he's owned. I'm 50 percent of do say and it's debt free. 100 % of ace of spades worth half a B. Roc Nation, half of that, that's my piece. 100 % of title to bust it up with my Gs. And then he has this lament. Most of us won't ever work together.

18:17You run a checkup, but they never give you leverage. And he says, we started without food in our mouth. They gave us pork and pig intestines. What you discarded, we ingested, made the project a wave. You came back, reinvested and gentrified it. Took our sense of pride. How's that free? all them people that stole the soul and hit artists with 360s. I ain't got a billion streams. I got a billion dollars. What does that mean to you? And what's the leadership of building up ownership so you don't have to ask someone to come meet with you or do whatever because you're now in a different position? Yeah.

18:55You know, I love Jay-Z. And that is pure genius, the way he expressed it. And that's why I love him so much. and it's perfectly stated. You know, that's the difference in ownership. You know, it's this slavery has never been about black or white. It's always been about green. We were brought here to make America rich. Anybody can become rich if you enslave millions of people and they work for free for close to 300 plus years. So once we were freed, then that's when the genocide kicked in because we were no longer assets. We immediately became competition and they decided we do not want to share this great American economic pie with you.

19:43And then that's when lynching started. That is when the incarceration started. That is when they said, okay, you can't have access to a proper education or economic inclusion, loans that are not predatory. So we won't work. We won't survive unless we become one. It won't work any other way. You need that balance so we can become one great American tribe to compete with the rest of the world. Now, the way it was done back in the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, and the 60s, I understand, and I don't agree with it, but I understand the thinking, but then you didn't have international pressure. Now you have all this international pressure and competition.

20:29You need every American position to succeed. Unfortunately, right now, most Americans, black and white, are positioned to fail. We need to make sure every American is positioned, every American, black and white, Hispanic, Asian, gay, everyone positioned to succeed. You should not be worried about getting a proper education or health care or food or housing. Those are your birthright, especially if you're born. It's a human birthright, in my opinion, especially if you're born here in America, and especially when you have a tiny tribe of only 330 million people out of a global population in excess of$8 billion.

21:16We can no longer have a scenario where people are positioned to fail and they are struggling. No one should be struggling in America, in my humble opinion. Yeah. I'm going to turn to our lightning round. You should be good at this because you've been in media your whole life. Politicians struggle with it, but this will be in a word or a sentence. Buzzfeed. Brilliant. Stars. Cars. Unbelievable potential once I control it. YouTube. My number one target to beat. Johnny Carson. The greatest. Stephen Colbert. Magnificent. What you've called your term white corporate America.

22:19What's the best way to put this one?

22:26Has a lot of work to do to help create a better, stronger America. Okay. Finish this sentence, and this is where people want to learn from you. The most important thing in negotiating is, balance. It's time to walk away from a deal when

22:53imbalanced. The future of streaming is

23:02everything and forever. Being broke means temporary mindset. Having a billion dollars means

23:20a little bit more freedom. The best way to build wealth is work for yourself and invest. One thing I wish I knew when starting out. The ebb and flows will occur Just enjoy the process. The most overrated idea in business is. Certain people with big titles.

23:53Will do everything to make you believe they're smarter than you and they're not. American business will be an equal playing field when.

24:07Everyone has economic inclusion. Final five. I knew I'd made it when. I discovered what I wanted to do with the rest of my life at age 14. I thought it was over when.

24:28I've never had that thought. Respect. Failure means. not pursuing your dreams with 1000 % of your passion. Success means pursuing your dreams with 1000 % of your passion. And reaching the summit means never reaching it and always setting new goals and going higher. That's how you look at it. You don't have a destination on this, on this path. No, you never you don't know. There is no destination. You just keep going higher. That's just how we're wired as human beings. Look at the Model T and then look at the car today. We could have stopped with the Model T. But Henry Ford didn't. Bars. We're human beings.