Comics Unleashed will move into the 11.35pm CBS slot once held by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and viewers who have been tuned in for Colbert will see Byron Allen’s long-running panel show start there on Friday. The move gives Allen a bigger stage at the exact moment CBS is clearing out one of late night’s most recognizable names.
The network said the arrangement will make the hour immediately profitable, with Allen taking on CBS’s old time slot under a 16-month lease agreement and handling ad sales for Comics Unleashed himself. Allen, 65, said he is not trying to supplant Colbert. “I’m not trying to replace Colbert,” he said. “I don’t think anybody can replace Colbert. I think he’s phenomenal. I think he’s fantastic.”
Comics Unleashed has been on the air for 20 years, and in September it began airing in the hour right after Colbert’s. That made the show familiar to some viewers before Friday’s switch, but the new placement turns it into the face of the post-Colbert slot at a time when CBS is trying to reset the hour around revenue rather than prestige.
Allen’s pitch for the show is simple. He says it features five comedians sitting around with one purpose: making people laugh. When it first launched, he told performers, “No political humor, nothing racist, nothing sexist, nothing antisemitic, nothing homophobic, just be funny.” That gives the program a very different tone from the political monologues that have defined much of late night for years.
That difference matters because Allen is stepping into a debate that has followed CBS’s cancellation of The Late Show for financial reasons. Some people have argued politics played a role, but that has not been confirmed. Allen is offering a lighter, cheaper alternative just as the network is looking for a cleaner business model in the hour.
The timing also comes after Allen last week announced a majority stake in BuzzFeed in a deal that could ultimately reach $120 million, with $20 million paid now and another $100 million possible in five years. He said his media holdings, which also include the Weather Channel and a group of local television networks, are built for scale, not symbolism. He started the company from his dining room table with a phone in 1993, and 33 years later he is still buying his way into bigger rooms.
Allen points to the numbers behind the approach. He said repeats on some political talk shows are down 52 percent in viewership, while the repeats on Comics Unleashed are down 14 percent. CBS is betting that a lower-cost, nonpolitical format can do what a marquee late-night brand once did: hold the hour without losing money. The unanswered question is not whether Allen wants the crown. It is whether CBS can make late night work better by giving up the idea of a traditional one.
