Byron Allen: A Born Entrepreneur Fights for ‘Economic Inclusion’

now independent film distribution. In this lively conversation, he takes us through his recent three hundred million dollar acquisition of the Weather Channel, his strategy in the film business, and he also talks about his controversial decision to pursue civil rights legal cases against major distributors alleging discrimination in their business practices. So, by Ron all and thank you for joining me today. Well, thank you, Cynthia Littleton, and it's good to be here and hang out with you. I'm

a fan of yours. You started, So your company is called Entertainment Studios, and you started you founded the company in yes, but you have really been on a growth spurt. You really expanded quite a bit in the last three to five years. Yeah, yes, yes, I'm a fifty seven year old overnight sensation. So you know, I started the company from my dining room table five years ago. And uh, for me, it was always business show, not shill business. And I made it a point of that. You know.

I started as a stand up comedian when I was fourteen years old. Fourteen years old, Uh, summer of seventy four, I think it was, it was either seventy four seventy I should know by this point. And uh, you know, my mother, I was born in Detroit, Michigan, so I come from that whole blue collar background. My dad worked at Ford Motor Company for over thirty years, and my grandfather worked at Great Lake Steel for over thirty years. And these guys, I mean, if they ever called in

a day sick, I'd be shocked. And they got to work an hour early, and they always tried to figure out how to put a you know, twenty six hours in a in a twenty four hour a day, and just good guys, hard workers. And my mother and father got a divorce. Um we came, my mother and I came out here summer sixty eight to Los Angeles, to Los Angeles. Excuse me, Yes, to Los Angeles from Detroit. Um, there was you know, a lot of riots. I was gonna say, that's a heavy time Detroit and for Detroit. Right.

So when Martin Luther King was assassinated, you know, uh, Detroit, the top blow off and military immediately took over my neighborhood, shut us down. Um, you know, I'm looking down the barrel of the tank troops walking on our lawns with bayonets and made it really clear if you don't get in the house, we're a shoot and kill. And um, so we thought, okay, let's go visit some family and friends in l A. And Uh, I thought it was a two week vacation and summer of sixty eight and

never went home. I was seven years old at that point, and my mother who had me seventeen days after her seventeenth birthday. So I tell everybody I have too high school diplomas. My mother happens to be very beautiful and smart, and she ended up going to u c l A. And she ended up getting her master's degree and sent him a TV production at u c l A. And while raising me, she was attending school and she went to NBC and asked them, Uh, could she get a

job doing anything? And they said no, and she said, well, can I be an intern? And they said, we don't have an intern program. And then she asked a very important question, will you start one with me? And they said yes. And from that she became a tour guy, and later she became a publicist working in the publicity and marketing department at NBC. And UH, when she was a tour guy, I used to go out to NBC with her and wait for her to get off work. And as a kid, I just sat and I watched

them make television. And up until this point, I was going to go work with my dad at Ford Motor Company or my granddaddy at Great Lake Steel and build cars. And UH, when I saw this different kind of factory, a content factory, it changed my life and my perspective.

I saw Johnny Carson tape The Tonight Show, and then I would walk across the hall and I would watch Red Fox tape Sanford and Son, and then I go around the corner and watch Freddie Prince du chic on the Man, and then the next day would be Flip Wilson doing the Flip Wilson Show, and then I go across the hall and I would watch a local sportscaster named Bryant Gumbel do the local sports and a local weather man named Pat Saj do the weather for k NBC.

Then I go down the hall and watch them do a soap opera, Days of Our Lives, and I just was. I would go from studio to studio studio and watch Bob Hope and George Burns and all of these amazing, iconic, super talented people make television, and I was, I was instantly in love. And I watched the executives in NBC, Fred Silverman and Brandon Tartakov interact with the producers, George Slaughter and Jimmy Komack interact with the with the writers and the directors and the crew and the unions, and

it was a symphony. And it was a symphony that I loved watching and listening to. And I thought, and I knew, right then, this is what I'm going to dedicate my life too. This is what I'm going to do until the day I die. I read one day in the New York Times that Verizon was going to spend twenty three billion dollars to bring fiber to the home and offer a hundred and fifty h D channels

