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Byron Allen gets the Colbert timeslot

ted chittenden said:
The other thing to keep in mind (if I'm remembering this correctly) is that Mr. Allen is paying CBS for the timeslot, meaning that the network doesn't have as much of a vested interest in Mr. Allen's ratings as they did Mr. Colbert's. On the other hand, if Mr. Allen's ratings go only down from here, Mr. Allen might want to reconsider the idea of paying CBS to air his shows.
Click to expand...
Byron Allen's model is to buy the time from CBS, cash on the barrelhead, and sell the ad time himself. If this succeeds, he looks like a prophet and pockets a nice profit. But if the 995,000 estimate really is first-week lookee-loos, and those initial viewers abandon the program after one, or a few, samplings, that number is going to deteriorate quickly. At which point Allen is going to have a real hard time selling all those avails while still being contractually committed to paying CBS for the time slots. That's a prescription for a bankruptcy. If Allen runs through his company's cash reserves trying to get a leaking zeppelin off the ground, CBS may find itself with a double problem: no more revenue from Allen's money spigot, and no programming to air in those timeslots.

On the other hand, this may be the kind of late night programming the heartland has been hungering for, and CBS and Allen will laugh all the way to the bank.
 
Weiserguy said:
At which point Allen is going to have a real hard time selling all those avails while still being contractually committed to paying CBS for the time slots. That's a prescription for a bankruptcy.
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Except the wild card is I don’t believe it’s been reported how much Allen is paying CBS for the 11:35 PM timeslot.
 
Weiserguy said:
That's a prescription for a bankruptcy.
Click to expand...

Byron Allen has found an entertainment business model that works by not being very entertaining. He seems to be doing well for himself by running a bunch of mediocre TV programming and third or fourth-rate channels.

Everyone has their own tastes but Comics Unleashed is hopelessly dull. Expect the ratings to reflect that once the curiosity seekers have finished checking it out, yet I expect Byron Allen will somehow come out ahead while so many higher quality productions continue to lose.
 
Larry said:
Except the wild card is I don’t believe it’s been reported how much Allen is paying CBS for the 11:35 PM timeslot.
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"Too much", perhaps?

Time will tell - and, so will AMG's profits.
 
TheBigA said:
Byron Allen's debut gets less than a million viewers. But at least he didn't criticize the president:

www.rawstory.com

Stephen Colbert's MAGA-coded replacement flops in debut: report

Stephen Colbert wrapped up "The Late Show" last week after alleged pressure from President Donald Trump on his parent network, but his replacement isn't exactly filling the gap, according to new reporting. The series finale of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert drew more than 6.7 million...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
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All Hail Glorious Leader
 
TheBigA said:
Byron Allen's debut gets less than a million viewers. But at least he didn't criticize the president:

www.rawstory.com

Stephen Colbert's MAGA-coded replacement flops in debut: report

Stephen Colbert wrapped up "The Late Show" last week after alleged pressure from President Donald Trump on his parent network, but his replacement isn't exactly filling the gap, according to new reporting. The series finale of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert drew more than 6.7 million...
www.rawstory.com www.rawstory.com
Click to expand...
What is worthy of criticism is the disto4rted "rawstory" article which compares the totally unique last night of Colbert with the first week of Allen's material. Normally, Colbert averaged 1.0 to 1.5 million viewers, not the overr-six-million that he got on the farewell show.

So the real issue is a million average viewers with much lower expense better than 1.5 million and a loss of about $3 million a month?
 
Don CT said:
Obviously not as Colberts ratings went up after he went political.
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And the conclusion there is that Colbert is a much better political commentator than he is as a comedian.
 
CTListener said:
Tyler Perry has made a nice living in the movie business by churning out mediocre comedy films.
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Yeah but it's a different business model. Tyler Perry isn't renting out individual theaters or individual screens in multiplexes. He's not committing to pay for one screen per theater times x number of AMCs and Cinemarks around the country for a guaranteed month's run. He's not paying HBO or Showtime or Amazon Prime or Netflix to have his baby appear as a tile on their homescreens, and then collecting 100% of the gross ticket sales or a buck per subscriber for himself.

That's sort of Allen's deal though. He committed to renting the "screen", paying a fixed price, and selling the tickets himself. (Only in this example it's ad time rather than actual tickets.)

Tyler Perry may not be my personal cup of hemlock, but he's proven there are plenty of moviegoers who enjoy what he creates, and are willing to pony up for a ticket and spend a couple of hours in a theater seat watching his latest. That gives at least one of the streamers, or premium cable services, faith that if they cut a deal to run his movie, enough eyeballs will select it. We really have no idea if that paradigm will work for Byron Allen in CBS's 11:35 real estate.
 
Don CT said:
Where did you get that idea from. He’s a great improve comedian. People want political a commentary. Look at The Daily Show.
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Well, if he got better ratings as a commentator than as a comedian, I'd say that the late night audience has already given its opinion.
 
DavinaR said:
Here is more of a break down of the Friday night ratings.
latenighter.com

'Comics Unleashed' 11:35 Debut Draws 995K Viewers, -85% From Colbert Finale

First on LateNighter: 'Comics Unleashed' drew 995,000 viewers in its CBS 11:35 p.m. debut Friday, down 85% from Colbert’s finale and behind Fallon and Kimmel at the national level.
latenighter.com latenighter.com
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Remember, the final night Kimmel audience was many times greater in size than the average for the year prior to 2026. All the controversy and interest in the cancellation caused an enormous increase in viewing.

About 32 years ago, the final Johnny Carson show had over 50 million viewers. That was also much greater than the average audience size day in and day out. The average audience size per Google AI was "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson averaged a massive 15 million viewers per night during its 30-year run."

This was written in September, 2024 (Moderator note: Mistyped year which sholud be 2025) right after the suspension driven by his comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination: "Jimmy Kimmel Ratings Over The Years Have Fallen. So it’s no surprise that Jimmy Kimmel ratings have dropped. During second quarter, he averaged 1.77 million total viewers (his strength has always been 18-49s). That’s down quite a bit from 2015, when Colbert joined the late-night lineup and Nielsen says Kimmel averaged 2.4 million total viewers."

And the figures quoted in Daily Variety include a whole variety of real time and later moment viewing, most of which did not exist in the Carson era.
 
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