The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s replacement has been officially named.
Variety reported on Monday that CBS has sold the late-night hour soon to be vacated by Colbert after May 21 to entertainment mogul Byron Allen.
The 11:35 p.m. ET slot following the local news will now run back-to-back episodes of Allen’s comedy series, Comics Unleashed, which has been airing after Colbert. Allen will retain the 12:37 a.m. hour, which will now run his other comedy series, Funny You Should Ask.
Allen said in a statement, “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. 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.”
Allen hosts the apolitical comedy series Comics Unleashed, on which a group of comedians does short stand-ups on topics he provides. Funny You Should Ask is a game show on which contestants answer trivia questions while comics weigh in on their answers.
Colbert’s Late Show was announced to be ending last summer, amid CBS parent company Paramount’s merger with MAGA billionaire David Ellison’s Skydance. As one of Trump’s most frequent late-night critics, Colbert was in a heated back-and-forth with the president that culminated in his declaring on Late Show’s airwaves that Paramount had “bribed” the president by paying him $16 million to settle his lawsuit over 60 Minutes. Days later, Paramount announced that The Late Show would end in May.
In the weeks that followed, reports claimed that the show was losing money for the company, but critics, like Colbert’s fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, came to his defense, calling those reports “nonsensical.”
Colbert has repeatedly insisted that he is grateful for the time he’s spent on CBS and couldn’t be sure the decision was politically motivated. He’s insisted that he will focus on “landing this plane” until the show’s end, though supporters suspect he will continue to have a major platform post-May 2026.
Last month, an NBC News poll found that he was the only entertainer whose popularity almost matched public favorability with Pope Leo XIV. He also hasn’t ruled out a run for political office.
In the meantime, Trump’s crackdown on the media continues. His FCC head, Brendan Carr, said at CPAC last month that Trump was “winning” in his efforts to silence critics.
“Look at the results so far. PBS defunded. NPR defunded. Joy Reid gone from MSNBC. Sleepy-Eyed Chuck Todd, gone. Jim Acosta, gone. John Dickerson gone. Colbert is leaving. CBS is under new ownership, and soon enough, CNN is going to have new ownership as well,” he added, as Ellison is currently closing in on another major acquisition of Warner Bros. shortly after remaking CBS News in Trump’s image.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also celebrated a more Trump-friendly media landscape, declaring from a news podium last month that “the sooner” the Ellisons take over CNN, “the better,” so the network would show more favorable coverage of the president.
