CBS says that it now expects to turn a $15 million profit on late night, thanks to Byron Allen\u2019s time buy of the former Late Show timeslot.<\/p>\n
In a statement late Thursday, a CBS spokesperson said that late night had become \u201ccost prohibitive\u201d to continue programming on its own, which ultimately led to the decision to cancel Stephen Colbert\u2019s Late Show.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re 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,\u201d the CBS spokesperson said. \u201cWith this \u2018time buy\u2019 model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40\u00a0million annually to $15\u00a0million in profit \u2014 a $55\u00a0million swing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments come as Allen\u2019s Comics Unleashed debuted to about 1.1 million<\/a> viewers, a significant decline from the Late Show, which averaged 2.7 million in its final season. The time buy model, however, means that Allen\u2019s company is covering all the production costs, and paying CBS for the privilege of running in the time period, effectively making it instantly profitable for the network. Allen\u2019s company sells advertising for the timeslot, which can help it recoup those costs.<\/p>\n Allen had told<\/a> The Hollywood Reporter of his talks with CBS, \u201cI have a show called\u00a0Comics Unleashed, it\u2019s been in syndication on the air for 20 years. We\u2019re celebrating our 20th anniversary. I said, \u2018Let me put that show there and let me buy the time period. I can save you $30 million-$40 million.\u2019 They said, \u2018Brilliant idea, let\u2019s do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a week after his final broadcast, Stephen Colbert\u2019s Late Show has officially shuttered, with staff sharing photos of the struck set on social media.<\/p>\n Allen has been embarking on an aggressive and quixotic media strategy, not only taking over CBS late night but inking a deal to acquire BuzzFeed, a deal that closed Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cOur vision is to build on the iconic foundation of BuzzFeed and HuffPost by expanding into free-streaming video, audio and user-generated content,\u201d Allen said in a statement. \u201cAs of this moment, with the power of AI, BuzzFeed is officially chasing YouTube to become another premier free-streaming video service.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CBS says that it now expects to turn a $15 million profit on late night, thanks to Byron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[216422,216673,146,85,46,60304,216674,6676,73558,411],"class_list":["post-465888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-byron-allen","tag-cost-prohibitive","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-late-show","tag-programming-model","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-hollywood-reporter","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}