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