‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Is Off-Air, What’s Next For CBS?

NEW YORK - MAY 21: Stephen Colbert on the CBS series The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, scheduled to air on the CBS Television Network. (Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)

CBS via Getty Images

CBS is out of the late night business now that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has ended. But George Cheeks, Paramount’s Chair of TV Media, isn’t willing to put the final nail in the coffin just yet. The exec is holding out hope for the format continuing to have a life at the network with original programming.

For now, slated to take over the vacated slot is Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. But his show’s positioning on CBS is unique. While Allen is holding down the late night format for the network, he’s doing so out of his own pocket.

The comedian and media mogul, who recently purchased a controlling stake in BuzzFeed and had put in a bid for Paramount prior to its sell to Skydance, has leased the time block. It’s a one-season contract that has the potential for a renewal if it proves advantageous for CBS. When it comes to the broadcaster’s finances, it already is.

Why ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Was Canceled

The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been a topic of both societal and governmental discussion since the news broke in July 2025 just days after Stephen Colbert had said Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 60 Minutes interview was a “big fat bribe.”

At the time, congressional Democrats pushed for answers from Skydance on whether the company was involved in Paramount’s decision to pull the plug on the show. The company denied having a hand in the cancellation.

Cheeks, who was co-CEO of Paramount Global when the decision was made, cited finances as the reason for the show’s scheduled end.

At an August 2025 press conference, after the Paramount-Skydance deal closed, he told reporters, “The challenge in late night is that the advertising marketplace is in significant secular decline. We are huge fans of Colbert, we love the show, unfortunately the economics made it a challenge for us to keep going.”

He expressed that The Late Show was losing a “significant” amount of money, which was in the “tens of millions,” though he wouldn’t share the exact figure.

But the timing of the decision, which Cheeks put down to when contracts would need to be negotiated for writers and producers, only stoked public accusations that Colbert lost his show because of what he said. Allegations of censorship have dogged the steps of CBS ever since.

On the day of the late night program’s last episode, the Committee for the First Amendment—boasting more than 3,000 members who work in the entertainment and media industry—put out a video thanking Stephen Colbert for his courage and affirming their commitment to “carry forward the torch Stephen has held so high."

What Is 'Comics Unleashed’?

The half-hour series, which got its start in 2006, is set-up as a late night comedy panel. Comedians get together and tell jokes, but viewers can’t expect biting political commentary. When Allen was asked on CBS Mornings whether there would be a political aspect to the program, he said, “No politics. You come, you laugh.”

Allen’s focused on bringing people together through comedy. He said, “Comedy can heal it all,” and he believes Comics Unleashed can hold onto Colbert’s audience and build upon it. His show is celebrating 20 years of laughs as it gears up for its official anniversary in the fall of 2026.

The move to Colbert’s spot is simply business to Allen. While he expressed love for Colbert and referred to himself as a big fan, he saw what he described as “a very unfortunate event” and realized that “this isn’t show business, it’s business show,” and he pitched CBS a solution to their money problems.

“The networks are challenged because sports rights are very expensive,” he said. “And ad dollars are shifting from linear to digital. So there’s some financial pressure. I’ve invested about a billion dollars buying ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX affiliates...what I said to the networks, I said look, you’re spending about $150 million dollars on Colbert and the show after Colbert (After Midnight). You’ve decided to cancel both of them."

Allen continued, "My recommendation is that you don’t spend money on that time period now that you’ve decided to cancel them. At the end of the day, you’re throwing me an audience at 1:30 in the morning to my CBS affiliates that I own around the country, and I’m running half-hour infomercials...I said save your money, I will put my show Comics Unleashed on...they said, this is great. You’re going to save us from $150-170 million.”

Is CBS Done With Late Night?

Though CBS is open to extending their contract with Allen, Cheeks hasn’t ruled out a return to the 11:35 p.m. slot for an original late night program from the network.

At a press conference in April, he mentioned they’re “developing other ideas” for the period though Amy Reisenbach, CBS Entertainment president, noted that nothing is in “active development.” However, the broadcaster is having conversations about what’s next.

Cheeks shared that he still believes in late night. It’s how he got his start. But he said, “I think the reality is that the reach is still there, but the reach is there primarily on YouTube, which is under monetized. So if we’re going to go back in that space, we have to go back in that space with a different financial model.”

What that could look like on CBS is up in the air for now, but YouTube is set to get into late night come Thursday, May 28 when Good Night with Ben Gleib premieres at 10 p.m. ET. The show’s promotional tagline is “The evolution of late night is here,” and while it’s the first program in this format coming to the platform, another is set to follow with Outside Tonight hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum.

This latest move in the programming available on YouTube is a response to the common practice of late night viewers watching clips or whole episodes from these shows the morning after they air. The decline in live viewing for broadcast has had an adverse affect on accruing ad revenue that supports the financial expense of producing late night talk shows that air on TV.

With The Late Show sunset by CBS, Colbert himself has been asked repeatedly to defend the existence of late night. It’s an existential question that’s not easily answerable. Colbert said, “People like it. I enjoy doing it,” and then extended the question to his fellow late night hosts during a Strike Force Five interview.

Jimmy Kimmel’s answer spoke to the moment. He said:

“I look at the figures. The fact of the matter is, more people are watching late night television then, and I know everybody gets crazy, then when Johnny Carson—now obviously Johnny Carson had a lot of people watching one show—but we have a lot of shows with 30,000 people watching each one, right? And it adds up. People watch us on YouTube now. People have a lot of different options and yet they’re still coming to us.”

Cheeks knows this. It’s why CBS is working on its next late night move. Cultural relevancy requires topical commentary, a point of view, and an audience hungry for what a host and their guests have to say about what’s going on in the world. The network wants to be in that game with late night, but it has to be at the right price point.

For now the “immediate profitability” of Comics Unleashed’s placement will hold as the network cedes airtime to a comparatively less controversial option than its counterparts in broadcast’s late night block.

Follow Sabrina Reed on Forbes for more TV and news coverage about what’s coming to a screen near you and what’s happening in Hollywood that affects your wallet and viewing habits.