Late-night legend David Letterman had some choice words to describe Stephen Colbert’s replacement on CBS.
Letterman, 79, said during a conversation with Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay on his podcast on Friday that the network’s decision to replace The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed during the late-night time slot is a financial one.
“They don’t want to spend any money, so they’re going to make money,” he said. “They charge Byron Allen some reasonable price. He sells all the advertising for his Comics Unleashed, and it’ll be, I think, 90 minutes or two hours of comics talking about funny stuff.“
“The show is a pretty good idea,” Letterman added. “It’s all panel. Nobody’s doing any standup, except they’re seated doing standup.”
The Daily Beast reached out to CBS and Allen Media Group for comment.
Colbert’s last episode as the host of The Late Show will air on May 21, with Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen filling the 11:35 p.m. time slot the following day, where it will air back-to-back half-hour episodes. The comedy game show Funny You Should Ask, owned by Allen’s media company, Allen Media Group, will fill Comics Unleashed‘s original 12:35 a.m. time slot.
“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," Allen, 64, 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.”
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight last week, Allen said his deal to purchase the timeslot for “tens of millions” was a risky one.
“What we do is we keep the commercial time, and we sell it directly to the advertisers,” Allen told the outlet. “I agreed to pay the network millions of dollars—tens of millions of dollars, OK—so this better work, or I’m going to be in front of your house in a tent."
CBS coincidentally announced Colbert’s firing shortly after the late-night host called out the network’s parent company, Paramount, over its legal settlement with President Donald Trump over 60 Minutes.
The network denied that the decision was politically motivated, though the choice raised eyebrows, given the timing of the company’s merger with MAGA-friendly nepo-billionaire David Ellison’s company, Skydance.
