Inside Byron Allen’s Billionaire Bet to Reinvent CBS Late Night

CBS is turning to Byron Allen to fill one of television’s most recognizable late-night time slots.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, beginning May 22, one night after The Late Show With Stephen Colbert signs off, Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen will move into the 11:35 p.m. slot, with Allen’s game show Funny You Should Ask following at 12:35 a.m.

The move gives Allen control of CBS’s entire late-night lineup for two hours and marks the biggest television platform yet for the billionaire media executive and former stand-up comic.

The arrangement is also unusual for network television. Rather than producing the programming itself, CBS is buying the airtime and selling the advertising inventory. That means Allen’s company will control the commercial time for both shows, creating a model expected to be far more profitable for CBS than traditional late-night programming.

For Allen, the new role represents the culmination of a career that began long before he became a billionaire media mogul. Born in Detroit and raised in Los Angeles, Allen started performing stand-up at 14 after spending time around NBC Studios, where his mother, publicist Carolyn Folks, worked.

At 18, he became the youngest comedian ever to perform on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

Comics Unleashed, which first launched in 2006, blends a talk-show format with stand-up comedy, featuring a panel of comics delivering short sets built around topics introduced by Allen. The series previously aired at 12:35 a.m. on CBS during the 2023 writers and actors strikes and again during the current season.

Funny You Should Ask, meanwhile, is a comedy-driven game show hosted by Jon Kelley in which contestants answer trivia questions with help from a panel of comedians.

“I created and launched Comics Unleashed 20 years ago so my fellow comedians could have a platform to do what we all love — make people laugh,” Allen said in a statement announcing the move. “I truly appreciate CBS’s confidence in me by picking up our two-hour comedy block of Comics Unleashed and Funny You Should Ask, because the world can never have enough laughter.”

Allen’s rise in television has extended far beyond hosting. He founded what became Allen Media Group in the early 1990s, building it into a company valued at more than $4.5 billion. The company owns The Weather Channel, TheGrio, local television stations, and film and television production businesses.

Allen also made headlines for a failed bid to buy the Denver Broncos in 2022 and for filing a $10 billion discrimination lawsuit against McDonald’s, which was settled in 2025.