David Letterman has weighed in on CBS’ decision to replace “The Late Show” franchise after 33 years with Byron Allen’s comedy talk show “Comics Unleashed.” The network confirmed the change earlier this month. Stephen Colbert‘s “The Late Show” airs its final episode on May 21. Allen will take over the 11:35 p.m. ET time slot on May 22 with back-to-back episodes of “Comics Unleashed.”
“They don’t want to spend any money, so they’re going to make money,” Letterman said about the decision on a recent episode of his podcast. “They charge Byron Allen some reasonable price. He sells all the advertising for his ‘Comics Unleashed,’ and it’ll be, I think, 90 minutes or two hours of comics talking about funny stuff.“
“The show is a pretty good idea,” Letterman added. “It’s all panel. Nobody’s doing any standup, except they’re seated doing standup.”
“Comics Unleashed” currently airs after Colbert’s “The Late Show” on CBS. When it moves up an hour to replace the late night institution, Allen will continue to lease the 12:37 a.m. hour with the comedy game show “Funny You Should Ask.” The time buy deal is through the 2026-2027 TV season.
Letterman started CBS’ “The Late Show” franchise in 1993 and hosted for 22 years before passing the baton to Stephen Colbert, who debuted in September 2015. When the network announced last summer its shocking decision to cancel “The Late Show,” Letterman’s team responded by posting a 20-minute supercut on his YouTube page featured all the times he slammed CBS or made jokes at the network’s expense during his tenure on air. The caption to the supercut read: “You can’t spell CBS without BS.”
Colbert announced last July that CBS was canceling not just his iteration of “The Late Show” but also the entire franchise come May 2026. While the decision was reportedly a “financial” one, it immediately sparked questions from industry figures about the politics involved given Colbert regularly attacks Donald Trump on air and CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, was trying to get a merger approved with Skydance at the time.
“This is pure cowardice,” Letterman later said in a YouTube video about the cancellation. “They did not do the correct thing. They did not handle Stephen Colbert — the face of that network — in the way he deserves to have been handled.”
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