17489: On Late Night Television And Byron Allen.

 

NBC News revealed how Byron Allen persuaded CBS to award him the time slot formerly held by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

 

Allen delivered a unique pitch, as detailed via the article below.

 

The image directly below unintentionally underscores Allen brings diversity to late night television—which will likely get the critical attention of President Donald J. Trump, who recently boasted, “We ended DEI in America!”

 

 

Byron Allen on how CBS handed him Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ time slot

 

The comedian-turned-media mogul spoke to NBC News this week about how “Comics Unleashed,” as well as his majority stake in Buzzfeed, will help him grow his media empire.

 

By Chloe Melas

 

As CBS sunsets “The Late Show,” media executive Byron Allen is gearing up to take over one of television’s most coveted evening time slots.

 

Starting Friday, Allen’s long-running syndicated comedy series, “Comics Unleashed,” will air at 11:35 p.m. ET.

 

Allen, who rose to fame as a stand-up comic, described the move as a “business opportunity” that he believes could help further expand his media empire. Last week, he bought a controlling stake in Buzzfeed, the digital media company co-founded by Jonah Peretti that helped define virality online.

 

His CBS pitch formed much earlier, however. Allen said that when news broke in July that the Paramount-owned CBS would be booting Stephen Colbert and the late-night staple off the air, he approached the network with a simple question.

 

“I said, ‘OK, do you like money?’” he said in an interview this week. “They said, ‘Yes!’”

Allen is friends with Colbert — the two go way back. He urged CBS to “not put on another show” if it went through with canceling the cancellation. He said he told the network, “I’ll buy the time period, and you can save over $110 million.”

 

Under the arrangement, Allen leases the hour and sells the advertising inventory himself. Although he wouldn’t reveal exactly how much he’s spending on the deal, he did say he’s “putting a lot of money in their cash register.”

 

“I am a gift from the money gods and the comedy gods,” he said.

 

Allen’s dream of appearing on late-night television dates back decades. When he was a child, his mother — an NBC employee who couldn’t afford childcare — took him to the lot in Burbank, California, where he got to watch late-night legend Johnny Carson in action.

 

“You know, my mom ended up convincing NBC to start an intern program with her, so she could work here for free,” he said. “While I was there, waiting for her to get off work, I’m watching Johnny Carson, and I’m like, wow, Johnny Carson is amazing, and he’s having the time of his life, lots of laughs, lots of fun.”

 

It all came full circle in 1979, when Allen got to do stand-up comedy on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

 

“I was thinking to myself, in the next five minutes I’m going to change my life and my mother’s life forever, so I’m going to go out there and have a great time, and after I make these people laugh, we’re never going to worry about a bowl of cereal again,” he said.

 

Eventually, he jumped into the media business and founded Allen Media Group (Entertainment Studios) in 1993. He owns television channels such as Pets.TV and Cars.TV. And in 2018, Entertainment Studios bought the Weather Channel’s parent company.

 

He sees a bright future for Buzzfeed, a brand that he said has “a great following.”

 

“Everything Jonah [Peretti] has built in the last 20 years, we are not touching that,” he said. “That is the foundation we are building on that, and we’re making it additive.”

 

But the media company, which was among the first digital-media startups to be valued at over $1 billion, has struggled to maintain a sustainable business model, as Axios reported this week.

 

Allen’s plan for the site involves having user-generated content that won’t live behind a paywall and will instead be available on his ad-supported streaming platform, Local Now.

 

“‘Free’ is the world’s favorite word,” he said. “The two best words in media: ‘free’ and ‘streaming’ ... bring it together and, poof, you’ve got something magical.”

 

Allen’s ambitions stretch even further. He said he eventually wants to control the premium cable network Starz, where he is the second-largest stockholder.

 

“I want to own it. I plan to own it, and somehow one day I’m going to own it and control it,” Allen said. “What I’ve said to them is, what I would like for you to do is, I would like to keep it publicly traded, and I would like for you to let me put more capital in Starz and become the controlling shareholder.”

