LateNighter has learned Byron Allen is in talks to bring Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask, the two shows that anchor his two-hour late-night block on CBS, to a major streaming platform.
The talks come five months into Allen’s unusual arrangement with CBS, under which his company pays the network $20 million a year to air the two shows and sells the national advertising itself.
So far, the deal appears to have paid off for both Allen and CBS, which has claimed it was losing $40 million a year on Allen’s predecessor, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
While ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! has emerged as the time-period leader at 11:35 p.m. post-Colbert, both of Allen’s shows have outperformed expectations, with Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask collecting a growing number of Live+Same Day ratings wins over NBC’s late-night franchises in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic.
As LateNighter has previously reported, Allen’s evergreen model has proven particularly effective on Friday nights, when the other network shows are typically in repeats.
Last Friday was another example. Averaging 173,416 viewers aged 18–49 across the full hour, two repeat episodes of Comics Unleashed not only outperformed a Fallon repeat by 3%, they drew a demo audience 41% larger than The Late Show with Stephen Colbert averaged on Friday nights last season.
At 12:35 a.m., Funny You Should Ask beat both NBC and ABC, averaging 96,233 adults 18–49—19% more than NBC’s competing hour and 46% more than ABC’s half-hour of Nightline.
Now Allen appears to be looking to extend that momentum beyond linear television.
Unlike NBC’s Tonight Show and Late Night with Seth Meyers, which stream on Peacock, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which streams on Hulu, Allen’s shows are not available on CBS’ streaming platform, Paramount+.
Older installments of Comics Unleashed are distributed through the show’s YouTube channel, but first-run episodes of both Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask have, until now, aired exclusively on linear television.
A streaming agreement would give Allen a second distribution window for a library built specifically to have a long shelf life. Both shows are produced in bulk, with episodes designed to remain usable well beyond their original airdate—a model that has already allowed CBS to program the late-night block without the same distinction between “new” and “repeat” episodes that applies to its competitors.
It is not yet clear whether the prospective deal would include only future episodes or also draw from the shows’ existing libraries.
