OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The CEO of Allen Media Group, Byron Allen is reportedly seeking to expand his media holdings and has made a $10 billion bid to purchase ABC, FX, and National Geographic from ailing industry titan Disney. The move could have massive implications for not only ABC’s news and entertainment divisions but also for the highly politically charged morning show The View.
According to Fox News, CNN’s media newsletter Thursday was titled, “Anxiety at ABC,” and featured quotes from ABC staffers who said: “Everyone is freaking the f— out. It’s all anyone at work is talking about.”
As noted by Fox, in July, Puck Hollywood reporter Matthew Belloni discussed how Disney could potentially cut costs at ABC explaining, “They’re basically the new newspapers, when all these private equity firms came in and bought newspapers because they recognized that, ‘Maybe you don’t have to pay the anchors of ‘Good Morning America’ a combined $75 million a year to anchor a morning TV show whose ratings are probably not going to go up a whole lot in the new environment.'”
This could suggest that new ownership could ‘clean house’ at the network.
Allen, who has been a vocal supporter of Democrat incumbent President Joe Biden told Yahoo! Finance as early as January 2021 that he’s hoping to avoid a repeat of the 2016 presidential election in 2024.
“Four years ago, I didn’t really like the way the political process had gone. I really wanted Black America to know that Black America is the most powerful vote in America,” he said.
The owner of the far-left-leaning website The Grio since 2016 he also owns almost a dozen cable networks, The Weather Channel, about a dozen or so local TV stations, and is the producer of 60 syndicated TV shows.
“I don’t like the fact that here we are, you know 2021, and we’re talking about voting and not voting. Voting should be like breathing,” Allen told Yahoo! “We have some big issues in the Black community. And we can’t address those issues unless we lean in and we vote. And we donate. And in doing so also be very clear that we’re holding these politicians accountable,” he said.
Allen has also been known to repost Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on X, formerly Twitter, and referred to then-candidate Donald Trump in 2015 as a “category 5 racist buffoon” calling on “networks and advertisers to stand up against racism and FIRE,” Trump.
Disney has answered the bid noncommittally saying in a statement, “While we are open to considering a variety of strategic options for our linear businesses, at this time The Walt Disney Company has made no decision with respect to the divestiture of ABC or any other property and any report to that effect is unfounded.”
Allen’s political views clearly align with the co-hosts of ABC’s The View in their vehemently anti-Trump rhetoric and his acquisition of ABC could see the far-left-leaning daytime talk show increase in prominence, with the potential for an expanded role for the controversial Whoopi Goldberg, and even less room for conservative guests or viewpoints.
As reported by Explain America, it took little more than one co-host, Republican former Trump staffer Alyssa Farah Griffin, saying she wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden to send the show into utter chaos. Since joining the show Griffin while still claiming to be a Republican, reportedly adopted an anti-Trump stance.
Co-host Anna Navarro, another anti-Trump Republican said in July: “[Trump] is a threat to national security. He has threatened our democracy. He caused an insurrection. He has weaponized government against his enemies and so if you, Jon Huntsman or Joe Lieberman — I love you, Joe Lieberman, but you’ve got to stop this, Joe. Joe, Joe, this is insane, and you cannot do anything, anything that could possibly help Donald Trump become president. You cannot be an accomplice in that. You are better than that, Joe.”