 

That may be difficult, however.

 

Allen previously explored deals that didn’t materialize, including deals with TV station operator Tegna and the NFL’s Washington Commanders. In 2024, he also tried to make a play for Paramount, CNBC reported.

 

Last year, Starz separated from the studio, Lionsgate, to become its own standalone public company. In March, “the Starz board unanimously voted to adopt a limited-duration shareholder protection rights agreement, also known as a ‘poison pill,’” according to Deadline, which described the move as a “defensive strategy used by companies against activist investors and hostile takeovers.”

 

A representative for Starz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

That hurdle doesn’t appear to deter Allen, however. At 65, he continues to pursue his dreams, with his mother remaining one of his biggest motivations in life.

 

“It makes me feel great, because at the end of the day, all I want to do is make my mama proud, no matter how rich I get,” he said. “I’m just still a little scared little boy hanging on to my mother’s leg.”

17488: WPP CAIO WTF.

Digiday spotlighted WPP’s Chief AI Officer, who remarked agentic AI is in the “teenage sex phase.” That is, everyone believes everyone else is doing it but upon closer inspection, no one is doing it.

 

For AI in Adland, the theory could be more accurately described as the “nonconsensual sex phase.” That is, White advertising agencies—as well as a certain single White operating company—are fucking clients without their approval or awareness by knowingly selling AI services via false promises and fake capabilities.

 

Indeed, it appears WPP’s CAIO has so little to do, he’s spending time conducting online research about teenage sex.

 

Why WPP’s AI boss believes agents are still in the ‘teenage sex’ stage of development

 

By Seb Joseph

 

WPP’s chief AI officer has a theory about agentic AI. It is, Dr. Daniel Hulm told attendees at the IAB U.K.’s AI growth summit in the “teenage sex phase” — everyone thinks everyone else is doing it but when they actually look, they’re not. 

 

It’s a crude metaphor. It’s also probably accurate.

 

The past 12 months have produced a remarkable volume of agentic AI announcements from across the industry. Holdcos have unveiled AI operating systems, ad tech vendors have launched agentic campaign creation tools. Consultancies have published frameworks, CMOs have given keynote speeches about the autonomous future of marketing. And yet, when the people who are supposed to be deploying the tech — the agency traders, the media planners ad the campaign managers — are pressed, the honest answer is usually a version of: “we’re exploring it, we’re in pilot or we’re building the business case.”

 

Agentic AI is not the first technology to get caught in this particular gap, and it won’t be the last. Programmatic was going to revolutionize media buying — eventually it did, about a decade after the press releases said it would. Data clean rooms were going to helo fix third-party addressability in the open web — they’re still mostly unlocking it. CTV measurement was going to bring digital accountability to television — ask anyone trying to reconcile a cross-platform report how that’s going. Every generation of advertising technology gets its teenage sex moment, where the industry consensus outpaces the operational reality by enough to be embarrassing in hindsight. 

 

What’s different about agentic AI is the texture of the gap. It’s not that companies are lying. It’s that almost no one is being honest about what deployment at scale actually requires. 

 

“The reality is that companies will deploy an army of [agents] across the organization, and forgive the technical term, but it’s going to be a shit show, because most of those agents are not going to be capable of doing their job,” said Hulme. “At least 80% of the energy that you need to build agents is testing,”

 

The reason that’s especially important in marketing comes down to what Hulme called the second-order gap. Train an agent on historical campaign data, deploy it to make autonomous decisions and it immediately starts changing the very behavior it was built to predict. Inevitably, consumers respond differently, competitors react and media prices shift. The model, without the testing, risks becoming obsolete the moment it starts running. Marketers are not testing whether the agent does what it’s told so much as they’re testing whether what it’s told to do still makes sense after it’s been doing it for a week — against a market that has already moved.

