The biggest joke about the show, “Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen” which replaced “Late Night with Stephen Colbert” is the ratings. “Comics Unleashed” has plummeted in the ratings since replacing Colbert by 85%.
When I talked about the announcement from CBS that “Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen” was replacing Stephen Colbert - I said that I didn’t think the show would do well. “Comics Unleashed” followed Colbert before replacing the show and I just didn’t think it had the content to maintain - much less beat - the ratings of Colbert. Colbert’s show was the #1 late-night talk show on broadcast TV with a consistent rating of 2.3 million viewers. Jimmy Kimmel followed at #2 with 1.8 million and Jimmy Fallon was 3rd with 1.3 million viewers. Greg Gutfeld - on the Fox News Channel - was #1 overall with just over 3 million viewers. Gutfeld’s big advantage came from being on Fox News where the lead-in audience was bigger than the broadcast network shows. I like Gutfeld and think he’s talented - but the built-in audience on the Fox News Channel did give him a distinct advantage.
The ratings for “Comics Unleashed” in the time slot previously held by Stephen Colbert is down from 2.3 million viewers to between 628,000 and 1 million - a decrease of 85% and I don’t think the fall is over.
Byron Allen was proud to announce that his show would have NO politics and NO political opinions and the only goal was to make people laugh. The only thing worth laughing at is the ratings!
But even with the drop in ratings - CBS is winning when it comes to revenue. Byron Allen’s media company is paying CBS $15 million a year for placing the show in that time slot and Allen’s company will sell all of the advertising to cover the cost.
The deal that Allen has with CBS allows the company to not release the cost of commercials or the revenue the show is generating. Basically, advertisers pay a rate for airing commercials that is related to the size of the audience. I’m not math wizard - but I put some numbers together based on the average price of commercials placed in the late-night talk shows and I figure that Allen’s company is not even breaking even right now. That could change if the ratings improve - but that seems unlikely.
“Comics Unleashed” is too contrived. Byron Allen is the host seated in the middle of 2 comedians on one side of him and 2 other comedians seated on the other side. Allen prompts each comedian with a question that leads each of them into their comedy material. For example - Allen may say to one comedian, “Hey, I heard you just got married?” which prompts the comedian to go into his jokes about marriage. Allen might say to another comedian something like, “Hey, Sally, so you just got back from a trip?” which would cue her into her material about traveling. And with what often appears to be Allen’s forced laughter - the fish in the salt-water aquarium behind him can often seem more entertaining.
I don’t wish failure on anyone and I hope that Allen’s show succeeds for him - but I admit that I liked Stephen Colbert and miss him.
With the tremendous drop in ratings in the Colbert time-slot - it would make sense for Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon to benefit since they do shows more similar to Colbert. In the latest ratings - Jimmy Kimmel has benefited the most with a big jump in ratings from 1.8 million viewers to 2.9 million. Fallon saw a mild jump in ratings of 11% to 19%. Interestingly - and understandably - Greg Gutfeld’s ratings remain the same after Colbert left the air. Gutfeld didn’t share audience with Colbert and the viewers who tuned into Colbert every night are not interested in any show on the Fox News Channel.
The show the CBS selected to replace Stephen Colbert may be dropping in the ratings - but CBS is getting $15 for airing “Comics Unleashed” so the network should be elated - especially considering that the network reported that the reason Colbert was cancelled was due to the show losing $40 million a year. I agree with the many experts who don’t believe that number. Colbert was very successful and if the show was losing that much money one would think that the network would have gone to Colbert and discussed a cutback rather than cancellation. There should be no doubt that Colbert was cancelled because of the looming threat from the Trump Administration that a pending merger that CBS was involved in would not happen if Colbert remained on the air. Trump was personally offended by the constant barrage of jokes targeting him as president. This president does not seem to be able to take jokes targeting him and criticism of his presidency and is willing to use his FCC to threaten media entities that allow criticism of the president. But we all know that’s all part of being president.
Many Americans don’t understand why Stephen Colbert was on the air anyway because they disagreed with the content of his jokes - but remember it is the audience that determines what is and what is not on the air and Stephen Colbert had an audience.
