Fresh off conquering late night and BuzzFeed, Byron Allen wants the Starz

The Comics Unleashed host already owns 11 percent of Starz. In a new interview, he makes it clear: he's coming for the whole thing.

By Matt Schimkowitz | May 14, 2026 | 2:44pm

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Fresh off conquering late night and BuzzFeed, Byron Allen wants the Starz

Byron Allen, the millionaire comedian and Weather Channel owner, whose syndicated comedy show Comics Unleashed became the surprise successor to Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, and who then became the surprise successor to Jonah Peretti at BuzzFeed, is turning his attention to Starz. The Hollywood Reporter spoke to the mogul, who announced his desire to dominate subscription video on demand by taking over premium channel Starz. Allen is currently Starz’s second-biggest stockholder, after buying former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s 11 percent stake in the channel for $25 million earlier this year. Realizing that Allen was attempting a coup, Starz put a “poison pill” in place to prevent a hostile takeover. The pill allows current shareholders to buy shares at a 50 percent discount if someone acquires more than 17.5 percent of the company. Allen is unfazed. He says:

“It doesn’t matter. When I decide to buy the whole company—I will buy the whole company—I do plan on controlling Starz[…]I want two streaming platforms. One that’s SVOD, and one that’s AVOD. I’m the largest in what I believe is an AVOD platform, free streaming. That would be BuzzFeed and HuffPost. And I want an SVOD, so that’s Starz. I’m going to do whatever I need to do to control Starz.”

The interview with Hollywood Reporter offers a fascinating glimpse inside the mind of a TV mogul who has been on the periphery of late-night television for decades, offering a bit of history into his recent acquisition of BuzzFeed and his successes making syndicated television for the 1:30 am programming block. For instance, he plans on integrating BuzzFeed and Huffpost, which he’ll acquire through the BuzzFeed purchase, into another one of his properties, Local Now, a free streamer that “curates, aggregates and streams super hyperlocal news, weather, sports and traffic, geofenced to the user’s zip code.” He’s also tried to buy Paramount, ABC, CNN, the Denver Broncos, and the Washington Commanders, and refers to the major layoffs at his company in 2024 as “rightsizing.” As the saying goes: “Ignore Byron Allen at your own peril.”

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