and compete with cable. So I went to Verizon and I said, okay, I read about your initiative and I said, I'm here to launch ten HD networks, ten of them. And they said, how many do you have now? I said zero and they were like, okay, he's cuckoo for cocopuffs, and they go, what are you thinking? I said, well, if you really want to know what I'm thinking, I

think that I said, this is a huge opportunity. I said, a hundred years ago, it was the industrial revolution, and the industrial revolution was fueled by gas and oil, and today it's the digital revolution, and that this revolution is being fueled by content. And we're not very efficient, and we have to do exactly what Rockefeller did in Henry Ford. And I love and I've studied all of their moves because I just love entrepreneurs in business. It's just something

that I was more into that than sports. And I said, black Rockefeller was vertically integrated. He we have to be vertically integrated. He took the oil out of the ground, put it in the pipelines, send it to the refineries, put it on the trucks, send it to the gas stations, and put it in every gas tank and made it affordable and efficient. And we have to do the same thing with content. One years later. That business mind set applies to day and I said, when I sent a crew,

I said, look, my dad worked it forward. My granddaddy worked at Great Lake Steel. These guys worked twenty hours a day, but sometimes TV crews want to work two hours and try and get paid for twelve. It's a very inefficient business. And I'm here to bring that Henry

forward Rockefeller efficiency to this space. So when I send a camera crew to Pebble Beach to cover the car show, concourse the elegance, I don't want them to just shoot the car show for our twenty four hour television network Cars dot TV, which we want an Emmy for and

I'm very proud of. I also want them to shoot the resorts and Pebble Beach for our travel channel My Destination dot TV, Shoot the chefs up there for our cooking channel Recipe dot TV, Shoot what's going on in the pet community up there for our twenty four pet channel Pets dot TV, and shoot all the celebrities that come to the show for our entertainment channel ees dot TV, and they say, wow, that's brilliant. We've had a lot of pitches. No one's ever come to us with that

point of view and that unique business model. They say, we won't give you ten networks, but we will give you six. And we made history and we launched six twenty four HD networks in a single day a little over nine years ago. And those are all of our twenty four hour networks that are on Verizon and A T and T and some of them are on Dish and Direct and you're up to eight now we have eight now, right? And so what I did was I went involve all the dot TVs about twelve years ago.

It's the premium dot TVs. Uh, And I said, look the Internet. At this point it was we're in you know, we're coming out of you know, we're in dot coms. And I said, dot com is for me? Was internet? One point out it was read it? But I said, habitually, we watch more than we read. And I said, what's going to happen is we're going to have an unbelievable insatiable appetite to watch it online. So I said, dot TV represents watch it. So I started buying all of

the beach front real estate. That's why we ended up with comedy dot TV and cars dot TV, pets dot TV, and we have a number of them. We haven't turned on music, dot TV, kids, dot TV, sports dot TV, news dot TV, and we'll turn them all on. And the goal is to be direct to the consumers worldwide on every device, different verticals. That's the vision, and that's been the vision since day one. So we we turned on those networks and and we we said we're gonna

own all the content, shoot everything in native HD. A day crew and a night crew that produces and edits, just like at Ford Motor Company. Because when I was a kid, my mom and I used to drop my dad off at Ford Motor Company at the night crew. So I said, we will have a night crew here, so we'll have editors to go during the day, and they will have editors go at night and keep the machine going and keep making the content and make it.

And what like my mentor who took the radio shows and made and made television shows, I took the magazine stand and made them twenty four hour verticals. You have plenty of car magazines, and plenty of cooking magazines, and plenty of travel magazines. There those are passion points. People will always be interested in that. And our new magazine stand is the mobile phone, not your traditional magazine. Acade ago.