 

“The problem is that buying and selling didn’t exist in the past.” said Hulme. “I’ve now changed the behavior, and marketing is the same thing. If I build a magic oracle and predict human behavior, I haven’t changed that behavior. Now I predict the models are out. You cannot predict the future based on the past.”

 

None of which means the tech isn’t coming. The more important part of Hulme’s argument made that all too clear. The industry, he suggested, is working with the weakest possible version of AI — think getting computers to do what humans can already do — when the genuinely disruptive version is systems that make decisions, observe outcomes and adapt. By that standard, the advertising industry is not yet doing AI in any meaningful sense. It is doing very fast, very sophisticated rule following. 

 

“The reality is that quick wins and low hanging fruit can be solved by a third party at a fraction of the cost,” said Hulme. “You need to be focused on the problems and differentiate business.”

17487: WPP Media Leads In Wins And Losses.

 

MediaPost reported COMvergence’s Q1 2026 Global New Business Barometer recognized WPP Media as the leader, bringing in $1.98 billion.

 

However, for the full-year 2025, WPP Media ranked as the loss leader with a net new business decline of $1.78 billion.

 

Expect WPP Media to spin the conflicting leader figures with a billion tons of bullshit.

 

WPP Media Led New Business In The First Quarter

 

By Steve McClellan

 

A resurgent WPP Media led the new business global rankings in the first quarter of 2026, according to COMvergence’s Global New Business Barometer.  

 

The company’s net new business (factoring in wins, retentions and losses) for the period was $1.98 billion, with key wins including Jaguar Land Rover, Estée Lauder, and SC Johnson. By comparison, for full-year 2025 WPP Media had a net new business decline of $1.78 billion, per the research firm.  

 

Omnicom Media Group (including the first full quarter of results including the acquired IPG agencies) was second, posting a net figure of $1.61 billion with Delta Airlines and Dyson assignments contributing. Publicis Media ranked third, followed by Havas and Dentsu, with the latter two losing a bit of ground on a net basis.  

 

Olivier Gauthier, Founder and CEO of COMvergence noted that 25% of the $7 billion in total reviewed spend was awarded to the Big 3 holding groups, a first, which he said reflected “the growing consolidation of media business within bespoke, centralized group solutions.”  

 

At the agency network level, WPP’s Wavemaker ranked first globally with a net gain of $382 million, driven primarily by the retentions of Huawei in China and Reckitt in India. Sibling agency EssenceMediacom ranked second, boosted by the retention of the Estée Lauder account in China. Omnicom’s Hearts & Science placed third bolstered by the retention of Cox Automotive in the US and the win of Xiaomi in China.  

 

For the rankings, COMvergence assessed 600 media account moves and retentions across 49 countries, involving 390 advertisers. The $7 billion total was up 6% versus Q1 2025.   

 

The U.S. accounted for 33% of total spend, followed by China at 23%. The overall retention rate was 38%, on the high side for the past few years. Publicis Media recorded the highest overall retention rate among the Big 5, followed by Omnicom Media and WPP Media.  

 

Independent agencies — over 100 assessed in the report — captured $1.4 billion in net new business, representing 20% of the spend reviewed. Approximately one third of that business went to Horizon Media, including assignments from Discover and Weight Watchers.

17486: The New Reality In Advertising.

 

This Milton Beer commercial by Agency 1351 in Italy is explained as follows:

 

Two strangers meet in a lift on the worst day of their working lives, both clutching a cardboard box. They go for a pint and, instead of feeling sorry for themselves, discover they have something in common that will take them a long way.

 

This commercial breaks the unwritten rules of beer advertising — no beach, no beautiful people, no sunset — and focuses entirely on the quiet resilience of ordinary men.

 

Entirely AI-produced.

 

Interestingly enough, Agency 1351 is actually a lone White male copywriter producing AI-generated content—who was likely laid off himself and/or is creating commercials that will ultimately lead to layoffs at traditional White advertising agencies, production companies, talent firms, post-production vendors, and more.

