When CBS announced it would end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the network faced a genuine crossroads. It could’ve used that 11:35 PM ET slot to do something bold. Instead, it chose to essentially rent the timeslot out, announcing back-to-back episodes of Comics Unleashed — with Byron Allen buying the time — followed by the comedy game show Funny You Should Ask in the hour after. That’s not a programming strategy. That’s a white flag.
Maybe Comics Unleashed is a terrific show. Honestly, it might be. But there’s a fundamental problem here that no amount of quality can fix — CBS isn’t airing it because the network believes in it. It’s airing it because someone paid to put it there. So should CBS realistically expect a paid-placement comedy program to go toe-to-toe with Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon every single night? That’s a tough case to make.
Here’s where the missed opportunity really stings, though. CBS News already runs a re-air of the CBS Evening News on its CBS News 24/7 streaming platform. Why couldn’t that same broadcast — or a version of it — run at 11:35 PM ET on the network itself? Sure, producing a brand-new, half-hour, late-night newscast from scratch probably isn’t financially viable. But it’s hard to imagine it’d cost more than The Late Show with Stephen Colbert did. It’s also hard to imagine advertisers wouldn’t find a late-night newscast more appealing than a paid-placement comedy block.
Two things consistently hold their own on linear television right now — live sports and news. That’s not an opinion. It’s just simply the reality. So why wasn’t a news program the first name on the whiteboard when CBS started mapping out Stephen Colbert’s replacement? The CBS Evening News already airs at 6:30 PM, right after local newscasts wrap up across the country. Doesn’t a late-night newscast at 11:35 PM — again, following local news — fit that same logical pattern? The audience handoff practically writes itself.
There’s also a more creative option CBS apparently didn’t seriously consider. The Takeout with Major Garrett is an established CBS News property with a built-in identity. Expanding something like that into a proper late-night slot — even a slimmed-down version — would’ve at least given CBS News a genuine presence in the window. Instead, the network handed the keys to an outside buyer and moved on.
Now, to be fair, if the numbers genuinely don’t work for any news-based programming — if the production costs outpace what advertisers will pay and what the audience will deliver — then CBS is stuck in an uncomfortable corner.
But if the choice is truly between “take Byron Allen’s money” or “do nothing,” then maybe it’s time to have an honest conversation about whether the network should simply sign off after the local news and fire the transmitter back up at 5 AM. At least that’s an honest outcome. Airing paid programming and calling it a late-night strategy isn’t.
It’s genuinely strange to think we’ve reached a point where a Big Four broadcast network’s late-night plan amounts to “well, at least something’s on the screen.” CBS spent decades building a legitimate late-night brand — from David Letterman to Stephen Colbert — and now it’s essentially subletting that legacy. That’s a tough thing to watch.
The broader issue isn’t just about one timeslot. It’s about whether CBS News sees an opening to matter in a window where it could actually reach people. Late-night used to be where networks made statements. Whether it was Nightline redefining what news on television could look like, or Letterman turning a timeslot into a cultural institution, somebody always cared enough to try. Right now, it doesn’t feel like CBS is trying. It feels like CBS is billing the timeslot by the hour — and hoping nobody notices.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
“Comics Unleashed” isn’t a horrible show; Allen has been producing and syndicating it off-and-on for 20 years. It’s just comedians sitting around and telling each other non-topical jokes (so they’ll work in reruns). Also, Allen is an incredibly successful businessman, so there must be something in this for him beyond just paying for a toehold into a more prestigious time slot. But yeah, for the network it’s an uninspired choice, and I wonder how the local affiliates will react.
As for the cost of mounting a new or slightly modified newscast in that time slot: you’re right, it would likely be cheaper than mounting “The Late Show,” but then, with Colbert’s show coming in at a reported production cost of $500,000 per episode for 200 episodes per year — and still losing $40 million a year on that — just about anything would be cheaper.
And as for why TPTB at CBS or CBS News didn’t try to mount a newscast in that slot? The most charitable answer would be that CBS killed the “Late Show” franchise to stanch the bleeding and that “Comics Unleashed” is just a stopgap until they can figure out a better replacement. The least charitable answer — and to my mind, the correct answer — is that, under the Ellisons (and under FCC chief Brendan Carr), the only real priority here was to get rid of the Trump-skewering Colbert. (And not replace him with some other lefty host who would continue to make fun of Trump.) Doing something that would help the flailing CBS News is waaaay down on the priority list; if they really cared about fixing CBS News (again, instead of neutering it as a potential Trump critic), they’d have hired someone with a lot more experience and competence than Bari Weiss to run it. Whether you attribute the Ellisons’ decisions in this situation to hard fiduciary responsibility or to cronyism with the Trump administration, they’re clearly not interested in preserving CBS’s legacy brands, whether it’s the 33-year-old late-night franchise or the century-old news division.