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Say what you will about Byron Allen’s low-cost, big-tent approach to late-night comedy—and people certainly do—but his new two-hour CBS block continues to turn up surprises in the ratings.
Two months after CBS closed up shop on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and handed his time period to Allen, the big picture at 11:35 pm remains largely unchanged. Comics Unleashed is still in third place, behind ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s The Tonight Show.
But as we’ve previously reported, Allen’s first month of ratings showed an audience that behaves differently from the rest of late night: unusually live, largely undeterred by repeats, and strongest on Fridays.
A second month has surfaced another pattern—and it may be the most distinctive yet.
No matter the host or the network, late night’s most formidable rival has always been sleep. Allen is no exception. But measured by retention—the share of viewers who stay as the night wears on—Allen’s shows hold their audiences better than the CBS lineup they replaced, and far better than the competition they face deeper into the night.
Compare CBS’s 11:35 p.m. hour in June 2026 with the same hour one year earlier. Colbert’s Late Show and Allen’s Comics Unleashed decline at nearly the same rate over the first 15 minutes. Then the lines diverge:
Colbert's total audience kept falling through the hour, ending at 40 percent of the viewers who had been watching at 11:35. Allen holds 53 percent—and unlike Colbert, he's the norm, not the exception. Most late-night shows shed their audience gradually over the hour; The Late Show shed it fast. The demo shows a similar gap: Allen retains 60 percent of his 18–49 viewers, compared with 46 percent for Colbert.
Where Allen truly separates from the field is an hour later, when Funny You Should Ask airs opposite NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Meyers slides to 56 percent of his opening audience over the hour, while Funny You Should Ask holds 81 percent—the flattest line in late night.
That stickiness produces a surprising result by the end of the night. Last month, Allen's two-hour block opened at 11:35 p.m. with 37 percent of the audience Colbert drew in June 2025. Two hours later, at 1:35 a.m., the block was delivering CBS affiliates 89 percent of the audience After Midnight signed off with a year earlier.
Put another way: CBS’s new late-night block starts far behind the lineup it replaced and ends nearly even—not because Allen builds an audience, but because he holds on to the one he has, while last year’s shows were bleeding theirs away.
The ratings data can't tell us why the shows hold their audiences so differently. But the likeliest explanation comes down to something Allen's shows don't have: a monologue.
On conventional late-night programs, the show's opening segment is the main event—timely, topical, and usually the most widely circulated part of the show. It's also what makes those shows perishable. Allen's shows, by design, carry no such freight. Nothing in them is pegged to a particular day, which is why they play virtually the same in reruns—repeats of Comics Unleashed at 11:35 p.m. drew 95 percent of the first-run audience in June—and why the block can be stripped across the schedule indefinitely.
The absence of a monologue changes the shape of the night, too. On conventional shows, the biggest draw comes first, and when it ends and the program shifts into guest mode, large swaths of the audience leave with it. It's why Colbert, who opened bigger than anyone, fell off fastest.
Allen never draws that monologue crowd—but he never has to watch it leave, either.
None of this settles the core question of whether Allen can generate enough advertising revenue from the audience he does have to make his CBS time buy profitable. But two months in, that audience continues to behave unlike anything else in late night.
Ratings figures are Nielsen national Live+7 averages (including repeats and sustainers) for June 2026 and June 2025 unless otherwise noted.
Oh boy…Eric P. and the rest of Byron’s boot-lickers are gonna be wetting themselves over this article today.
Allen has a cult!
It’s hilarious how phony they are.
You fuckers are the very first to experience white genocide by your diversity pets.
Better you than the rest of us.
its okay you will all be dead by your own dumb decisions before that day comes
But it doesn’t compute to anybody else you cocksucker
Cuz you’re dumber than a piece of plank wood, Zero!
You pathetic old queen. Nobody defends literal faggots besides literal faggots.
You bug chasers abuse children.
I’m neither gay nor a pedophile! And gay people don’t do children! They find sex with them as revolting as straight people do!
You think you can make me back off from you? Think again, twig!
‘I’m neither gay nor a pedophile!’
Uh huh
‘….. And gay people don’t do children! They find sex with them as revolting as straight people do!’
Oops.
Lame ass response, Zero! Your attempts to project your sickness onto me is laughable! You have nothing to hurt me, yet I can smack you around, whenever you act up here, child!
Sucks being you bitch!
It’s why you also are the biggest drug addicts too.
You invalids can’t live with yourselves no matter how much tolerance you force on society.
That’s why you have the highest suicide rate too.
Zero here has nothing but unsubstantiated accusations against me, because it’s a crying little bitch that can’t stand the fact that it gets called out for its bigotry and hatred of others! And the fact that he calls LGBTQ people kiddie rapers also shows how fucking stupid it is!
Always remember to slap that little hate filled hole when it acts up!
the lack of comment moderation turns this sites gourmet restaurant into a waffle house
Right on cue.
See, you light-skinned democrats hate Coloreds more than anybody else.
I know. Right? I enjoy reading about Late Night Yelevision. NOT Political “grandeur.” cough cough.
I keep telling you, nobody likes a hair on fire bigot, like you!
Are you gonna grow the fuck up. or NAAAW?!!
Or maybe the CBS viewers were more likely to fall asleep during the 11 PM weather and leave the TV on for 4 hours.
If a Nielsen viewer falls asleep with the tv on, an on screen-prompt will appear and ask the viewer if they are still watching. If the viewer doesn’t respond, the home is thrown out of the sample for that day.
If it keeps happening, Nielsen pays a visit to the home and can throw the home out of the sample permanently.
Basically, sleeping, non-present, or dead people are filtered out of the ratings.
EDITED TO ADD:
If a channel remains unchanged for too long—usually every 30 to 45 minutes—a light on the set-top box will begin flashing to prompt the viewer. If the viewer is asleep, they will fail to press their assigned button to confirm their presence.
What happens when they fall asleep after the opening or before the end?
So, this means that the viewer is alive and awake to pay attention to lights and prompts, not necessarily engaging with the content. That’s why advertisers like content where you can track engagement on social media.
Wish I’d said that!
Arguably his audience behaves just like anyone else who watches home shopping channels and people who sleep with a tv on.
Let’s check in again in September when Kimmel comes back. Even I’m not watching any of the shows right now and I watch them all.
CBS viewers probably fall asleep with their Televisions on.
isn’t some of the live heavy component because the Byron shows are not on streaming next days, only live simulcast for premium tier p+? I get people are also not recording these shows on DVR
if Byron makes money, CBS will charge him more or replace him with their own programming.
Man, GTFO. Nobody is actually watching unwatchable Bryon Allen slop. They didn’t watch it when it was all over late, late, late night and weekend syndication filler timeslots and they are not watching now. It’s just Nielsen awful teenie-tiny sampling that gives even the worst of TV an audience. Color Bars or pure static would turn in the same numbers.