'Horrible to me': Bill Maher tells billionaire to his face that his newly acquired media outlets are 'woke'

[Wiz Imp]

9. He has a net worth of around $1 billion

He owns the Weather Channel, The Grio, This TV, Bally Sports/Diaamond Sports group and 27 local TV stations among many other things. He owns Entertainment Studios, now known as Allen Media Group. This is the company that owns the Colbert replacement shows. CBS went with thaat prograamming because it's extremely cheap.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Media_Group

Entertainment Studios has historically been known for its syndicated programs, which are distributed using a bartered model that does not require stations to pay a rights fee. The company sells national advertising inventory guaranteeing an audience in aggregate across all of its programs, and shares the revenue with stations.[52] Allen explained to Bloomberg in 2013 that this business model was attractive to stations that cannot afford to acquire programs from the syndication market, and that "we offer, across all our television shows, probably 20 million to 25 million viewers a week".[52]

The company has employed various cost-cutting techniques, including using non-union staff, and streamlining productions to reduce their complexity—a technique that also allows it to produce programming at an accelerated pace.[52] The studio's first production—Entertainers with Byron Allen—bypassed budget constraints by filming interviews at press junkets, using equipment that was provided by film studios for use by the media.[53] Similarly, the company's court shows are dramatized with actors rather than arbitration-based like other popular entries in the genre; Allen explained that with this model, "we don't have the cost of airfare, hotels, security; we don't have the costs of the claims, the settlements."[52] Entertainment Studios' first court show—America's Court with Judge Ross—reused a set from another court show that was about to be scrapped, which Allen bought from the producers for $1.[54]

These practices have allowed some of Entertainment Studios programs to bring in sizable amounts of advertising revenue, even with clearances in lesser-viewed time slots such as late night, or without having produced new episodes in an extended period.[52]