I get that we now apparently exist in a world where it’s a much more desirable path to merely point out when something positive or negative happens rather than actually provide something resembling an unbiased look from even ten thousand feet (Thirty thousand would be WAY too much to ask). Earlier this month I pretty much expressed the exact same sentiment when I took those attempting to correlate FOX NEWS’ viewership decline being somehow emblematic of our country’s moral healing to task. Now it’s late night TV’s turn.
LATENIGHTER.com’s Jed Rosenzweig turned on his niggly side to provide what he considered to be a definitive take on the state of affairs of late night tv yesterday morning. He provided live-plus-seven figures–indeed a step in the right direction–to provide what he would offer is a more definitive lens of what’s happening in the daypart. It naturally provided great news for JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! but also provided Rosenzweig yet another chance to provide Byron Allen’s relentless propaganda machine with an avenue to tout audience gains which the ever-complicit stooge bought hook, line and sinker:
(T)he month’s biggest total-viewer gains came from Byron Allen’s two-hour CBS late-night block, which appeared to benefit from the return of CBS’s fall primetime originals. Across its full hour, Comics Unleashed averaged approximately 797,000 total viewers in October, up 19% from September, and 100,000 adults 18–49, up 12%. Funny You Should Ask averaged approximately 549,000 total viewers across its hour, up 17% month-over-month, and 72,000 adults 18–49, up 5%.
Apparently anything that even smatters of something that would support the cancellation of THE LATE SHOW is triggering to those who still suffer from CDS–Colbert Departure Syndrome. Within an hour of Rosenzweig’s “analysis” came this rebuttal from THE ANKLER’s Sean McNulty in his holiday morning WAKEUP newsletter:
Colbert crushing Byron Allen show in October numbers on CBS
Here’s how the numbers shaped up for October according to NIELSEN numbers cited by Late Nighter.
- The Late Show With Stephen Colbert averaged over 3x as many viewers in October 2025 as Comics Unleashed did this October, with a 2.6M average vs. 797k.
- In the18-49 demo, it’s 230k vs. 100k.
- AND: I’m gonna guess the October midterms would have bumped that up even further.
- PLUS: This is also a big promotional audience loss for other CBS programming each Monday to Thursday night.
- ALSO: The Comics Unleashed YT channel has just 23k total subscribers (it’s not affiliated with CBS). The Late Show’s had over 10M.
- There’s no data out there on how this shift may also be affecting 11 p.m. local TV broadcast numbers on CBS stations.
Sure, you could argue a $15M profit from Byron Allen paying you for the slot is better than losing money — if that indeed were true. Throw in an additional $5M for the 12:35 p.m. slot. But for a network that consistently touts how “#1” it is at everything, becoming a no-show after 11 p.m. is a really bad look. So is your own cable TV network beating your flagship broadcast TV network in a timeslot . . . in 2026, as COMEDY CENTRAL is topping CBS in late night in the October numbers, too.
Aside from what I’d hope was a poor grammatical choice that something that no longer exists could actively “crush” something that does, considering how much effort McNulty put it to provide his context I’m somewhat stunned that he didn’t dig up ALL of the October 2025 late night night data for comparison. Since I assume he was too busy cleaning out his Jersey Shore beach house I did that for him–not all that hard since Rosenzweig makes a living doing it:
- Jimmy Kimmel Live! (ABC) – 2.37M
- Gutfeld! (Fox News) – 3.09M (‑6%) – highest total audience in the 10 PM slot
- The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) – 1.34M (+7%)
- Late Night with Seth Meyers (NBC) – 959K (‑1%)
- Nightline (ABC) – 943K (+4%)
- The Daily Show (Comedy Central) – 872K
Let me save you the need to click back and forth and cut to the pertinent data. Year/year, CBS has lost approximately 1.8 million viewers. Kimmel has gained approximately 633,000. TDS has gained approximately 152,000. Let’s put to the side for a moment the further reality check that specific time slots and time shifted viewing give further qualifications to all of this. By my count, there’s just over one million Colbert viewers that haven’t found their way to any established competitor. Where did they go and is it possible to get any of them back?
About the only research-savvy observer who’s spending even a smattering of time pondering these bigger picture issues is Allen’s lackey, and he’s certainly not motivated to provide an impartial lens. McNulty and his elitist publishers could be–hell, they spend far too much time and detail pushing a narrative that Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy were undeserving victims–but they apparently would rather settle for clickbaitable half-truths.
