ATLANTA, GEORGIA - DECEMBER 02: Byron Allen speaks onstage at day 2 of the 2025 HOPE Global Forum at Signia by Hilton Atlanta on December 02, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

Getty Images

CBS is turning over its entire late-night block to Byron Allen after Stephen Colbert’s exit next month, in a move that even a year ago would have seemed almost impossible.

After the final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs on May 21st, his time slot will be filled with episodes of the Byron Allen series Comics Unleashed, which is hosted by Allen and which features stand-up comics sitting around telling jokes.

The show has been airing in the 12:37 a.m. timeslot formerly occupied by the comedy game show After Midnight. Moving forward, that space will be filled with the 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,” said Allen, the founder/chairman/CEO of Allen Media Group, 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.”

For most of its 20-year history, Comics Unleashed was syndicated and primarily aired on local TV stations in an overnight timeslot. Generally speaking, the show was provided to local stations on a barter basis - stations received the show for free in exchange for allowing Allen’s company to sell the majority of the advertising inventory inside that time slot.

The CBS deal is structured differently in that the network is leasing the time to Allen Media Group, which will then be able to sell advertising inside that two-hour programming block.

It’s not clear how much money Allen is paying for the two hours of CBS late night airtime. It won’t even be clear how many are viewing the programs, since the television measurement company Nielsen Media Research doesn’t provide ratings for barter programs or for programs that pay to be on the air.

All of this is a remarkable change for a post-local news timeslot that has included a network produced late night talk show since The Late Show With David Letterman premiered in 1993.

The deal likely won’t please local CBS affiliates, since the network has informed them that despite leasing out the two-hour block of airtime, it still considers the time slot national programming. And that means local stations can’t replace it with more popular (and more profitable) syndicated programming.

If there is a silver lining for those local stations, it’s that the deal only lasts for twelve months, meaning things can change again at the end of the 2026-2027 season.