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Los Angeles Times
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Who will be late-night TV's last man standing? Byron Allen takes his shot
Before Byron Allen became a media mogul, he was one of those comedians whose life was changed by Johnny Carson. Growing up, Allen would accompany his mother to the NBC lot in Burbank, where she worked as a publicist, and was provided with a show business education. An aspiring comic who played comedy clubs as a teenager, he regularly waited in the parking lot for the late-night host to exchange a few words before tapings of 'The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.' When Allen was 19 years old, he became the youngest comic to appear on Carson's 'Tonight' stage. It led to a regular role on the NBC prime-time series 'Real People' and a successful stand-up career that had him touring for two decades. Now Allen, 64, is poised to reenter the late-night TV arena — and just when the genre is at a crossroads. CBS' decision to end 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' next May raises questions about the future of the nocturnal kingdom Carson once ruled. Allen will become a part of the CBS late-night lineup starting Sept. 22, when his series 'Comics Unleashed' takes over the 12:30 a.m. time slot and will follow Colbert during his final season. Allen's series hasn't produced a new episode since 2016, but the 233 that were made during its original run have remained in syndication and aired as a stopgap for CBS in 2023 after the network canceled the money-losing 'Late Late Show With James Corden.' The network is picking up 'Comics Unleashed' for the 2025-26 season as the successor to Corden replacement 'After Midnight With Taylor Tomlinson,' which concluded its second and final season in June. Allen has no illusions about why CBS has turned to 'Comics Unleashed' again. 'It's not cheaper,' Allen said. 'It's zero.' Allen Media Group buys the airtime on CBS for 'Comics Unleashed' and keeps most of the advertising time on the program to sell. It's the same formula Allen used for 'Entertainers With Byron Allen,' the program that launched his company in the 1990s. Allen would score interviews with major stars at press junkets and cut them into a weekly half-hour program. He would go to the National Assn. of Television Program Executives conference, an annual TV marketplace for syndicated programming, and tell station owners that when the high-priced new shows they were buying failed, they should come to him and get 'Entertainers' for free. The stations received half the commercial time while Allen sold the rest to national advertisers from his kitchen table. 'I'm addicted to selling,' Allen said. CBS said Colbert's show is being canceled for financial reasons, with insiders saying it was accruing losses of $40 million a year. 'The Late Show' may have the most viewers in late night, but Colbert has the biggest piece of a shrinking pie. Nielsen data show the number of homes using television between 11:35 p.m. and 1:35 a.m. has declined around 13% in the first six months of 2025 compared with the same period last year. Ad revenues for all of the shows have declined dramatically as well over the last few years. Late-night shows are expensive to produce, with high-priced hosts, large writing staffs and the costs of servicing live audiences. While they generate revenue from clips on social media, they don't do well on streaming. The topical nature of the shows diminishes their value as library product, which helps keep subscribers hooked on streaming platforms. What makes 'Comics Unleashed' different than traditional late-night franchises is that it's designed to have a longer shelf life. In the recent reruns that have aired on CBS and in syndication, viewers heard an occasional joke about the Bush administration or a plug for a comic's MySpace address. But for the most part, the shows contain few references that date them. 'I tell the comedians we're shooting 'I Love Lucy,'' Allen said. 'Something that's evergreen. So I don't want to hear any political humor. Just be funny, family-friendly and advertiser-friendly.' In addition to veteran comics Allen has known for years, the series booked many stand-up stars before they became household names, including Kevin Hart, Whitney Cummings, Sebastian Maniscalco, Nate Bargatze and Chelsea Handler. Stand-ups who toil on the comedy club circuit are thankful for the exposure the show provided. 'To me, Byron is the patron saint of comedians,' said Greg Romero Wilson, who wrote for the program and appeared as a panelist. 'He's given so many opportunities to comics of every level. From up-and-comers to names you've known your whole life, Byron makes room for everyone.' Stand-up comic Shang Forbes said he hears from audience members at clubs who recall bits from episodes of the series he taped years ago. 'It was a very good experience,' Forbes said. 'I was surprised how many people saw it.' Allen wanted 'Comics Unleashed' to re-create the camaraderie he experienced during his own stand-up career, which started when Jimmie 'J.J.' Walker hired him as a 14-year-old joke writer alongside David Letterman and Jay Leno. ('Let me ask my mom,' Allen said when he got the offer.) 'What I remember most is that comedians were at their funniest afterwards when we went to Canter's Deli,' Allen said. Since buying the Weather Channel for $300 million in 2018, Allen has made a habit of throwing his hat in the ring whenever a legacy media company is said to be up for sale. But he recently reached a deal to sell 10 of Allen Media Groups's 28 TV stations to Atlanta-based Gray Media as part of an effort to reduce the privately held company's debt and invest in streaming. As the owner of network affiliate stations, he is well aware of the economic challenges facing traditional TV as viewers migrate to streaming, driving down ratings and ad revenue. 'All of it is under pressure,' he said. 'The networks are spending more on sports and less on nonsports content.' Allen spends a lot of time talking to bankers and lawyers — over the last decade he's filed lawsuits against Comcast, McDonald's and Nielsen, all of which were settled — but despite running a business, he will host new episodes of 'Comics Unleashed' himself. He plans to produce 132 half-hours, which will run back-to-back with repeat episodes. He will also be writing some jokes. 'You never stop being a comedian,' he said. 'It's a muscle that never goes away.'
