Byron Allen Says He and Stephen Colbert Have Been ‘Texting Quite a Bit’

Stephen Colbert may be losing his time slot to Byron Allen, but apparently he hasn’t lost his sense of grace about it.

In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen shed a little more light on his relationship with Colbert, whose Late Show will air its final episode May 21 before Allen’s Comics Unleashed takes over the 11:35 p.m. hour on CBS the following night.

Asked how he responded after Colbert sent him a congratulatory note referencing Allen’s distinction as the youngest comedian ever to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Allen said the two have been in regular contact.

“He and I have been texting quite a bit,” Allen told THR. “He’s just a really good human being, he’s very talented, he’s an American treasure and I really enjoy our interactions. I really like him a lot. He’s a good guy.”

Allen added that he expects Colbert’s TV career isn’t over.

“I hope, and I believe, he will always be someway-somehow a part of the media landscape, in our homes, because he deserves to be,” he said.

The exchange builds on Colbert’s own comments earlier this month, when he said he wrote Allen after learning Comics Unleashed would be taking over his slot.

“Hey, congrats. I heard you got the time. Good for you,” Colbert recalled writing. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could drop Mr. Carson a note?”

Colbert, for his part, was careful not to take the bait when asked whether being replaced by a non-traditional late-night show made the situation feel better or worse.

“It’s none of my business,” he said.

Allen was less reserved when discussing CBS’ broader late-night economics. While he said he didn’t know all the details behind the network’s decision to cancel The Late Show, he argued that the broadcast networks have been overspending in late night for years.

“I know for fact that the networks, all of the networks, not CBS, all of them, are quite frankly—they’re wasting a lot of money,” Allen told THR.

His argument: networks spend heavily building late-night audiences only to hand those viewers over to affiliates at 1:30 a.m., when many stations are airing infomercials.

“So when After Midnight went away, why would you spend $30 million-$40 million to replace that show?” Allen said. “I have a show called Comics Unleashed, it’s been in syndication on the air for 20 years. We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary. I said, ‘Let me put that show there and let me buy the time period. I can save you $30 million-$40 million.’ They said, ‘Brilliant idea, let’s do it.’”

As LateNighter first reported last year when Comics Unleashed replaced After Midnight, Allen’s CBS arrangement is a time-buy: Allen Media Group pays CBS for the airtime and sells the advertising itself. The new 11:35 deal extends that model to the network’s entire late-night block, with Funny You Should Ask following Comics Unleashed at 12:37.

CBS has said the arrangement will return the time period to a revenue-positive state after The Late Show reportedly ran at a $40 million annual deficit—a figure that has been met with skepticism in and around late night, and which Colbert himself has repeatedly turned into a punchline.

Whatever the economics, Allen’s latest comments suggest the handoff itself has been unusually cordial.

Or, at minimum, more cordial than the average network cancellation followed by a paid-programming-adjacent replacement at 11:35 p.m.