That's why I started buying all the dot TVs. And I said, you know, I couldn't raise money, so I said, I will finance it myself. Uh. And this is a vision that's hard to explain, and but they will eventually show up, and they will eventually start watching over the top. And we we uh launched, and then we added a seventh network. We became the largest producer of court shows and now we have six of them, and I created

a twenty four hour vertical. I couldn't license the court shows to any cable network, so I said, okay, we'll just start our own one. So we started uh Justice Central dot TV and UH then someone came to me and said you should buy the Weather channel. A buddy of mine who satellites our networks and he's the largest, one of the largest in that space, satellite networks, and

he said you should buy it. And he said, I used to be, uh, one of the top executives at this at the Weather Channel, and he says, people don't realize how much money it names, and they don't realize what a cash cole it is and how he goes and it fits your other seven networks perfectly. It's your model. It's a vertical into itself. It's a vertical into itself, and it's you own all the content and you're able

to go on every device everywhere. We were one of the first to achieve to v everywhere, not because of the technology, but because we own the rights to our content and we were able to go on every vertical everywhere. And I looked at it and I said, you're right. He said, Look, it's owned by black Snow, who manages over four hundred and thirty five billion. It's managed its owned by Baying who manages over a hundred billion in cash, as well as Comcast, and so these are really smart,

sophisticated operators sellers. And I said, I love it, So let's get into it. And we got into it. It wasn't an easy deal to get done. How long did it take you to to to work that out? Because you announced the deal in April, a three million dollar deal March twenty two. We didn't announce the deal. We did the I remember I could barely go to bed

the night before because I didn't want to oversleep. And all the bankers and lawyers and I mean dozens and dozens on the phone at five am, uh, confirming everybody had all their paperwork in line, check check the wire transfer went through, and uh it was. It was at five am, and it was all done at five ten, and the wires started going through, and I think it

was sixty eight different wires to various entities. We did a test run the day before of a dollar per wire to make sure all sixty eight of them worked. So I told them, I said, look at this, we haven't even closed. I'm already sixty eight bucks over budget. So all the wires went through, and after we confirmed that all the wires had gone through and everybody had gotten their share, then we announced at eight am, and uh, you know, it was great. The team did a phenomenal job.

It wasn't an easy negotiation. Uh. These were some of the brightest and toughest executives and lawyers. And it tested me and it tested me. I mean at one point we had we had the deal two or three times and we lost it and it was at the end of the day. Uh was it over? Price? Was it over? It was over? Well, it was over terms, conditions, price. It was like everything. You had to go through the entire menu of everything, and it was. It was one of those things. It was. It was a marathon times ten.

You had to run it and you had to just not let go. And finally this was this will be in my book. One day we had agreed on everything. I had it done for a lot less. I had the deal done, uh, for forty one million dollars less, and uh, they said, we only need one signature. And this was on a Thursday. I had signed my name two hundred times and those signatures were being held in escrow by the attorneys, and I had signed everything and

everybody had signed everything except for one signature. And this was a Thursday. So I said, can we get that signature and so I can wire you this money and we can be done. And they said, yeah, we just need that one signature. You'll get it on Monday or Tuesday. And didn't come Monday, and in Tuesday, I said, where's the signature. Well, I'm ready to wire this money and on Tuesday, say we got some bad news. I go,

oh yeah. I said, there's no such thing as bad news right now unless you will want to take less. And the bad news is for you. They said, no, two more bidders. Two more bidders emerged over the weekend, and they're higher than you, and one is ten million more than you, and people closing in a natal second. And they and we're sure you're really upset with us and you don't want to participate in the process. And

I said that's not true. I said, I am upset, but I am going to continue because this is a decision. I can be bitter, I can be better. And they said, I said to them, give me a number that you want me to pay you, so we can end this right now. I said, here's the difference. I own my company. I don't have a board of directors. Here, no analysis, paralysis. The decision is made right here in the moment. As you tell me. You tell me the number, and I'll either say yes or no, and if it's yes, it

will be done within ten minutes. And they said, I don't have a number, and I want, Oh my god, how do you not have a number. You have to give me a number. They said, no number, and then I said, and they said, we'll get back to you. And I knew what was going to happen. Next we hung up the phone. I looked at my executives and I said, and we're now going into a bidding war. So let's gear up and uh. The next morning, at six thirty five in the morning, I got an email

and they said we have three interested parties. And I was one of them. Do you know who the other two were? I didn't, and and and all of my executives wanted to know, and I said, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't matter. We have to get rid of them. So and so they said, we have three interested parties and we want best and final bids by two pm Easterom today and we're going to make a decision and sign with one of you today. So I called up