That laziness aside, he did bring up a more than valid point that–gasp–a CABLE network is beating a broadcaster. The fact this was happening on a regular basis in key prime time slots a generation ago–should I remind McNulty this was happening at his old HBO haunt where I assume he was copied on internal distribution lists?–was apparently an inconvenient truth in this case. So, apparently, is the reality that Colbert did indeed cost what it did to produce and a day-and-date, New York-based talk show with writers, a band and union-defined staffers wasn’t projecting any significant savings down the road.
But the now-renamed Skydance monolith did choose to continue THE DAILY SHOW–heck, they even committed to an extension of Jon Stewart–at what I’d surmise was an expense line slightly more negative than the one that CBS currently claims. For a network that’s already been identified as a potential sacrifical lamb should they fail to deliver the thirty theatrical films per year they pinky-promised would be in order to ram their supposedly politically driven move to control CNN through the courts.
Allen’s time buy deal has an expiration date of this coming summer, and what McNulty righly points out is that there are more tentacles to the move that’s costing CBS in ways that his blood money alone can’t make up for. It’s not all that much of a leap of faith to conclude there are better solutions out there for CBS late night.
So if THE DAILY SHOW can do all it’s doing with practically nothing else on its air beyond skatedy-eight reruns of THE OFFICE to prop it up then maybe it should be considered for deployment on CBS?
The infrastructure is already up and running and committed to. Many episodes–especially ones that Stewart hosts–already run well over their typical half-hour length. Producing a one-hour version that can run on both CBS and Comedy Central would require a fraction of the cost that Colbert incurred–or, for that matter, almost anything else that would need to be started from scratch.
Yeah, there’s that small little issue that CC starts straight up at 11 PM ET–35 minutes ahead of those Luddite CBS affiliates committed to news. Personally, I’d take the risk that shoving in a twelfth episode of an OFFICE marathon in that half-hour wouldn’t necessarily cost CC or TDS all that much, considering how much of its viewership occurs outside of a live window. And if indeed the upside of having an anticipated original lead-out of those declining newscasts could inflate those numbers–apart from the fact that there’s at least 200k viewers more than Allen’s delivering already ready to make the leap–that’s a move that oozes with common sense.
Please, spare me any sort of outdated rhetoric that Skydance needs to nurture all of their children. CBS has already dual illuminated the VMA, BET and Kids’ Choice awards to expand their respective reaches. Virtually anyone who subscribes to Comedy Central has access to CBS–for Paramount Plus subscribers, they’re in the same app. And by the by, Skydance sales would be selling a cume audience anyway, so who really cares which channel they watch it on anyway?
Allen can always be relegated back to the 12:37 AM hour exclusively–just as he was during 2024-25 in the wake of AFTER MIDNIGHT’s cancellation. When he was merely providing decades-old reruns to that time slot he was delivering 466,000 viewers–or 83,000 fewer than FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK is delivering with originals now. One can surmise that its newfound popularity should easily be able to make up that difference and then some. Maybe he won’t pay $15 million for the privilege, but I’m pretty sure Skydance will be able to make up the difference.
I tinkered with other more complicated permutations on the above while I pondered all of this as I typically do–on my morning walk stepping over the sleepless homeless. They ranged from producing THE DAILY SHOW in a manner where the signature monologue occurred midway through once the two entities were simulcasting and that CBS would air the 11-11:35 PM Comedy Central portion on a net one-hour delay to provide some sort of continuity to adding a couple more one-day-a-week “name” hosts to the checkerboard to boost the supersized profile–including (ta da!) a dramatic limited return of Colbert himself on one of them. Once I had my coffee, I opted against that. Even I have my limitations as to how much one can reasonably expect out of people who were lax enough to sell their souls and their valuable real estate to someone like Byron Allen.
Since I know McNulty travels in far tonier circles than do I, maybe he still falls somewhere between my own loony ideas and the dearth of any that seem to be coming from CBS. I offer these up as a way for him to go a little bit beyond pointing out the obvious and perhaps trying to actually be a journalist with a take–just like his other ANKLERs. Go finish your packing, Sean, and then at least pretend you want to identify any solution at all.
Until next time…