Late-night viewers appear to have crowned their new favorite following Stephen Colbert’s departure from CBS airwaves.
On Monday, the first night that ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon returned with new episodes since Colbert signed off, Jimmy Kimmel Live! dominated the competitive 11:35 p.m. time slot, according to live and same-day data from Nielsen.
Kimmel saw 2.185 million total viewers on June 1, marking a 53-percent year-on-year increase. The ABC show also captured 295,000 viewers in the coveted 18-49 demographic, a staggering 178-percent increase from the same night last year.
Fallon came in a distant second with 1.301 million total viewers, but did increase by 10 percent year-over-year. In the 18-49 demo, the show saw a 14-percent increase from last year to 194,000 viewers.
CBS ended up trailing the competition with only 628,000 total viewers for Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed, which launched a day after Colbert left the network, a 65-percent drop for the same time slot compared to last year. In the 18-49 demo, only 82,000 viewers tuned in.
Under a unique “time buy” deal with the network, Allen bought the coveted 11:35 p.m. time slot from CBS but covers all production costs for his comedy panel show and, in turn, gains the right to sell advertising himself. That means that it’s Allen, not CBS, that is directly affected by poor ratings.
“We’re proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue,” CBS previously said in the statement. “With this ‘time buy’ model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit—a $55 million swing.”
A source familiar with the matter told the Daily Beast that this model allows CBS to program the late-night time slot without being susceptible to shifting audience and advertiser trends.
The numbers came as the network reimagines a late-night universe without Colbert, who helmed The Late Show for more than a decade before a festive sign-off last month that featured Paul McCartney as the final guest. He took over the show from David Letterman in 2015.
CBS first announced the shocking end of the Colbert era in July 2025. Though the network billed the change as “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” viewers and lawmakers alike couldn’t help but notice the timing.
The announcement was made days after Colbert called out CBS for agreeing to pay $16 million to settle the lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote after the cancellation was announced. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”
Letterman threw his weight behind Colbert in an interview with The New York Times last month.
Colbert was “dumped because the people selling the network to Skydance said, ‘Oh no, there’s not going to be any trouble with that guy. We’re going to take care of the show. We’re just going to throw that into the deal. When will the ink on the check dry?’ I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying,” Letterman said. “Let me just add one other thing. They’re lying weasels.”
