OTT Summit: Byron Allen: Programmers Cannot Be Big Enough

Marina del Rey, Calif. In the current content climate, companies need scale and leverage, said Byron Allen, founder, owner, chairman and CEO of Entertainment Studios.

Entertainment Studios founder and CEO Byron Allen (left) with Mark Robichaux, content director for Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, during the 2018 OTT & Video Distribution Summit

Future plc event producer Andy Friedman

Where you get in trouble is if you're too small, said Allen, during a keynote address at the 2018 OTT & Video Distribution Summit Thursday. You cannot be big enough. You have to get bigger and you have to do it quickly. And the way you do it is you have to do it through acquisitions.

Earlier this year, Allen's Entertainment Studios completed its acquisition of The Weather Channel parent The Weather Group. The acquisition, Allen said, gives Entertainment Studios the leverage it needs for its seven other networks Automotive.tv, Cars.tv, Comedy.tv, MyDestination.tv, Pets.tv, Recipe.tv, and JusticeCentral.tv.

As we get greater distribution for these other seven networks, there's about $100 million a year in advertising in each network, he said.

This year Entertainment Studios turned 25 but the road to that milestone was not always smooth.

I never stopped picking up the phone and dialing and selling and dialing and selling, said Allen, who cited a New York Times article about Verizon's investment in fiber and its plans to launch 150 HD channels. The article inspired Allen to reach out to Verizon, and, while he didn't get the 10 HD channels he wanted, Verizon did give him six, which eventually led to a seventh with the pick up of Justice Central.

ES owns the content on its networks, something Allen said will become more and more valuable for companies as technology changes and morphs.

The Detroit-born entrepreneur is looking to the future in other ways as well.

Sports.tv, Allen said, will segregate, aggregate and globalize sports.

The true religion of the world is sports That's why we're saying Sports.tv is for us; that's everything, he said. And that's the war we're going to win.

Mark Robichaux, content director for Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News, moderated the keynote session with Allen.

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