 

Oh, and the AI-generated commercial promoted as content that “breaks the unwritten rules of beer advertising” is breaking tenets of advertising; that is, the concept is generic, and the execution lacks distinctiveness.

 

A real creative director would’ve crushed the idea like an empty beer can during the brainstorm stage.

17485: Subway Offers 6” Subs, Footlongs, And Crumbs.

 

The previous post on Subway launching a creative review to possibly find a new White advertising agency warrants another bite. Specifically, the Advertising Age report stated the following:

 

The chain is also prioritizing Hispanic-market expertise “not as a translation function but as a cultural capability,” alongside in-house or partner-led production capabilities for social, creator and limited-time offer content.

 

The statement demands interpretation.

 

For starters, define “prioritizing.” Which spot in the Subway food chain is designated for Hispanic consumers—that is, how important is marketing to Hispanics vs Whites?

 

Next, given the alleged goals of going beyond a translation function and seeking cultural capability, will Hispanic-market experts have a seat at the table—or will they be taking fast-food orders from the White advertising agency?

 

Finally, will Hispanic marketing restitution involve cash—or crumbs?

17484: Subway Fixing Its Brandwich…?

 

Advertising Age reported Subway is taking its Eat Fresh tagline to different levels.

 

The fast feeder wants fresh thinking, which could lead to changes, including a new White advertising agency.

 

For starters, Subway removed its Global CMO from the menu and appointed a new US CMO.

 

After a review, Subway’s US media duties went from Dentsu to Omnicom.

 

And now, Subway is launching a US creative review.

 

What’s next—reintroducing Jared?

Subway shakes up its CMO roster and agencies to solve the brand’s ‘emotional resonance’ problem

 

By Brian Bonilla and Ewan Larkin

 

Subway is overhauling its U.S. marketing and agency roster, parting ways with its global chief marketing officer, appointing a new U.S. CMO, and shaking up both its media and creative accounts, Ad Age has learned.

 

The changes come as Subway aims to fix what an agency-focused request for information document obtained by Ad Age describes as a deeper brand problem.

 

“Subway falls short on emotional resonance and brand distinctiveness; the brand is more known than felt,” the brief stated.

 

CMO shuffle at Subway

 

The sandwich giant has amicably parted ways with its global CMO, Greg Lyons, just over a year after he was appointed to the role, according to two people familiar with the matter. Subway CEO Jonathan Fitzpatrick, named to the role in July 2025, eliminated the global CMO position after changing the organization’s structure to a more regional one, according to sources. Lyons could not be reached for comment. Subway did not return multiple requests for comment.

 

Subway hired Jeff Klein, the former marketing leader-turned-president of Popeyes, earlier this year as a senior VP of marketing. Klein will now serve as U.S. CMO. David Skena, who was appointed North America CMO eight months ago, will now serve in a chief strategy and commercialization role, according to three people close to the situation.

 

Before his time with Popeyes, Klein served as the CMO of Little Caesars Pizza and was a long-time PepsiCo marketing executive. He will now report to Damien Harmon, Subway’s North America president, sources said.

 

Subway’s ongoing agency changes

 

Along with the CMO shuffle, Subway has awarded Omnicom its U.S. media and CRM accounts following a review, Ad Age has learned. Dentsu’s Carat most recently held the media account.

 

Subway is now launching a U.S. creative review, with an RFI going out this week, according to four people familiar with the matter. The creative account, which includes creative and social duties, is said to be worth around $10 million in fees, according to a source close to the situation.

 

Subway brought in Publicis Groupe’s Leo New York to handle U.S. creative in April 2025, replacing Dentsu Creative. It wasn’t immediately clear if Leo is participating in the creative review, which is being conducted by SRI, according to multiple people.

