Meet Byron Allen: The new host jumping into Stephen Colbert’s time slot

0:00It's Consider This from NPR, where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, the successor to Stephen Colbert's late night slot on CBS. All right, you guys are a hot crowd. We're going to have a lot of fun tonight. Give yourselves a round of applause. Byron Allen. He's a media mogul who owns the Weather Channel, a bunch of local TV and cable channels, and he's also just acquired a majority stake in BuzzFeed. Byron Allen also has deep roots in stand-up comedy. Thank you, thank you. I guess I'd tell you a little about myself first. When he was just 18 years old, still in high school, he appeared on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.

0:42Favorite class is algebra. Oh, see, because I have a real hip teacher. Gives us problems we can relate to. It's like, if Bob has a hundred hostess Twinkies, eats 87 of them. How many joints did he smoke? And for the last 20 years, Byron Allen has been the host of the comedy roundtable show Comics Unleashed. All right. We're going to have a great time tonight. Some very funny people here say hello to... And now, on Friday, that very show goes up against Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. It is shaking up the whole late-night comedy lineup. Consider this. Meet the man taking over CBS late night.

1:35From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. new shows new music new movies keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job thankfully over at pop culture happy hour it's literally our job we break down what's actually worth watching listening to and pretending you already knew about so the next time someone says did you see that you can say yeah obviously follow npr's pop culture happy hour wherever you get your podcasts

2:09It's Consider This from NPR. Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen is a comedy roundtable made right here in Culver City. And so I headed over to his production studios on Thursday to sit down with him. Allen said airing his show in the 11.35 p.m. slot has been a lifelong dream. I feel great. I feel amazing. You know, I tell everybody I have been pursuing this for 51 years. And then our conversation got way more heated than I expected. You're about to hear part of that conversation. And there's a lot more you can listen to and watch in the latest episode of NPR's Newsmakers. That's our new video podcast where you can find NPR's biggest interviews.

2:55This show has had hundreds of episodes since you started it about 20 years ago. And let's be honest, Byron, your show, Comics Unleashed, is nowhere near as popular as a show that it's replacing, Colbert. I never said it was. Wait, wait. For years, your show has not gotten great reviews. Like, people on IMDb gave it a rating of 4.3 out of 10. That's too many. That's not a great rating, Byron. 4.3, that's too many. So I want to ask you, are you doing anything different with this show this time around so you can make it better? Okay. Do you want to make it better? Okay, so we're going to talk about better.

3:32Yeah. Let's talk about better. Am I going to do anything different? Yeah. Absolutely not! Wait, but Byron, the reason I'm asking you if you're going to meet the moment is you have an opportunity here. You have an opportunity to capture Stephen Colbert's audience. Wrong! Which is more than two and a half million viewers per episode. Wait, you have no interest in their eyeballs? Well, here's what I have to say. Okay. Real simple, real simple. So now when we started doing the show, right, Comics Unleash, we're now celebrating our 20th anniversary. 20 years. You tell me what show could stay on the air that long.

4:07And I'm proud of it because we've had on over a thousand comedians. And we've had on every shape, size, color, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, gay, Jewish, Muslim. I want to know, have you had any conversations with anybody at CBS or at Paramount about boundaries not to cross or topics to avoid on Comics Unleashed? Absolutely not. Okay. How about down the road? No, no, you asked the question. I want to be clear. I have absolutely not had any conversations with anybody at CBS or Paramount about what to say or not to say politics or boundaries. If Paramount or if someone at CBS down the road, comes to you and says, don't have that comic on your show or don't talk about that topic, what would you do in that scenario?

4:55I would say, guys, enjoy the$150 million I save you. Okay. Now, we've been talking a lot about how you say - Elsa, come on now. You have to talk to me business show, not show business. You have to remember this, Elsa. Let's talk about your business show. No, no, no. Let's talk about business show. I pay them millions on top of the$150 they're saving. Oh, yeah. You're saving them money. Oh, yeah. And also you're offering... And I'm paying them. You're also offering them comedy that you say will not be controversial. In fact... I didn't say the word controversial. Well, okay. Let me read your quote.