and I said, well, this isn't fair. They go, why, I go, well, I know my two competitors are on the East Coast. I knew that about them. I said, so it's nine thirty five for them. They're at their desk having coffee. It's six thirty five here. I said, My people are still asleeper, waking up or getting ready, and they go, yeah, we thought about that, but we know you're awake. I go, how do you know I'm awake? They go, because you never sleep. I said, that's true. But I go, we have to get this on the

same level playing field. They go, nope, you gotta get yours in by eleven am. And they said, are you in? Are you gonna go for it tonight? They go I said yeah. They go, So what do you have to say? I said, Mohammed Ali. They go, Mohammed Ali. I got those were just the two words that just came to my mind at this particular moment, Mohammed Ali. So they go, what does that mean? I said, tell the other two guys,

I'm gonna hit him so hard. I'm gonna knock him out of the ring into the cheap seats like Mohammed Ali. They go, Okay, bye bye. Mohammad Ali. So I hung up the phone and then I said, what do I need to do? And I it was an instinctive thing. I said, what do I need to do? Beat these other two guys? And I don't really know who they are, but I said, what is it worth to me? The top line number, because this is a asset we must

have for strategic reasons. And the number that came in mind was forty one million more than our previous bit. And so I put it up, We wrote it up, and I sent it at ten fifty nine am our time. I made it with one minute to spare, and five after, like ten minutes after eleven am, they called me up the bankers on Wall Street, the bankers on Wall Street, and you could hear like almost this crackle on their voice. Are we reading this right? I go, what are you reading?

And they explained it to me and said, yes, those numbers are correct. Those are the numbers. And they went, okay, we'll get right back to you. I go, yeah, it's time to close, guys, this game is over. And we closed, and uh, and I just said, I'm not gonna let it go. And why was it an important transformative deal for us? It helped to bring along our other seven networks because our other seven networks were having a tough time getting distribution and I didn't have the average. And

this is a this is a unique iconic network. This network is it's in the American homes for nearly forty years. It's the most widely distributed channel in your portfolio now, the most widely distributed homes. It's the only network that protects and saves lives. A lot of people depend on it, farmers, the government, businesses, retail. It is an extremely important information source and it's twenty four hours of weather news and it is a phenomenal, best in class asset and it

will only lift our others. And uh, we immediately saw that. So we had a big negotiation right after we close and someone with millions and millions of subs, and we were we're talking about negotiation with a distributor, with a distributor with a platform for the Weather Channel. And we were able to renew the Weather Channel, and more importantly, we're able to get distribution for some of our other cable networks to leverage game. And that that was it.

So that's why I said, I'm not I'm not gonna lose this. I'm gonna And I said to him, I said, be really clear, I'm not gonna lose this. This is not having I'm going to win. You can tell whoever you need to tell, but just now I'm taking this one who was the main banker that was orchestrating the deal for the sellers. They were using, Uh, Morgan Stanley and they were terrific and Morgan Stanley and they were nice that they at the end they said, wow, they said,

you have been amazing every step of the way. When we thought you would get upset and step out, you didn't. You were cool, you were calm, you were focused. Uh And they were, they said, and you beat some really sophisticated players. The financing of your company and your ambitions. So you own you own entertainment studios outright. You don't have investors, do you? So you financed it with bank loans? How do you you know to enter? Seeing this company

shouldn't be around today. I don't have it. I own it on not by design. I couldn't get anyone to invest in me, or to believe in my vision, or to offer me one penny. I watched a lot of people raise money, and for whatever reason, I just didn't have to access to capital. And I said, that's okay. You know, you just you do it yourself, you know,

you just build it yourself. And as a kid, I would study all these iconic entrepreneurs and one of them I loved was Annenberg, Walter Walter Hannenberg and uh, publisher of TV Guide and other things, other things, and you know, he was terrific. And there's a story where you know, they wouldn't let him in the country club because he was Jewish, and and he just went and built his own magnificent, spectacular golf course that is now in Palm

Springs and all the presidents have played on it. And it's just look, if they don't let you in, you built it yourself, and you make it better. And I watched a lot of brilliant, brilliant people like him and just said, that's how you play the game. And well, I couldn't raise the money. Uh. I went to Factors and the fact that we survived Factors is one of the most amazing things ever. These are companies that will lend you against your receivables, but not at great rates.

