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.
So BuzzFeed, once worth $1.7bn, just sold for $120m to Byron Allen. That’s a massive fall from grace. Wonder how many layoffs are coming with those ‘significant cost cuts’?
The semiconductor shortage exposed just how concentrated critical supply chains are. (806a19)
Byron Allen replacing Jonah Peretti as CEO—interesting move. I guess his Comics Unleashed show got the CBS slot after Colbert, but can a weather channel guy really turn BuzzFeed profitable?
$120 million for a company that was worth over a billion? That’s less than 10% of its peak. Shows how brutal the digital media crash has been. Allen’s known for lowball bids, so this fits.
Is Byron Allen going to turn BuzzFeed into a TV-style operation? He owns The Weather Channel and bought this for a steal. Hope he doesn’t gut the listicles and quizzes that made it famous.
Export-oriented economies are particularly exposed to shifts in global demand. (751f91)
Commodity price volatility is making long-term planning nearly impossible. (f56d81)
Globalisation isn’t dead but it’s definitely evolving into something different. (12bcd6)
The pharmaceutical supply chain is strategically important and increasingly fragile. (d556b5)