5:28I'm going to read your quote. Byron, let me read your quote. These are your words. Okay. We are doing a show with nothing political, racist, sexist, or homophobic. That's right. Just clean comedy. I never used the word controversial. What do you say to people out there who are listening or reading that quote and thinking to themselves, that sounds like some boring toothless comedy. Okay, here's what I would say. What do you say to them? I would say to them, for you, that may be boring toothless comedy. You have a huge audience out there. You only need one or 2 % to be a success. Not everybody's going to love me.

6:02But there is that one or 2 % that will be like, hell yeah, I'm rolling with you. And I learned that at an early age. And by the way, that simple lesson made me a billionaire. You've been doing comedy since you were a kid. We've been talking about you were on Carson when you were 18. Can you just explain to me, like, over the years, over the course of your life, why did you decide eventually to start leaning more into the business side of it all instead of focusing on the craft of comedy itself and only that? Yeah, it's not show business, it's business show. Okay, your favorite line. It is business show.

6:38Meaning? Meaning? Look, I've been able to sell 74 television shows. I have on more first-run shows than all the studios combined. I have on over 13 hours a day of television with my name on it. And that's important to me because my passion is to make sure that we own something as black people in America. Right. That black people not just make content, they own the content. We own the content. You know, we have plenty of corporations out here who make money off of our style, our creativity, our swagger. But that's over. It's time for us to own it. I get that. And I get that that's a very important desire.

7:18Yes. I also want to understand what kind of media mogul you want to be as that black American. Why do I ask this? Because you have this long history of trying to buy media properties that are in decline, like BET and VH1. You also tried to buy Paramount before Skydance showed up. You just acquired this majority stake in BuzzFeed. So you do have this pattern of going after media platforms that are in distress. What is the strategy? Is it you're actually trying to make these platforms better? Or are you mainly just trying to grab up as much stuff as possible to grow your empire? Well, yes. Well, I feel I can make them better.

7:58And you do need scale. I'm chasing Walt Disney. I'm chasing Rupert Murdoch. Those are the best of the best. In media, I love business. I live for business. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. I don't play golf. You know what I love to do? I love business. I love it. I live it. I breathe it. I eat it. Golf as a vice. Sleep it. Yeah. I love it. You never thought of what as a ball? Golf as a vice. Well, you're taking up time trying to get a white ball in the hole. Come on now. My passion is business. A lot of people buy businesses in the penthouse and take them to the lobby. I buy them in the lobby and take them to the penthouse.

8:35I do want to return to the reason that we are talking here today, and that is the cancellation of Stephen Colbert. I had nothing to do with that. I know. You have called that cancellation a quote. I had nothing to do with that. You called it a quote, unfortunate event. It was. So let me ask you this. It was. What do we lose when someone like Stephen Colbert goes off the air? Stephen Colbert is an American treasure. He is a phenomenal human being. Here's the good news. He owns his talent and he has an audience that loves him. He just has to decide where he wants to plant his flag next. And quite frankly, there's so many places he can go.

9:17I would support him on anything he wants to do. He doesn't need me, but I would do it in a nanosecond. Maybe you need to invite him on Comics Unleashed. He's always invited. And by the way, when he saw that I got the time period, he texted me. And he said, congratulations. I'm very happy for you. Don't you wish Johnny Carson could have witnessed this? and it brought tears to my eyes. Yeah, I bet. Byron Allen, host of Comics Unleashed on CBS. The best of the best, baby. So great talking to you. Oh yeah, Elsa, I love this one. This was good, this was confrontation. I felt like I was on Jerry Springer.

9:53Boy, baby. Hey, Elsa, I'm not the baby daddy. Elsa, this is not my baby Elsa. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Karen Zamora with audio engineering by Kwesi Lee and Maggie Luthar. It was edited by Christopher Intagliata and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

10:18It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.