At one point I was borrowing money against the world's greatest receivables receivables from Pepsi and mcdonald'son Johnson and Johnson at twenty five and twenty six interest. It's amazing that you couldn't create cash flow to have any operations. It was unbelievably challenging. It was excruciating. But I didn't have access to capital. I couldn't get investors. I couldn't get a banngalow. And they said, well, you can go to these factors. And factors were kind of creative for the

garment industry. People would ship off their goods and then they would say, okay, well the story hasn't paid me yet in fact ters, but they would lend against those orders, and so they I said, well, can you please do it against this? This is coca you know, this is pepsie,

this is McDonald's. They said, sure. Got paid every penny from those advertisers out of over the years, ran hundreds of millions through there maybe less than a hundred grand defaulted, maybe less than a hundred thousand defaulted out of over a hundred plus million. So then I was able to move into banking relationships. And the one thing I had, I said I had that I learned was I have to create my own bank. And my bank became internal, my own internal cash flow UM and I call it

the bank of content. And every turn it's you. You have found the way around the big obstacles. The story of your mother's own experience coming to l A is very instructive in terms of where you got that entrepreneurial gene. Well you start with me, Well, you know that's it, and you know, you know, the no is when you go to work. The no is not when you shut down. And uh and I like being nimble like that, you know. When unfortunately Susan Jackson passed away. She was one of

the founders of Freestyle Releasing. And I went to lunch with her business partner, Mark Boarding, and I said, you know, now that Susan's passed away, what would you like to do? You want to stay in and you want to sell? He said, I want to sell And I said how much do you want? And he gave me a number and I said done, I will buy it in Freestyle.

Freestyle was an independent film distributor and that was kind of your entree into the film business, which has been an expansion for you in the last couple of years. That's exactly right. And he was taken aback and I said, I know, you're kind of surprised. I said, remember I own my company, No Analysis Paralysis. Your company is sold. He goes, well, if there's two or three other people way down the line from you. I go, how did they have? I said, have they closed? He said no.

I go, well then they lost. Just call him up and let them know they lost, and just enjoy the lunch. I said, there's nothing to negotiate. You gave me a number. Yeah, I'm sure the books are clean. I'm sure that I'll get a good, clean legal opinion. Let's we're done and uh we closed and uh. And I said, what's really valuable is about this company. He's terrific Mark. But also to have a direct relationship with all the movie theaters.

I really wanted that exhibitors, all the exhibitors, just like I have a direct relationship with all the TV stations and I have a direct relationship with all of the advertisers. I said, I really want that direct relationship with them, all the exhibitors. And he also had an output deal with Netflix that pays us on box office performance. And they pretty much only have two of those deals, one with us and one with the Walt Disney Company. And I said, I'm gonna supersize this. And uh. I started

studying box Office Mojo because I love the numbers. And I said, you know, I've studied hundreds and hundreds of movies, and I noticed the one type of movie that's never failed is a shark movie. And uh, and I said, I want a shark movie. I want a shark movie to be our first movie because I can't find one

that's failed. And they said, well, you know, the Weinsteins have a shark movie that they're not going to be putting out wide because they're short on cash because of the Hateful Eight didn't do as well as they had holped and I said, okay, I said let's go get it. And they said what should we offer him? And I said, we'll go off from two million bucks. So our head of acquisitions went to Bob Weinstein and Bob, it's like, get out of here, Get out of here. And then

I said, what's going on with that shark movie. They said, Bob won't sell it totes at that price. I saw it. Well, he's my neighbor out in Malibu. He literally is like eight doors now, and I'll go up on his deck and we'll get something done. So I walked down on the weekend. I walked down to his deck and said, Bob, it's by right now, and I want to get something done on the on the Shark movie. And he looked at me and says, do you have any money? I said yes. He says, well, have a seat. And so

he says, what are you thinking? And I said, I'm thinking we should get this done at two million bucks. He says, I already told you're got to get out of here with that two million bucks. I go two and a half buck. He goes. No. He goes, I want something with a three in front of it. I said, okay, three bucks. He goes, and more zeros, I said, And I said, I said okay, um, let's do it. Let's do it. And I get up to leave and he goes. He goes, I want some schmuck insurance. And I had