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Photo-sharing app Locket is banking on a new celebrity-focused feature to fuel its growth
Locket, the photo-sharing app that allows users to share images with friends that are then displayed on their home screens as widgets, wants to stay on your radar, and it's enlisting the help of celebrities. Locket emerged as a competitor to BeReal when it launched in 2022, offering a more authentic way to connect with others. The app places a widget on iPhone home screens that updates with the latest pictures added by friends. Users can select up to 20 close friends, creating an intimate space to share unfiltered selfies and updates on their lives. The app claims to have over 80 million total downloads, more than 9 million daily active users, and its users have shared more than 10 billion photos to date. Notably, the company also shared with TechCrunch that it achieved profitability in 2024, a significant accomplishment given its relatively modest fundraising efforts of just $12.5 million. To drive additional growth, Locket has been quietly testing a feature called 'Celebrity Lockets' for the past six months, which the app officially announced on Wednesday. Celebrity Lockets mostly focuses on music artists, letting them engage with fans by sharing details about upcoming shows, new album releases, and other news. Locket has already tested this feature with Suki Waterhouse and JVKE, with more artists to be announced soon. To use the feature, celebrities can share a link on their social media platforms, or fans can look them up in the app to add them, and they can then send photos directly to their fans' home screens. 'With posts going straight to fans' home screens, it offers the kind of immediacy and intimacy that other platforms can't replicate, turning passive followers into active participants,' founder Matt Moss told TechCrunch. Locket allows artists to choose a number of fans to connect with, ranging from 1,000 to 15,000 slots. For instance, Suki has 5,000 fans on the app and has helped Locket attract hundreds of new members. According to the company, 17% of these 5,000 fans were new to Locket. 'Fans feel special knowing they're one of just a few thousand rather than just another follower. This also preserves the same intimacy and brand of Locket as a product today … We knew our community used Locket to share music with their friends, so being able to also connect with their favorite artists is a natural evolution for the platform,' Moss said. Although Moss says the feedback from testers has been good, it's unclear whether this will help Locket grow its user numbers. BeReal tried something similar with a feature called 'RealPeople,' but the reception wasn't entirely positive, with some people saying that they preferred the anti-social media app as a way to escape from celebrities.
