Byron Allen's syndicated late-night panel show will succeed The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, handing the first network rival to The Tonight Show to a comedian and media tycoon who has long aspired to Johnny Carson's seat.
For those who remember the wars of late-night succession fought in the past 40 years, the current changing of the guard at CBS is unlike any other. After Stephen Colbert was unceremoniously fired, the network didn’t launch a search for a replacement, nor did it select someone groomed or selected by Colbert. Unlike Jimmy Fallon or Conan O’Brien, the replacement didn’t host the 12:30 show before stepping to the mainstage. This time, CBS is canceling The Late Show entirely and replacing it with the syndicated late-night panel show Comics Unleashed, hosted by veteran stand-up comic, media mogul, and proud new owner of BuzzFeed Byron Allen. And whether you know it or not, Allen is already his own type of late-night fixture.
Viewers of Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show are likely well acquainted with Comics Unleashed. They’re probably still conditioned to grab a remote and head to bed whenever they hear the dulcet tones of announcer John Cramer saying, “Coming to you from Hollywood, almost live.” Between 2006 and 2016, Allen produced more than 230 episodes of Comics Unleashed, and the half-hour panel show closed out the broadcast day for CBS affiliates across the United States. In 2023, when CBS faced a hole in its broadcasting schedule because the people who wrote and performed its programming were on strike, the network called Allen to Unleash more Comics. As his stand-up brethren walked the picket line during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Byron Allen held court in late-night. He must’ve made an impression. Not only is the show airing back-to-back in Colbert’s old time slot starting tonight, Allen’s syndicated game show, Funny You Should Ask, hosted by Jon Kelley, follows it at 12:37.
Allen, who considered Johnny Carson a mentor, is perhaps a more classical candidate for the role than he gets credit for. As a boy, his mother worked at NBC as a publicist, and Allen watched from the wings as Carson, Redd Fox, Flip Wilson, and Dean Martin entertained America. At age 14, after his first stand-up set, Jimmie Walker hired him to his writing team, alongside David Letterman and Jay Leno. He would hang around Carson’s parking spot and greet the host as he arrived at work. After Carson wrapped, Allen would sneak into his chair and read his cue cards. By age 17, Allen became the youngest stand-up to ever perform on The Tonight Show.
Allen has been on TV ever since. After co-hosting the proto-reality show Real People, he hosted his own syndicated late-night show, The Byron Allen Show,in the late-’80s and early-’90s. Allen followed that with Entertainers, a cheapo celebrity interview show cobbled together from junket Q&As, which is, remarkably, still on the air. However, Comics Unleashed remains his most successful television venture.
Every episode of Comics Unleashed is the same: Allen performs a brief observational monologue before hosting four comics for 20 minutes, lobbing them heavy-handed set-ups for the prewritten material they’ve brought with them. Inoffensive, apolitical, and utterly nontopical, it’s an advertiser’s dream. It’s also the rare TV series that’sbetter known for its “time-buy” business model than the quality of its content. Allen produces the show through his Allen Media Group (née the hilariously vague Entertainment Studios) imprint, buys airtime that would normally go to infomercials, and gets to keep the revenue from the commercials that air during the show.
Pretty much since it premiered, Comics Unleashed has been a frequent punchline for stand-ups, both for its strict rules and low pay. “Casey Anthony left prison with $537.68,” Todd Berry tweeted in 2011. “That’s the same amount you get for appearing on Comics Unleashed.” On multiple episodes of his podcast, the late Norm Macdonald critiqued the show and goofed on its title, saying, “Oh, you couldn’t be more leashed.” Macdonald recalled an appearance in which Allen’s producers put his jokes through “six layers” of scrutiny. More offensively, he said, Allen couldn’t segue between his guests and their patter. One Allen setup Macdonald liked to repeat was for Jon Lovitz: “So, Jon, I hear you’re growing older.”
Comics Unleashed’s aversion to political talk aside, Allen has made a reputation for himself as a crusader for equity in media, and the show’s booking doesn’t discriminate based on color, ethnicity, party affiliation, or style of humor. One episode might feature Sinbad, Tom Dreesen, and Maria Bamford, another Wayne Brady, Adam Carolla, and Robert Wuhl. If Allen can wring a few jokes out of you, and you’re willing to work for exposure, there’s a chair for you. The host’s connections really run the gamut: Since resuming production, the Comics Unleashed panel has welcomed a bona fide movie star in Tiffany Haddish, podcast fixtures like James Adomian and Josh Gondelman, and veterans like Alonzo Bodden and Rita Rudner.
Of course, the dirty little secret ofthe show’s timeless content is that it allows episodes to rerun long after their production date. That’s how the first week of episodes in the Colbert timeslot was able to nab John Witherspoon, despite the Friday star being dead since 2019. In 2023, when a screenshot of Roy Wood Jr.’s long-ago Comics Unleashed appearance popped up on the former Daily Show correspondent’s Twitter feed, he joked, “My issue with Comics Unleashed returning to TV is that no one is letting people know that all of these episodes are AT LEAST 15 years old. Folks gone think we dressing like this now.”
The show’s approach to listing upcoming episodes takes one of two tracks: Mentioning the original airdates for any repeats from the past three years, and the season and episode number for those that come from the original run. As such, a Nate Bargatze appearance can be advertised as if he’s promoting his upcoming movie, The Breadwinner, and there’s no way to tell ahead of time if the footage is from 2026, 2023, or 2009. It seemingly makes no difference to Allen or CBS.
Allen’s aspirations extend far past late-night. In recent weeks, he bought what remains of BuzzFeed and continued making overtures to buy Starz. He hopes to one day become the first Black owner of an NFL team and has invested close to a billion dollars in local TV stations around the country. He’s a “big fan” of Rupert Murdoch as a sports broadcaster. But for CBS, Allen means not having to worry about the president tweeting missives about firing its network stars. He isn’t even a CBS employee, nor is he an ideologue like Bari Weiss, and he probably won’t turn his show into a diet version of Fox’s The Five. With Allen, CBS gets light laughs, weak jokes, and zero political critique five nights a week for basically nothing. But apolitical is a political choice, and by excising whatever fangs comedy has, Allen is producing a show that is in the best interest of those in power and his bottom line. Comics Unleashed is late night enshittified, which is exactly what CBS wants.
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