Stephen Colbert wrapped up his final-ever The Late Show last Thursday (May 21) with record ratings, and it seems many of those viewers left with the late-night host.
Colbert’s series finale attracted more than 6.7 million viewers, the show’s most-watched weeknight episode of all time. The Late Show‘s replacement, Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed, fell well short of that number on its Friday (May 22) debut.
According to LateNighter, citing initial panel-only Nielsen Live+Same Day ratings data, Comics Unleashed drew 995,000 total viewers and 116,000 viewers in the 18–49 demo, in the 11:35 pm time slot. This was down a massive 85 percent in total viewers and 95 percent in the key demo compared to Colbert’s series finale numbers.
Of course, one wouldn’t have expected Comics Unleashed to match the numbers of The Late Show‘s last ever episode. However, the show was also well below Colbert’s 2026 Q1 average of 2.69 million viewers, per live+7 big data info.
In addition, Comics Unleashed struggled against its competition on ABC and NBC. The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which aired a half-hour later on the East Coast due to an NBA overrun, averaged 1.5 million total viewers and 319,000 demo viewers.
Meanwhile, on ABC, a rerun of Jimmy Kimmel Live! averaged 1.6 million total viewers and 208,000 in the demo.
Allen’s company, Allen Media Group, touted a different story, releasing figures that show Comics Unleashed outperformed Fallon and/or Kimmel in more than two dozen local markets Friday night.
Speaking to NPR ahead of his show’s new time slot debut, Allen admitted he didn’t expect to match Colbert’s ratings. “At the end of the day, I’m not trying to replace Colbert,” he told the outlet. “I am not trying to hold on to his audience because Comics Unleashed has been around 20 years and has its own audience.”
Allen, who purchased Colbert’s time slot for “tens of millions” and will sell his own commercial space to advertisers, added, “Not everybody’s gonna love me. Not everyone’s going to love the fact that I’m not being racist or antisemitic or sexist. But there is that one or two percent that would be like ‘Hell yeah, I’m rolling with you,’ and I learned that at an early age, and by the way, that simple lesson made me a billionaire.”
Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen, weeknights at 11:35 a.m. ET, CBS
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Originally published on tvinsider.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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