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.”
