CBS exits late-night TV production, hands Colbert's slot to Byron Allen's 'Comics Unleashed'
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will air its final episode on May 21. The day after, CBS hands the keys to Byron Allen. It is, in its own way, a perfect ending to a decade-long experiment in mistaking partisan performance for entertainment.
CBS announced in July that it had canceled "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and that it would officially go off the air in May 2026 after a more than 10-year run. One day after The Late Show ends, CBS will air Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen at 11:35 p.m. beginning May 22, followed by another Allen-produced series, the comedy game show Funny You Should Ask, at 12:35 a.m.
Allen is buying time from the network to air the two shows, with his company, Allen Media Group, selling the available ad spots in the two hours. The change will likely see CBS turn a profit in late night. That financial detail deserves a second look. CBS spent more than a decade subsidizing a nightly political grievance session. Its replacement will actually make the network money. The market has spoken, and it is not speaking in Colbert's favor.
Allen has been waiting for this moment
Byron Allen did not stumble into this. Allen had been lobbying to take over the 11:35 p.m. slot from almost the moment it was revealed that "The Late Show" was ending. "If they're looking for a show, my hand is already up," Allen said during New York's Advertising Week event last October, Fox News reported.
The enthusiasm is understandable. Allen, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Allen Media Group, said in a statement: "I created and launched 'Comics Unleashed' 20 years ago so my fellow comedians could have a platform to do what we all love — make people laugh."
"I truly appreciate CBS' confidence in me by picking up our two-hour comedy block of Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask, because the world can never have enough laughter."
Comics Unleashed features a group of comedians doing short sets on topics provided by Allen. The show is something of a hybrid between a talk show and a stand-up showcase. The roundtable-style comedy talk show has featured comedians including Sebastian Maniscalco, Tiffany Haddish, Gabriel Iglesias, Cedric the Entertainer, and Nate Bargatze.
Allen has said that he urges his participants to avoid religious and political content to keep the show with a lighter touch for a mass audience and to facilitate that reruns are more successful, since they won't be tied to stories, politics, or news that were occurring when the episode initially aired. Comedy for everyone. What a concept.
What a decade of political comedy actually produced
The liberals crying censorship over Colbert's cancellation would have you believe a free speech giant has been silenced. What actually happened is simpler: a very expensive show ran out of audience.
The final season of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" was recently ripped by Variety as "not very good TV" and out of touch with everyday Americans as the host has been flattered by a parade of celebrities. That is not the verdict of a right-wing media critic. That is the industry's own trade publication calling the product what it is.
According to NewsBusters, 92% of the political jokes told on broadcast late-night shows were about conservatives, up from 82% in 2024. The guest list was even worse, running almost unanimously left-wing 99% of the time: 196 liberals to just two conservatives. A show that books 196 liberals for every two conservatives is not a late-night program. It is a donor event with a house band.
The ascension of Allen's show appears to be a sign of the times, precisely as many late-night talk shows like Colbert's have been accused of becoming divisively political and out of step with American audiences, many of whom go to podcasts for political commentary. Colbert's audience didn't disappear. They just found other places to marinate in outrage, places that don't require CBS to lose money providing the venue.
The conspiracy theory that won't die
Liberal critics have accused CBS and Paramount of ending the show to appease President Donald Trump and receive approval for a long-planned merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media. This argument requires believing that a show critics described as "not very good TV," whose ratings had been in structural decline for years, was canceled for political reasons rather than financial ones. It requires ignoring the economics entirely.
CBS said at the time: "This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount."
The left insists this statement is false. They need it to be false. If the cancellation was simply financial, then the show died because people stopped watching. And if people stopped watching, the nightly political sermons were not the courageous democracy-defending act they claimed. They were just bad television that fewer and fewer people chose to sit through.
Let that sink in.
CBS moves on, and so does the audience
Comics Unleashed has been airing in the later spot this season and also aired there during the 2023 writers and actors strikes. It was already filling gaps. Now it fills the main slot. The time buy deal runs through the 2026-2027 TV season, and as part of the deal, Allen will also continue to lease the 12:37 a.m. hour with the comedy game show "Funny You Should Ask."
CBS is not replacing one prestige late-night production with another. It is getting out of the business of producing late night entirely, leasing the hours to someone who will make the timeslot profitable. That is a rational business decision. It is also a verdict on what a decade of politically saturated television programming actually built: not loyalty, not audience growth, not cultural staying power. A time slot CBS was relieved to sell.
Byron Allen built something over twenty years that networks now pay to have on the air. Colbert built something that cost CBS money until the moment it ended. The scoreboard does not lie.