Chicago Tribune
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Of Notoriety: Newspaper columnist turned TV commentator Gary Deeb dead at age 79
Before the advent and proliferation of the internet as a widespread information and communication change factor for the media landscape (around 1998 by my recollection), newspapers, television and radio continued as the trio that reigned supreme. Having graduated from Valparaiso University in 1992, I'm grateful I had a taste of 'the golden years' for media known as the decade of the 1990s. For Chicago and spanning to borders far beyond, there was media personality Gary Deeb as the caustic gatekeeper of all things TV, radio and media reporting about what and who to watch and when and where to listen. Deeb died at age 79 on May 17. His obituary was quietly published in his original hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News, the same newspaper that gave him his start as a radio and TV columnist in 1970 (the year I was born). His first editors took a chance on him, considering he hadn't had any college or journalism experience. Less than 10 lines long, the first line of his published obituary reads that Deeb 'passed away peacefully.' It's an interesting phrase of words: a familiar string and accurately assigned to most as symbolic of a quiet and gentle transition. In contrast, the career and temperament of Gary Deeb was very much the opposite. In 1973, Deeb moved to Chicago and was hired by the Chicago Tribune as the new radio and TV critic. By age 30 in 1973, his column was syndicated, and like his immense popularity and power in the media industry, his syndication numbers grew and expanded, extending for a wider reach than Chicago. He was young, brash, crass, to the point and often sarcastic and mean-spirited. When his column was added as a new feature in April 1982 to The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington, the newspaper touted: 'TV Columnist Added! Television reviewer Gary Deeb has been described as arrogant, snippy, opinionated, demanding and a host of other adjectives, some printable. He has his defenders, too. He is the best and brightest TV critic in print today. He is the Ralph Nader of reviewers.' Time magazine dubbed him 'Terror of the Tube' and further categorized him in 1975 as 'the sour, crude ravager of the medium' after Deeb described that year's prime time season TV lineup as 'devoid of innovation, creativity or diversification, freighted with drivel, sanitized doggerel and phony rotten garbage.' He was indifferent about ABC's series 'Kung Fu,' saying it 'exploits the mass audience's craving for blood and guts,' yet loved NBC's 'Real People,' an hour-long salute to everyday personalities hosted by Sarah Purcell, Skip Stephenson, Byron Allen and young Peter Billingsley, and very much despised NBC's 'Little House on the Prairie,' describing the latter as 'cloying sweetness and padded dialog.' He loved 'the tiny slice of life's underside' that was the ABC sitcom 'Taxi' but had few kind words for brother and sister duo Donny and Marie Osmond and their ABC variety show. Some of Deeb's most cutting criticisms were saved for Chicago's local on-air news personalities from news anchors to the weather broadcasters of TV and radio. Most famously, he said our Hoosier claim-to-fame TV news and NBC 'Today' show icon Jane Pauley 'has the IQ of a cantaloupe.' Even his own future Sun-Times gossip columnist colleague Irv 'Kup' Kupcinet wasn't safe from Deeb's poison pen. Deeb described Kup and his broadcast counterpart Jack Brickhouse as 'simpletons' and found their constant banter and chitchat annoying and distracting from the commentary they were supposed to provide when announcing Chicago Bears games. Sportswriter George Castle, who I worked with for 20 years at The Times of Northwest Indiana, worked with Deeb as a nighttime copyboy at the Chicago Tribune when he was just beginning his journalism career. Castle always said Deeb's column was entertaining to all, as long as it wasn't them he was describing in his adjective-heavy prose. In today's era of journalism, no columnist could write with such a harsh slant about people and subjects. I know firsthand that Kup did not find Deeb amusing or entertaining. Though I never met or knew Deeb, I did know Kup and would visit him with my parents at his Lakeshore Drive apartment during his final years before his death at age 91 in 2003. 'Deeb was a twerp' was Kup's description of his newsroom desk neighbor. (Though Kup mostly wrote from home and left his newsroom needs to longtime assistant Stella Foster.) Deeb and Kup became co-workers in 1980 when The Sun-Times courted Deeb away from the Tribune by offering him his own secretary and an assistant by the name of Robert Feder, the latter who would assume Deeb's column duties from writing about media news while writer Phil Rosenthal took over as the Sun-Times TV columnist. Deeb eventually left newspapers in 1983 for a coveted TV broadcaster position with Chicago ABC 7 as the TV and radio media commentator. He left his TV position in 1996 and returned home to Buffalo retiring at age 50, and then later moving to Charlotte, North Carolina. He was married and divorced twice. The last time Deeb's name made news headlines was in 2003, when the Chicago Reader's columnist Michael Miner was tipped off that Deeb had netted several thousand dollars by selling his personal archive of letters and correspondence from Chicago media notable names and national media personalities like John Chancellor and Morley Safer, among others. When asked to comment, Deeb had no comment. He is survived by his sister Elaine Lamb and stepdaughter Kyla Lee. A memorial service will be held at a later date.