to sit back down. I go, Bob, what do you mean, what do you mean? What is schmuck? What what schmuck insurance? Do you want? Bob? He goes, He goes, I want two percent of the back end. He goes, two percent of back end, goes, what does it matter? Just give me two percent of back in. I said, okay, Bob, and I'm gonna say something to you no one's ever

said to you before. He goes, yeah, right, I said, I'm not gonna give you two percent of back in I'm gonna give you two percent of every dollar I collect, two percent of micros. He goes what I said, Bob, I don't want to sit across the table from you, going over receipts and trying to explain to you why I spend so much money on hair and makeup or whatever it is from Mandy Moore and Claire Holt. I'm not going to have that conversation with you. This is

one movie. I'm gonna put out a hundred plus movies over the next seven years. We're not going to get rich off of this movie. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You are an excellent film producer. I want you to call me first when you have something you think is gonna make money. So this two percent i'm giving you is two percent to say, let's go on a long journey together and do it the right way. Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures has been very active picking up

picking up titles at festivals, documentaries, animation. You really seem to be building up portfolio. Yes. Yes. When I met my wife seventeen eighteen years ago, and uh, she said, what are you doing with your life and I'm building the world's biggest media company. And she was like, okay, well you're kind of cute and now I know you're crazy. So you know, that was it. I said. You know, I'm not about it's not about what I like. It's what does the world want. I'm feeding them what they want.

So it's all of that documentaries, animation, action pictures, traumas, comedies. And I love it, Cynthia, I love it. I love you know, for me, every day is a play date with the world, and you just wake up and you go and you play, and you just you just pursue your love, pursue your passion. So for us, we are I'm gonna I want to get to the point where we're putting out twenty four movies a year. That's ambitious.

That's a that's a big slate. By this by the standard of a student of a major studio, it is. It is very ambitious. Its just like saying, hey, I want to own HD Networks and uh forty one television shows and and basically we control where the you know, it's probably the largest collection of time periods on broadcast television stations. We control thousands of hours on TVs, syndication syndicate asian Um. For us, these are very unique times. This is not a space where you want to be small.

This is a space where you want to be big and get bigger, and be bigger and continue to be bigger, or else you will get flushed out of the system. Uh. I don't have a fear of about being ambitious. I have a fear about not being ambitious enough because you don't want to wake up and you're just too small. That is if I have any fear, that's the fear being too ambitious or being ambitious. That's the asset. Don't wake up and find you're too small or you're done.

Let me ask you a couple of years ago, you took a controversial step. You filed some very high profile lawsuits against the biggest distributors in television, Comcast, Charter, Direct TV, and you accuse them of exhibiting racial bias in not negotiating with you in carriage deals on your on your HD television networks. Can you tell me about what motivated that and do you feel like it was it was a successful path for entertainment studios? Yes to take Yes,

so the matter with a T and T has been resolved. So, um, we wish a T and T extremely well. Um the lawsuit, the twenty billion against Comcast and the twenty billion against Charter, I'm sorry, the ten billion against Charter are still in the court and they're in the nine Circuit, and I'm highly confident we will prevail. So I'm not a lititious person. I had not sued anyone before the Obama administration came to me and said, Hey, Comcast, Charter, blah blah blah, Time,

Warner Cable, these guys want to get bigger. Are they good corporate citizens? And will you them to d C and talk to the d o J and the f c C. And I said sure. So I go to the to d C and I sit with the Department of Justice and eighteen lawyers taking notes and I'm sitting with them and hour after hour and talking with them and the FCC, and they said, are they good corporate citizen? As I said, the answer is not know. The answer is hell now and you know that. And they said, well,

what's you're thinking. I said, well, I said, they spend as an industry seventy billion a year licensing cable networks. Not one penny goes to African American ownership, not to be confused with targeted ownership. I also said, why don't you just look at the board of directors at Charter. They have eleven white guys on their board. Eleven white guys get together every ninety days and look around the

room and say and they say, this feels right. I said, they don't even have someone who represents of the global population on their board, a woman, a woman. How do you not have at least one woman out of eleven white guys. I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you today, Department of Justice. They don't have any one that's Hispanic or Asian, or someone representing the LBGT community. Nothing. I said, you really think they should be the number

