Anti-Trump Comedian Seals Deal To Pay for Colbert’s Airtime on CBS, Will Air Comedy Shows in Place of Canceled ‘Late Show’

The clock is ticking for the end of CBS’s “The Late Show,” hosted by anti-Trump comedian Stephen Colbert. But, in its place will be comedy programming produced by another anti-Trump comedian, Byron Allen, who is paying CBS for use of the timeslot.Last summer, CBS announced it would be ending “The Late Show,” claiming the cancellation was due to financial reasons — though Democrats and liberal commentators suggested the move was meant to placate the Trump Administration. Reports later indicated the show was losing up to $50 million a year. This week, it was announced that Mr. Allen will be filling the empty time slot with his syndicated “Comics Unleashed” show, followed by his “Funny You Should Ask” game show.In a press release, Mr Allen said, “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,” he added.But the term “picking up” is a stretch. Unlike “The Late Show” or most programming on the major broadcast television networks, Mr. Allen’s programs will not be funded by CBS.A veteran media reporter, Matthew Belloni, said on his podcast “The Town,” that “This is them essentially renting the time slot to these two shows.”“And my prediction is this is only the beginning,” he said. “I think once Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers are done, this is coming for the rest of late night. They are essentially going to be turned into infomercial slots where they will rent out the time to these other shows that are produced elsewhere and that they’ll do a [revenue] share they’ll do an ad split or something like that where it just becomes financially more advantageous to give up and rent up the slot.”The practice of effectively renting airtime is more common on lower-tier cable channels, including faith-centered broadcasters, where megachurch preachers pay for their services to be broadcast to a national audience. The fact that this practice is now extending to the once prestigious late-night day part is a sign of how low the fortunes of broadcast television have fallen.While Mr. Colbert will no longer be on the air, that does not necessarily mean that the late-night time slot will be without Trump criticism.Mr. Allen, a stand-up comedian who became a film and television producer, has been an outspoken critic of the president. In 2019, he accused the Trump Administration of trying to “maintain institutionalized racism in America.”A year later, he said Mr. Trump is “completely wrong” for criticizing the news media as “fake news.”“What he’s not understanding is that he’s nothing more than temporary hired help. He works for the American people. He answers to us, we don’t answer to him,” Mr. Allen said.He also praised the media, saying, “Thank God we have the media or else I think we might all be drinking Lysol right now, and we don’t need to be drinking Lysol.”His comment seems to be a reference to jocular remarks Mr. Trump made during the COVID pandemic when he mused about whether COVID could be treated by injecting a disinfectant or otherwise cleaning out a patient’s respiratory system. Mr. Allen’s programs are set to begin airing on CBS on May 22. Variety notes that it is unclear how much he is paying the network to lease the airtime. But it reports that the Tiffany Network executives are celebrating the news, saying that it will once again make the network profitable in the late-night hours.

Anti-Trump Comedian Seals Deal To Pay for Colbert’s Airtime on CBS, Will Air Comedy Shows in Place of Canceled ‘Late Show’

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