I’ve been keeping close tabs on the end of The Late Show, as well as its replacement Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, which has already shifted into the 11:35 timeslot on the 2026 TV schedule. While it’s been pretty heavily speculated that CBS will be saving a slew of money by saying goodbye to the late night show (and its massive staff), I hadn’t fully comprehended the network is also making money by replacing it with Byron Allen.
Let’s take a look at the numbers. First and foremost, and prior to this CBS had not confirmed this, rumors reported The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was losing $40 million a year before it went off of the air. That’s a hefty chunk of change, and one Jimmy Kimmel scoffed at. Yet, a separate study with hard numbers does indicate the the major networks are making less and less money off of advertisements and seeing a shortfall when it comes to late night shows.
All of this was known info before Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen shifted to 11:35 on May 22. What is newly running around, and particularly intriguing to me, is the fact that CBS is also adding a solid $15 million in cold hard cash by swapping The Late Show out.
How Does Comics Unleashed Work On CBS?
Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen is actually what is known as a “time by,” or a show from another production company that is leasing out the timeslot on CBS. This is exactly what David Letterman mentioned would happen after The Late Show got canceled.
Instead of CBS having to fill the programmatic ads during the segment, the show is reportedly paying CBS to let it air. As the network noted, Comics Unleashed is paying a cool $15 million for the privilege. The show is also responsible for filling its own ads. In short, it’s a way safer bet than The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as CBS confirmed in a new statement (via Deadline):
We’re proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost prohibitive to continue. With this ‘time buy’ model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing.
Allen seemingly also agreed this is what is happening this week when he talked about hoping his series will garner some eyeballs. He told ET he’s taking a gamble, but it’s one he has his fingers crossed will pay off.
What we do is we keep the commercial time and we sell it directly to the advertisers. I agreed to pay the network millions of dollars. Tens of millions of dollars. OK, so this better work, or I’m gonna be in front of your house in a tent.
The goal would presumably be that the show backs out and makes a tidy profit, even after paying CBS. If Allen’s team can do it, both should come out with a financial win, and do it at a fraction of the cost of what was in the timeslot prior. Though, if it fails, the outlet also notes Allen has an estimated net worth of a billion dollars, so I think he’ll probably be OK.
Shifting up the timeslot has seemingly started out reasonably well. The series used to pull in a little over 800K viewers on average in the post-Colbert slot, but now that it has shifted up an hour, it debuted to over 2.14 million viewers in Live+Same Day viewing. We’ll have to wait and see if fans stick around.
It certainly was the end of an era saying goodbye to The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but in a time when the TV and streaming landscape is changing drastically, I only project more changes like these to be coming down the pipeline over the long haul.
