Byron Allen Media Puts Major Push Behind Inclusivity in College Sports With HBCU Go: ‘Tough Conversations Are What Make Us Better’
Byron Allen’s media company Entertainment Studios, also known as Allen Media Group (AMG), is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, a major milestone for one of the most visible Black-owned media companies in the U.S. AMG has championed several diversity-related initiatives over the years, including the recent launch of the streaming service HBCU Go. The free, ad-supported streamer delivers sports content to audiences from the country’s 107 historically Black colleges and universities.
Allen, a preeminent Black entertainment mogul, has upheld equality and inclusivity as core values of his company for decades. Some of AMG’s assets include the Weather Channel, the Weather Channel en Español, Local Now, HBCU Go, TheGrio, comedy.tv and sports.tv, among other networks. Allen’s umbrella also includes the distribution banner Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures.
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Though Allen Media Group has significantly expanded in the past three decades to include thousands of employees, Allen’s goal of reaching economic parity across racial groups remains the same, says chief revenue officer Darren Galatt, who has worked alongside Allen for over 20 years and identifies himself as “employee number eight.”
“If [Black people] represent 14% of the of the population, then they should get 14% of the budget,” says Galatt. “And that equity and parity is what drives all of our communication to the industry.”
HBCU Go, which can be accessed via the HBCU Go app, cable packages and Allen Media Group’s network TheGrio, specifically targets Black viewers. Through TheGrio, HBCU games reach between 56 million and 60 million households on the weekends, per Galatt’s estimate.
Galatt says many of Allen Media Group’s central tenets can be traced back to the story of Allen’s mother, Carolyn Folks. Folks had Allen when she was 17 years old and raised him as a single mother. The pair moved to Los Angeles when Allen was a young boy, and Folks was accepted to UCLA, where she studied film. Folks convinced NBC to start an internship program for her, which exposed Allen to the entertainment industry as he watched comedy greats like Johnny Carson and Flip Wilson host their shows.
Folks’ success proved an invaluable source of inspiration to Allen, who recently referred to her as his “very first blessing” at the UCLA Neurosurgery Visionary Ball in October, where he was honored.
“Seeing what she was able to do with all of that struck Byron in such a way that, at this point in time, he looks back and knows full well that education is the key to the lion’s share of our problems and issues in this country,” Galatt says. “If you fix the education problem, then you’re going to fix the incarceration problem. I think that a lot of those things go together. And it starts at the very beginning with education. I think Byron is very, very serious about that initiative.”
He goes on to explain how HBCU Go is connected to Allen’s education-centered goals. While promising college athletes might have the chance to go pro, athletic departments at HBCUs don’t always receive the same attention that other colleges and universities do. HBCU Go allows a wider audience to watch Black student athletes and potentially change their futures.
“The fact is, the more just due the athletes in HBCUs get, the more you will see them being drafted,” he says. “The talent is there. It’s just that the marketing of these student athletes has not been there. If their desire is to go into professional sports, they should have just as much of a chance as any of these other kids. So, again, [it’s] an inequality thing, a parity thing, an opportunity thing.”
AMG would potentially expand the scope beyond sports to further highlight other areas of Black student life.
“There is a cultural aspect to it, but I think that right now, to really start to grow the brand, sports is the focus,” Galatt says. “Certainly, we would love to be on campus at so many of these schools and promoting all of these programs and even supporting these programs. But I think at this moment, the majority of the attention is being placed in the area of sports — which is football, men’s and women’s basketball and Olympic sports.”
In addition to launching HBCU Go, Allen recently saved the network Black News Channel from bankruptcy, spending $11 million to add the company to his portfolio. Subsequently, he merged Black News Channel with TheGrio in a continued effort to connect with Black audiences.
“Black News Channel, unfortunately, went into bankruptcy because of the lack of ad dollars. And again, that goes back to the parity conversation, where there’s a network in 50-plus million homes that’s getting so very little in advertising from corporate America,” says Galatt. “They’re on CNN and they’re on Fox News, and all these other entertainment outlets, but they’re not on the Black News Channel.”
Recently, Allen has also made it known that he is keen on acquiring ABC from Disney for a hefty price tag of $10 billion. “When they’re ready I’m going to chase it down like a lion chases down a gazelle,” Allen said at the UCLA Neurosurgery Visionary Ball.
He told Variety at the same event, “The one thing that needs to be in the shopping cart to keep my interest is ABC and the ABC owned-and-operated stations — and I wouldn’t mind if they threw in ‘Kelly and Mark’ and ‘Tamron Hall.’”
So, what would an ABC acquisition mean for AMG’s DEI-related efforts?
“There are just that many more possibilities for folks to lean in and spend with Black-owned,” says Galatt. “We’re making it so very easy with [Allen’s] acquisitive nature and taking on more and more assets that are strategic within the portfolio for advertisers to spend more and get to that parity level with Black-owned media.”
It’s extremely important to examine where money is being invested in the entertainment industry, as Galatt highlights a difference between investing in media aimed at Black audiences and investing in companies owned by Black individuals.
“It’s always been a positive attitude in terms of ‘spend with everybody,’” he says. “But make sure that in this area of Black-owned media and diversity, that you count the dollars and the percentages that you spend truly with Black-owned and not Black-targeted — that’s a very big distinction to be made.”
Ultimately, Allen Media Group’s diversity initiatives are about uplifting and improving the industry for everybody’s benefit.
“It’s to make us all better. … In the midst of communicating our dissatisfaction with where people are on their journey to parity and equity, [our message is] ‘I’m going to help you make us better,’” says Galatt. “And I think that that is super important because people think when they see us coming, ‘It’s these diversity pioneers’… it’s a tough conversation a lot of the time, but tough conversations are what make us better.”
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