two provider of broadband in America? Look at their board of eleven white guys and tell me why you think they should have the keys, I says, as a matter of fact, they don't even spend sixty seventy thousand a year to pay someone to sit in the closet and pretend to be the chief diversity officer. They don't even have a chief diversity officer, and you had me fly across the country tree to ask me if I think they're good corporate citizens. You guys need to google. I'll

do it. I'm not gonna leave this for my daughters to deal with. I'm gonna deal with it for once or for all. And they said, what are you thinking about doing? I said, I'm gonna do it in a way where it can't be ignored, so we can stop the excuses and we can get it past us. I don't I don't want my daughters talking about women not being on boards and people of color not being included. I said, because in America, we don't really have a true democracy unless all of our voices are widely heard.

All of our voices must be heard, not just some of them. And so I must structure it where we have a level playing field. And I'm going to do it, and I'm gonna do it in a way that's very unique. And so I said, look, here's what happens when you're a woman, or a person, a person of color, you're African American. They put the four DS on you, the four d s. First, they dismiss you, all right, that's the first D. And then you get a little frustrated by that. And so when you get a little frustrated,

they discredit you. Oh look at her, she's just cranky. And then you you say, no, no, it's not true. You step up and you speak louder. It might be protest or whatever it is. Then they put that third D on you, They demonize you. And they have to do that third D to get right with their so called Christian selves, so they can do the fourth and inevitable D, which is destroy you, dismiss, discredit, demonize, destroyed.

And I figured out that matrix that they use on women and people of color, and I said, I'm gonna work around that matrix. And the best way to do it is to use the legal process. And before before your experience talking to the Justice Apartment, you have had been knocking on the door but had not to talk about carrying your channels. And you've gotten no engagement, No one,

No one got engagement. And what I said is the quickest way to get rid of my lawsuit is to bring in someone of color, bring in an African American and say that Byron Allen's wrong. This person owns a network on our platform. That person didn't exist before the lawsuit, and I said, you should not be in that position

when you're spending seventy billion a year. And I know a hundred people who have come to you to get networks, whether it was Will Smith or Don Corneius or whoever it was, and tried to get cable networks with you. And it was no, no, no, no no. And you should not be in a position where you have five D channels and not one of them are owned by someone in the community. That's just wrong. And I'm holding you accountable. And so I said, Okay, we're gonna get

around the four DS by using the ecosystem. So I paid my lawyers millions and millions of dollars and they said, let's use Civil Rights Act eighteen sixty six section the year in which it was put on the books, eighteen sixty six to protect the newly freed slaves to make sure African Americans had economic inclusion government and commercial contracting. Well, nobody even knew about the law. They forgot about it. So I took it and I put it on steroids

and I said, here, here's twenty billion. Now, let's deal with it. Now, are you doing business with the community or are you not, And I said, this is something that we're going to address forever, for once and for all. And this is a rat. I'm not going to complain. I'm gonna take you to federal court, and in federal court you need to explain why you're not in business with You have Spanish language networks where the people who

own them can't even speak Spanish. So we have to now start the process of being at the table right And this is a very important thing. Especially after I started having my kids, someone said to me, why does it have to be black owned? Why can't it be black targeted? And I said, okay, well, your father, you have some little girls just like me. I said, would you be okay if I control the image, the likeness,

how your little girls grew up in selve themselves. Could I shape their image and their self esteem with my control of over film and TV? And are you all right with that? I have complete control over how they see themselves and whether they're beautiful or stupid, or smart, or wanted or not wanted. He goes, now, I'm not comfortable with that, And I said, why do you think I would be comfortable with that? Now that I have my girls, I'm not asking for a seat at the table.

That may be clear. I'm taking a seat at the table and I'm going to be a part of that process. This is changing. The game has changed. My name is Byron Allen, and let me explain the new rules. And so when I dropped that lawsuit, it changed the game. They were like, WHOA, nobody has ever approached us this way, and so that lawsuit, those lawsuits are history and their design to address very important issues in this country. CORRECTA.

Scott King was a friend of mine and I bought the rights to her life story because I wanted to look at Martin Luther King through her eyes. And she said, looked, Byron, as black people, we in this country, we had four major challenges. Number one end slavery. Number two end Jim Crow, which I think was more damaging than slavery, because when we were slaves, you know, we were considered property and valuable. When when we were free, we were considered the enemy.

