CBS celebrated a financial victory lap one week after ousting beloved late-night host Stephen Colbert.
In a statement on Thursday, a spokesperson for the TV network both praised The Late Show‘s replacement, Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed, and burned Colbert, relishing the money they saved by unceremoniously canceling his show.
“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 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."
The statement purported to reaffirm CBS’s initial claim that its cancellation of Colbert, 62, had been “purely a financial decision,” continuing the “insider” report that the network had been losing $40 million annually on The Late Show. The network has never divulged how it calculated that figure.
“There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate,” fellow late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, 58, said of CBS’s reported loss at the time. “The idea that Stephen Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical.”
CBS announced Colbert’s cancellation just days after the late-night host publicly shamed their $16 million 60 Minutes lawsuit settlement with President Donald Trump as a “big, fat bribe.”
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I’m offended, and I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company,” Colbert said in his July monologue.
In the statement, CBS equally relished its new moneymaking arrangement with Allen, 65, under which he purchased the coveted 11:35 pm timeslot from the network. As part of Allen’s “time buy” deal, the billionaire media mogul covers all production costs associated with his comedy panel show, Comics Unleashed, and in turn gains the right to sell advertising himself.
The statement seemed to reveal for the first time that the billionaire media mogul had purchased the timeslot for $15 million. Allen had previously kept the deal’s exact sum a secret, stating vaguely that it had cost him “tens of millions.”
CBS’s self-proclaimed financial victory comes days after the network’s late-night primetime viewership dropped by 85 percent after Colbert’s exit.
Whereas The Late Show‘s final-ever broadcast netted the network 6.7 million viewers (the highest of any weeknight in the show’s history), Allen’s Comics Unleashed premiere drew 995,000 viewers, according to initial Nielsen data reported by LateNighter.
For CBS, the viewership decline doesn’t affect its bottom line as Allen’s $15 million fee goes to the network no matter how many people are watching. Any revenue from advertisers goes directly into Allen’s pocket.
Allen, who also leases the subsequent 12:37 am time slot, has suggested his deal with CBS will earn the network “$150 million+ per year” in addition to his fee.
“Between the two time periods, they’re saving approximately $150 million+ per year, just on production and marketing,” he told TheWrap in May. “That does not include what I’m paying. So it’s a great deal for CBS.”
