Byron Allen has secured the 11:35 p.m. ET post-local news timeslot on CBS and is set to take over once “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” ends next month.
The billionaire media mogul is expected to fill the slot with back-to-back episodes of his “Comics Unleashed” series, shifting it an hour later, Variety reports. The move follows CBS’s decision to lease out the timeslot through the 2026–2027 season, with Allen also securing the 12:37 a.m. hour for his comedy game show “Funny You Should Ask.”
“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,” Allen said in a statement. “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.”
Allen, founder, chairman, and CEO of Allen Media Group, has previously paid CBS to air two episodes of “Comics Unleashed,” typically a new
episode paired with a rerun, at 12:37 a.m. ET. He first occupied the slot during the 2023–2024 gap between “The Late Late Show With James Corden” and the launch of “After Midnight” in January 2024, and returned to it again in September 2025 after “After Midnight” concluded.The programming shift comes as “The Late Show” airs its final episode on May 21, closing a franchise that began in 1993 when David Letterman moved to CBS from NBC. Stephen Colbert has hosted the show since Letterman’s 2015 retirement. Allen is set to take over the timeslot the following night, May 22.
CBS may see ratings dip with the loss of “The Late Show,” long the top-rated program in late night, but the network is expected to offset some of that through the leased timeslot. Under a traditional time-buy model, Allen pays for the slot and sells his own advertising, allowing CBS to generate revenue from the arrangement.
It’s a deal Allen had been eyeing from the moment news broke that “The Late Show” would end, telling attendees at New York’s Advertising Week last October, that for “50 years, I’ve been waiting for this moment.”
“Definitely, I’m going for it… I’m investing millions and millions of dollars to prove myself at 12:35,” Allen said.
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