CBS attempts to spin the Colbert replacement show's flop as a sound financial move
In an attempt to get some positive press after making good on pulling Stephen Colbert’s popular “The Late Show” off the air and replacing it with Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” CBS issued a press statement claiming it was a sound business decision despite a massive drop in viewership.According to a report from the Daily Beast, CBS claimed on Thursday the unpopular move represented sound business strategy, stating: "We're proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue. With this 'time buy' model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing."The network reiterated its assertion that canceling Colbert's show had been "purely a financial decision," which skeptical late-night competitor Jimmy Kimmel had already rejected, stating: "There's just not a snowball's chance in hell that that's anywhere near accurate," Kimmel said. "The idea that Stephen Colbert's show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical."According to an earlier report from The Beast, "Comics Unleashed" drew only 995,000 viewers in its debut episode, while late-night talk shows hosted by Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon topped more than 1.5 million viewers on the same night — and notably, Kimmel's was a rerun, not a fresh broadcast.Even more embarrassingly for CBS, Colbert's YouTube presence continues to outperform Allen's new show, the report added. A one-night appearance by Colbert on the public access TV show "Only in Monroe" drew 928,000 views on his YouTube channel alone — a figure that doesn't include viewers on other platforms.
