Byron Allen gets a whopping 15% of Colbert's send-off audience. YES! ELLISONS F*CKIN" RULE! GO TEAM ELLISON!

[Miles Archer]

Colbert Replacement’s Late-Night Ratings Disaster Revealed
LEASHED
CBS filled Colbert’s timeslot with a show that attracted just 15 percent of his send-off viewership.

Owen Mason-Hill Editorial intern, Obsessed

Published May 27 2026 6:12PM EDT

Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show finale put CBS atop the late-night ratings charts. His replacement’s premiere plummeted them to the bottom.

When Colbert, 62, left CBS on Thursday, so too did all of his viewers. The first episode of Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed to premiere at Colbert’s previous 11:35 pm time slot drew just 995,000 viewers, according to initial Nielsen data reported by LateNighter.

By comparison, Colbert’s series finale attracted more than 6.7 million viewers via the same metric, meaning CBS saw an 85 percent downturn in viewership just one day after Colbert’s show went dark for good.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/colbert-replacements-late-night-ratings-disaster-revealed/

[tanyev]

1. Oopsie.

[dem4decades]

2. Not to mention Colbert's show was shown on youtube and other CBS shows.

I will never watch the replacement show, never.

[Coventina]

3. CBS is dead to me now.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. The Ellison's don't care about the ratings

They sold the block to Allen, who I believe in turn sells the ad space.

I’m sure ad time on Allen’s block is waaay cheaper than it was for Colbert’s.