David Letterman said the main reason Byron Allen is taking over Stephen Colbert\u2019s late-night time slot at CBS comes down to money.<\/p>\n
While speaking with Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay on his podcast Friday, the late-night icon was asked about the recent news of Allen\u2019s \u201cComics Unleashed\u201d taking over the \u201cLate Show with Stephen Colbert\u201d weekday time slot. Letterman said it was a sign CBS did not want to spend money on another big show.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t want to spend any money, so they\u2019re going to make money,\u201d Letterman said. \u201cThey charge Byron Allen some reasonable price. He sells all the advertising for his \u2018Comics Unleashed\u2019 and it\u2019ll be, I think, 90 minutes or two hours of comics talking about funny stuff. The show is a pretty good idea. It\u2019s all panel. Nobody\u2019s doing any standup except they\u2019re seated doing standup.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colbert\u2019s time as a late-night host will come to an end in May. Allen\u2019s show is set to begin May 22 and air back-to-back half-hour episodes from 11:35 p.m. to 12:37 a.m. ET\/PT. The move, a time-buy agreement for the 2026-27 season, is aimed at making CBS profitable in late night as the format faces financial challenges. As late night evolves, the network could consider new forms of original programming with a more sustainable financial model, according to an individual with knowledge of the decision-making.<\/p>\n
\u201cI created and launched \u2018Comics Unleashed\u2019 20 years ago so my fellow comedians could have a platform to do what we all love \u2013 make people laugh,\u201d Allen Media Group founder, chairman and CEO Byron Allen said in a statement when it was announced. \u201cI truly appreciate CBS\u2019 confidence in me by picking up our two-hour comedy block of \u2018Comics Unleashed\u2019 and \u2018Funny You Should Ask,\u2019 because the world can never have enough laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can watch the full \u201cThe Letterman Podcast\u201d episode in the video above.<\/p>\n
The post David Letterman Weighs In On Byron Allen\u2019s Time Slot Takeover for Colbert at CBS: \u2018They Don\u2019t Wanna Spend Any Money\u2019 | Video<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Letterman said the main reason Byron Allen is taking over Stephen Colbert\u2019s late-night time slot at CBS…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[20521,223927,49,48,187944,12997,75,20896,3668,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-596582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-barbara-gaines","9":"tag-byron-allen","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-comics-unleashed","13":"tag-david-letterman","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-mary-barclay","16":"tag-stephen-colbert","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}