 

Earlier this year, Leo launched a campaign showcasing a promotion for Subway’s Sub Club loyalty program in which customers can earn a free footlong sandwich after three purchases of a sandwich of the same size.

 

However, free sandwich promotions were removed from the program following complaints from Subway franchisees about the deal being too generous and not cost-effective.

 

Dentsu also most recently handled social for Subway and played a significant role in facilitating the advertising effort around Subway’s collaboration with the 2025 movie “Happy Gilmore 2.”

 

Dentsu referred to the client for comment. Leo declined to comment. Omnicom referred comment to Subway, and SRI wasn’t immediately available for comment.

 

Subway’s U.S. measured media spending declined from $242 million in 2024 to $208 million in 2025, according to MediaRadar. Subway is the 10th largest U.S. restaurant chain, according to Technomic, with 2025 sales of $8.97 billion, down 5.7%.

 

Subway’s brief focuses on brand reinvigoration

 

The company’s largest challenge appears to be rebuilding its cultural and emotional relevance, especially with younger consumers, according to the RFI document. Subway “needs to re-establish brand meaning for a new generation of QSR consumers” by creating “a clear, ownable story about why Subway specifically is the better-for-you, fair-price sandwich choice for a busy life,” according to the brief.

 

This includes capitalizing on its first-ever value menu, launched in late April.

 

Subway’s recent value offerings are positioned as evidence that the company is “finally showing up with options that deliver value and everyday access,” the brief stated. But it also notes that the company needs to convince both existing and new customers that “Subway is delicious, convenient and affordable.”

 

“The current advertising has been working campaign-by-campaign rather than building a long-term, ownable brand platform,” the RFI stated.

 

Subway sees its biggest competitive pressure not just from rival sandwich chains, but from the broader quick-service restaurant landscape, where giants like McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell and Wendy’s continue to dominate consumer traffic and volume. At the same time, emerging sandwich-focused competitors are beginning to gain momentum. The RFI identifies Jersey Mike’s as Subway’s No. 1 threat on “brand momentum and premium perception,” while Jimmy John’s was cited as a growing competitor built around “speed and convenience.”

 

Subway has faced declining U.S. store counts, intensifying competition and franchisee pressure during the last decade.

 

The company, which in 2024 completed its sale to affiliates of private equity firm Roark, has now closed U.S. locations for 10 consecutive years, shrinking from more than 27,000 domestic restaurants in 2015 to fewer than 19,000 today, according to QSR Magazine. In 2025, Subway shuttered 729 restaurants.

 

What Subway seeks in an agency

 

Subway is seeking a large-scale agency with the “bench strength to handle [its] calendar volume,” which includes “six marketing windows + test markets,” according to the RFI.

 

Subway also wants an agency partner with deep experience in fast-paced retail and QSR marketing, particularly around brand reinvention, social-first creative and managing large-scale integrated campaigns.

 

The chain is also prioritizing Hispanic-market expertise “not as a translation function but as a cultural capability,” alongside in-house or partner-led production capabilities for social, creator and limited-time offer content.

 

The company also signaled in the document that it wants senior-level involvement throughout the relationship, including “CCO/senior creative engagement,” that won’t just “pitch-and-disappear.”

 

Contributing: E.J. Schultz and Jon Springer

17483: Adweek Reruns Wren Renumeration.

 

Adweek published “exclusive” content that was originally scooped by MediaPost in March, re-revealing Omnicom Chairman and CEO—and Pioneer of Divestiture—John Wren pocketed nearly $70 million in 2025.

 

Adweek compared Wren’s 2025 compensation to CEO paychecks at competitive White holding companies and a single White operating company, pointing out Wren reeled in more than double all other CEOs combined.

 

Salary-shaming multimillionaires actively cutting hundreds of millions from their respective corporate coffers by firing thousands will not likely get sympathy from the average Adweek reader—many of whom lost incomes because of the CEOs’ cost-cutting maneuvers.