Stephen Colbert spent eleven years turning CBS late night into a nightly DNC fundraiser.
Now CBS handed his time slot to someone whose entire pitch is that comedy should be funny.
The network announced this week what replaces Colbert on May 22 – and the answer says everything about why political lecture TV is dying.
The Late Show Finale Is Set — and CBS Is Already Walking Away
Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed takes over the 11:35 p.m. slot the day after Colbert's finale on May 21.
Allen built Allen Media Group from nothing into a billion-dollar operation by giving comedians a stage and staying out of politics entirely.
Allen has been pitching for this moment since CBS announced Colbert's cancellation last July.
"If they're looking for a show, my hand is already up," Allen said at New York's Advertising Week last October. "50 years, I've been waiting for this moment."
His show – four comedians telling jokes and being funny – is about as far from Colbert's nightly Trump-bashing ritual as television gets.
The deal runs through the 2026-2027 TV season, with Allen's comedy game show Funny You Should Ask filling the 12:35 a.m. slot right behind it.
CBS isn't replacing Colbert with another host doing the same act.
They're replacing him with a comedian who explicitly says his goal is to make people laugh.
Late Night Ratings Tell the Story Colbert Never Wanted You to See
Colbert's show was bleeding $40 million a year for CBS even as his defenders called it a ratings success.
Yes, The Late Show held the No. 1 spot in its 11:35 p.m. time slot – drawing around 2.4 million viewers in 2025.
Greg Gutfeld drew 3.1 million over that same stretch without a single broadcast network behind him.
Gutfeld grew his audience 21 percent last year while Colbert bled that $40 million annually out of CBS's pocket.
The industry-wide numbers are even uglier: ad revenue for broadcast late-night collapsed 50 percent from $439 million in 2018 to $220 million in 2024.
Ninety-two percent of political jokes on late-night shows targeted conservatives last year – up from 82 percent in 2024.
Guest lists matched the contempt: 196 liberal guests to just two conservative ones across the entire late-night landscape.
Half of America wasn't being represented.
Half of America stopped watching.
The networks acted surprised.
Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert literally co-hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden while Biden was visibly in cognitive decline – and then kept lecturing America about truth and democracy.
Variety – not exactly a conservative outlet – ripped Colbert's final season as "not very good TV."
America wasn't being unfair to Colbert.
America just stopped watching.
What Gutfeld Ratings Proved That Colbert Spent 11 Years Ignoring
Johnny Carson never told you who to vote for.
Jay Leno made fun of both parties.
David Letterman was weird and brilliant and never once acted like your political therapist.
Then the Left took over late night entirely and decided their job was to make sure you knew Trump was bad – every single night – for years.
Here's what they never understood: the people who agreed with them already knew Trump was bad.
https://twitter.com/NewsNation/status/2041283912517722377?s=20
And the half of America that didn't agree with them stopped watching.
Gutfeld went the other direction – hired rebel comics, kept the energy loose, made fun of the absurdity across the board – and drew more viewers than anyone in late night without a single network broadcast advantage.
Comics Unleashed isn't trying to be Gutfeld.
But it's built on the same instinct: comedy is supposed to be entertaining.
Allen has been in the comedy business for fifty years.
He didn't build a media empire by lecturing his audience.
The era of late-night political therapy is over. CBS finally admitted it – and Stephen Colbert can spend his retirement explaining to himself why America never came around.
Sources:
- Alexander Hall, "CBS to replace Colbert's 'Late Show' with Byron Allen's 'Comics Unleashed,'" Fox News, April 6, 2026.
- Josef Adalian, "CBS Seals Deal With Byron Allen to Lease All of Late Night After Stephen Colbert Exits in May," Variety, April 6, 2026.
- Alex Christy, "Broadcast Bias: Late-Night Comedy Death Spiral Shows How Leftist Hate Killed Their Humor," Fox News, January 3, 2026.
- Christian Toto, "'Gutfeld!' Ruled 2025 While Two Late-Night Shows Collapsed," Hollywood in Toto, January 12, 2026.
- "'Gutfeld!' Ratings," Fox News Media, March 19, 2026.