{"id":671616,"date":"2026-05-29T06:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671616\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T06:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:31:10","slug":"cbs-says-late-night-byron-allen-deal-generates-15-million-in-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/671616\/","title":{"rendered":"CBS Says Late-Night Byron Allen Deal Generates $15 Million in Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHow to make big, well, some bucks in late night<\/a>? According to CBS<\/a>, the trick is to cancel your traditional show and lease the time to someone else.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Paramount Skydance broadcast outlet, which has been grilled for weeks over its decision to oust Stephen Colbert and cancel its long-running \u201cLate Show,\u201d<\/a> says the move will swing its wee-hours business to a profit from a loss.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re proud to partner with Byron Allen<\/a> on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost prohibitive to continue,\u201d the company said in a statement Thursday. \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

\n\tCBS has been ridiculed and criticized for weeks as Colbert wound down his program and invited guests who cast opprobrium at network executives. David Letterman, who hosted \u201cLate Show\u201d before Colbert, likened executives behind the cancellation decision to \u201clying weasels\u201d during an appearance in the waning days of the program.<\/p>\n

\n\tMuch of the industry believes Colbert was cancelled not because of the financial reasons CBS touts but due to a desire by Paramount executives to flatter President Donald Trump, known to dislike late-night comics who poke fun at him and his policies. Colbert was heavily reliant on political humor<\/a> \u2014 a move that helped \u201cLate Show\u201d win more viewers overall than rivals like NBC\u2019s \u201cTonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u201da and ABC\u2019s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live.\u201d Indeed, Colbert\u2019s facility with hot, headline-heavy topics helped reverse CBS\u2019 fortunes in late night. <\/p>\n

\n\tAdding fuel to the fire were what appeared to be lackluster ratings for the debut of Allen\u2019s \u201cComics Unleashed\u201d roundtable program on the day after Colbert\u2019s finale. The series generated 878,000 total viewers across two half-hour shows on Friday, May 22, according to\u00a0Nielsen data. The first half-hour was a first-run episode and the second one was a repeat from September. The night before, Colbert\u2019s finale, which drew a larger-than-usual audience, snared more than 6.7 million viewers.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comparison is not of the apples-to-apples variety, because a late-night host\u2019s last program is bound to win a large audience, just as a repeat aired on a Friday night is not. The decision to launch Allen\u2019s show in Colbert\u2019s time slot on a Friday was surprising, because none of the current crop of late-night programs airs originals regularly on Fridays, meaning the audience does not regularly tune to them in typical numbers.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder the arrangement CBS has with Allen, the entrepreneur and media owner covers 100% of the production costs and pays CBS a fee for his use of the time period. Allen in turn sells the advertising that appears alongside his shows. No matter the viewership or the ratings for the time period, CBS gets paid the same fee.<\/p>\n

\n\tAll the networks have had to grapple with how to handle late night programs,<\/a> which remain a staple of American culture and conversation, but no longer draw the crowds they once did when Johnny Carson, Letterman and Jay Leno held sway. Ad spending on late night television shows fell to $209 million in 2025, according to Guideline, down from $519.7 million in 2017 \u2014 a drop of nearly 60%. \u201cThe Late Show\u201d accounted for 27% of all spending on late-night TV shows in 2025, according to the company\u2019s data, and 29% of all spending so far in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the exit of Colbert, many dollars that have stayed with the daypart may migrate to digital, along with the viewers who previously watched the shows around midnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How to make big, well, some bucks in late night? According to CBS, the trick is to cancel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[49565,991,236,88,13726,10674],"class_list":["post-671616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-byron-allen","tag-cbs","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-late-night","tag-stephen-colbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}