CBS is handing its 11:35 p.m. hour to Byron Allen and will no longer program late night at all, ending a stretch that began when David Letterman arrived at the network in 1993. Stephen Colbert is being replaced at The Late Show, and Allen will control both the 11:35 and 12:35 slots through Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask.
The move closes the book on CBS’s direct role in late night after more than three decades. When Letterman joined CBS in 1993, the network built its late-night identity around his production company, Worldwide Pants, which helped shape both the 11:35 and 12:35 hours. That arrangement lasted through 2015, when Letterman retired and Colbert took over The Late Show.
By the early 2020s, CBS had already started pulling back. It canceled The Late Late Show and began placing Byron Allen’s programming in overnight slots as a quiet test case before expanding that approach into the network’s most prominent post-news real estate. The new arrangement gives Allen full control of both late-night hours, while CBS steps away from the daypart altogether.
The tension in CBS’s move is that the network is not just replacing one host with another. It is abandoning the model that made late night a CBS franchise in the first place. The shift leaves Allen with the hours, the programming and the opportunity, but it also marks the end of an era in which CBS still treated late night as a network business rather than a timeshare.
For viewers, the answer is already clear: CBS is done programming late night, and the Stephen Colbert new show era will not be a CBS late-night launch at all. It is the final handoff in a long retreat, and the network is choosing to leave the field instead of compete for it.