And that's when they said kill all black people, lynch all black people, burn all black people, because they looked at as as competitors. And then she said number three achieved civil rights. And then she choked up and she said in number four. The real reason they killed my Martin achieve economic inclusion. And she said, everybody thinks they killed him over I have a dream, But it wasn't I have a dream. The speech that got him in trouble was the other America. That's the speech that got

him killed, the Other America. The speech where he was talking about economic inclusion, and he said, there are two America's. One America has access to opportunity, education, capital, that's not predatory mentorship. What does it matter if I can sit at the same lunch counter as my white counterpart and I cannot afford the same hamburger. There are two Americas, and two America's will not survive. We need one America. And so that was something and I said, I got

at it. I will deal with the fourth and final chapter, economic inclusion. That is what I said told her. I said, I'll deal with that. You're right. And they killed him on the spot with the Poor People's March when he was delivering half a million poor people to the nation's capital and it was primarily poor white people, and they said, this is too powerful to deal with. And here we are, fifty years later, we don't have that economic inclusion, and so that's why I did the lawsuits. And that's also

what I said to Tom Ruttlets, who runs Charter. I said, Tom, Tom said to me, when you file these lawsuits to take advantage of the merger, I said, when Charter was trying to buy the process of I mean, you know, just to be blunt, you have been accused of playing a race card at a moment when a company like Charter was vulnerable to gain carriage for your channels. That's exactly that's what they're saying. Well stated. And I said to Thomas, said, Tom, if you really want to know

the truth, I'll tell you the truth. I said, you having eleven white guys on your board, no women and people of color. I have an issue with that, I said, but if you really want to look at the at the time, Stamp, I didn't sue you until I saw a photo of you in the newspaper with Al Sharpton and you said that you would signed a memorandum of understanding and m o U with Al Sharpton as to how you will be handling black people. That is when

I sued you. After I saw that, And I said, Tom, who is the white man that speaks for all white people, and if that white man doesn't exist, why do you think there's a black man that speaks for all black people. The very idea of Al Sharpton, in my opinion, is racist, which is why I named Al Sharpton in the lawsuits. Tom. Black people speak for themselves. You need to treat us as equals, not as these natives that have someone who

speak for them. That is why I suit you. We have to change your behavior and get you to look at us and deal with us as equals and not someone that you feel superior to. Do you feel like the federal courts is that there is a real avenue for you to achieve the goals that you're trying to achieve with these suits. Yeah, I do absolutely. I think that. I think the Look, we already got our favorable ruling

against Charter. Judge wool and Federal Court Downtown ruled in our favor seventeen page ruling that this lawsuit is to go forward. They're uh, the Charter lawyers put on their adult diapers and immediately filed for interlocutory appeal on the spot. And that's how we ended up in the Ninth Circuit and we're gonna go to the Ninth Circuit. We're gonna win there, and then we're gonna go back to Federal Court. We're gonna to win there, and then we're gonna go

to the Supreme Court and we're gonna win there. And you know what's gonna happen. Then corporate America is going to start doing business with all Americans, including African Americans who have been the furthest left behind. See, this is all a part of what I call economic genocide. When you don't have access to a proper education and capital, that's not predatory, but you have access to plenty a plenty of guns, drugs and alcohol, you end up in a war zone and you die from the drugs, the alcohol,

the hopelessness, and the violence. But this is what America needs to do to go to the next level. We are only three hundred and twenty seven million people out of a global population of seven billion, were less than five percent of the country. Half the women in this country live at or below the poverty line. If the women fail, so will the children. China has over two hundred million kids in college. China has over two hundred

million kids in college. Two thirds of our nation is in college, developing intellectual capital at a much faster rate than we are. The women must succeed. We must position every American to unleash their greatest potential. In order for us to continue to compete on a global level, all Americans must be positioned to succeed, to bring the A game, to have a truly great America, a greater America. There is no more. It doesn't work anymore to leave half

of us behind. We must position everyone to succeed, and this these lawsuits start that process of economic conclusion and opportunity. Thanks for listening. Be sure to join us next week for another episode of Strictly Business.