Allen, a media entrepreneur, to replace founder Jonah Peretti as chief executive with ‘significant’ cost cuts to come
BuzzFeed, the digital media pioneer that was once valued as high as $1.7bn amid a private equity-funded wave of interest in websites that generated massive amounts of online traffic in the 2010s, has finally changed hands for $120m.
On Monday, the company announced that a controlling stake in the company has been sold to media entrepreneur Byron Allen. Allen, who often makes large, sometimes unsolicited bids for media companies, is also an on-screen personality in addition to controlling his Allen Media Group conglomerate, which owns networks including The Weather Channel. Allen’s show, Comics Unleashed, will replace the Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS’s schedule starting later this month.
As part of the transaction, Allen will take over for the BuzzFeed founder, Jonah Peretti, as chief executive, though Peretti will stay on as president of BuzzFeed AI. BuzzFeed also owns the progressive news outlet HuffPost.
“Byron’s vision, operational experience and long-term commitment to premium content makes him exceptionally well-positioned to lead BuzzFeed and HuffPost into our next phase of growth,” Peretti said in a statement. “And personally, I’m thrilled Byron is taking over The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’s time slot, and highly confident that his relationships with talent will bring some incredible stars to the BuzzFeed platform.”
