With “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” ending next month, CBS has opted to buy time from its 11:35 p.m. ET post-local news time slot and sell the slot to Byron Allen. Byron Allen will shorten the episodes of his “Comics Unleashed” series by an hour.
The time purchase agreement runs through the 2026-2027 television season. As part of the deal, Allen will continue to lease the 12:37 a.m. time to another of his company’s shows, the comedy game show “Funny You Should Ask.”
“The Late Show” will air its final episode on May 21, wrapping up the series that first began in 1993 when David Letterman left his NBC enclave (which was taken over by “The Tonight Show”) to the i Network. Colbert has hosted “The Late Show” since Letterman retired in 2015. Mr. Allen will take over the time slot the following night, May 22.
Mr. Allen, meanwhile, has paid CBS in recent years to air two episodes of “Comics Unleashed” (usually a new episode paired with a library half-hour) at 12:37 a.m. ET. First, he won the slot during the 2023-2024 gap after “The Late Late Show with James Corden” ends and before “After Midnight” begins in January 2024. He won the slot again in September 2025 as “After Midnight” ended its run.
“I founded and launched Comics Unleashed 20 years ago so that my fellow comedians would have a platform to do what we all love: making people laugh,” Allen, founder, chairman and CEO of Allen Media Group, said in a statement. “We are so grateful to CBS for their trust in picking up the two-hour comedy slots on Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask, because there isn’t enough laughter in the world.”
CBS and Allen have not disclosed how much Allen and his Allen Media Group are paying for the 12:37 a.m. slot. It’s also unclear how much more he will pay the network to also take over the 11:35 p.m. slot. With traditional time buying, a company leases time from a network and sells the advertising itself. In effect, CBS will lose its No. 1 late-night talk show, “The Late Show,” and make money off that time, even though ratings will likely drop.
Although it buys time from Allen, “Comics Unleashed” and “Funny You Should Ask” are both considered nationally network programs, and The Eye hopes its affiliates will continue to clear CBS’ late-night slots to air both shows, according to people familiar with the matter.
“Comics Unleashed” originally filmed approximately 233 episodes as a syndicated series from 2006 to 2016, before resuming production of new episodes for the 2025-2026 television season on CBS. The show will be executive produced by Allen, Carolyn Foulkes, Jennifer Lucas, Jodi Miller, Peter Steen and Dylan King.
As for “Funny You Should Ask,” the series premiered in syndication in September 2017 as a first-run strip. John Kelly will host The Gamer, and Allen, Carolyn Foulkes, Jennifer Lucas, Bob Borden, Jody Miller, Peter Steen, Scott Satin and Eric Charbonnel will serve as executive producers.
Allen has been lobbying to take over the 11:35 p.m. slot almost from the moment it became clear that “The Late Show” was ending. “If they’re looking for a show, my hand is already up,” Allen said at an Ad Week event in New York last October. “For 50 years I have been waiting for this moment. Without a doubt, I will go for it…I am investing millions of dollars to prove myself at 12:35.”
As CBS moves from paying high late-night fees to paying for time slots, network officials say this will allow Eye to make a profit late at night and is the first step in rethinking how the time slots are economically priced.
Since CBS decided to get out of the late-night talk business, other options have included returning to reruns (“Crimetime After Primetime”) of the drama that CBS aired before it first aired “The Late Show with David Letterman” in 1993. Another option was to expand local news to an hour at 11 p.m., giving affiliates an additional 30 minutes.
Last July, CBS announced that The Late Show would be canceled at the end of May 2026, insisting that this was a “purely financial decision in the context of the difficult circumstances of late night and has nothing to do with the show’s performance or content or anything else going on at Paramount.”
However, this excuse was thoroughly derided, given that CBS owner Paramount Global was in the process of being acquired by Skydance and required government approval from an administration that has frequently demanded compensation. And silencing Donald Trump’s critics was seen as a way to curry favor with the administration. Days earlier, Colbert had criticized Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement with Trump, calling it a “huge bribe.”
And indeed, almost immediately, Trump wrote on social media that he “really loves” Colbert’s firing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote in a column for Variety magazine that the incident had the appearance of “blatant bribery.” “Is it a coincidence that CBS canceled just three days after Mr. Colbert’s remarks? Are we sure this isn’t part of a whirlwind deal between the president and a giant corporation that needs something from the administration? If CBS made this decision for “purely economic” reasons, why the timing? And why did President Trump say, “I hope I played a big role?” “Are we firing Colbert? These are legitimate questions, and I asked them of Paramount and Skydance.”
The Writers Guild of America also responded to the news by calling for an investigation into Paramount on bribery charges by the New York State Attorney General. In a glorious turn of events, Colbert won a Variety Talk Emmy in 2025 following the news (late-night show star Jimmy Kimmel even put up a sign to show his support for Colbert).
In an interview with GQ, Colbert tiptoed around the conventional wisdom that CBS fired him to please President Trump, but said, “I understand why people would react that way, because we don’t know who made that decision, either CBS or the parent company, because no one will tell us, decided to write a check for $16 million to the president of the United States over a lawsuit that their own lawyers, Paramount’s lawyers, said they had.” There is no benefit at all. ”
Regardless of the reason, Letterman took to his YouTube channel to condemn CBS’ response to Colbert’s firing, calling it “utter cowardice.” “They didn’t do the right thing. They didn’t treat Stephen Colbert, the face of that network, the way he deserved to be treated.” He also posted a series of clips from his “Late Show” appearances mocking CBS with the supercut caption, “You can’t spell CBS without BS.”
CBS came under fire again in February when “The Late Show” was blocked from airing an interview with Texas Rep. James Talarico for fear of retaliation from the FCC. So the conversation was instead posted to YouTube and other social media platforms, where the clip ended up being viewed more than 9.3 million times.
