CBS Canceling ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’

[Ralph Wiggum]

CBS said Thursday that it was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and retiring a late-night franchise that has existed for more than three decades.

Mr. Colbert’s run — and “The Late Show” itself — will end in May.

“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” said George Cheeks, the president of CBS and co-chief executive of Paramount, CBS’s parent company. “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount. Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”

NY Slimes link via paywall.

Edit: Fox News link

https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-cancels-the-late-show-stephen-colbert-end-program-may-2026

And Gutfeld slays another loser...

[SVPete]

Translating the SeeBS blah-blah into accurate English, Colbert's audience isn't large enough to garner sufficient ad revenue, so they're cancelling him (pun intended).

[Ptarmigan]

Why can it in May 2026 if it is a financial decision?

[Ralph Wiggum]

Why can it in May 2026 if it is a financial decision?

They probably have to pay off his contract whether the show is on the air or not. And his staff of hundreds are likely unionized who can't be axed immediately. Gutfeld has mentioned this before both on TV and on his website. His show has a staff of about 15 people, most of whom work in other capacities on the network. The other late night shows typically have 15 writers and probably 15 executive producers, not to mention all the other supporting folks.

Coal-bert and Kimmel simply lost the ability to be funny when President Trump emerged on the political scene. That is their main mission: to be entertaining.

[SVPete]

Apparently, Colbert lambasted SeeBS owner Paramount for settling Trump's lawsuit. Paramount may have been unamused with his runt-rant as well as less than happy with his ratings and ad revenue.

[SVPete]

Democrats Are Flipping Out Over Colbert’s Cancellation

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/07/18/democrats-are-flipping-out-over-colberts-cancellation-n4941872

On Thursday evening, we learned that Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” will be axed in May 2026. Those of us on the right weren’t particularly shocked. Despite Colbert's reputation as the king of late night, Greg Gutfeld dethroned him in the fall of 2022, and it seemed inevitable that as Colbert’s ratings fell, so would ad revenue.

Naturally, the usual suspects on the left are in full meltdown mode. The narrative from their side is simple: Any setback for one of their favorite propagandists must be a covert political hit job orchestrated by Trump and his cronies.
...
Late-night TV has been hemorrhaging money for years as viewers jump ship for streaming services. In 2018, these shows raked in $439 million in ad revenue. Last year, that figure crashed to $220 million — a collapse so catastrophic that no amount of Trump jokes could paper it over. But try telling that to the likes of Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren, who see sinister motives everywhere except in themselves.
...
Democratic Sens. Schiff and Warren practically tripped over themselves, racing to social media and demanding an investigation, as though Colbert’s show was a sacred institution under assault.

Embedded Schifftyroo X post

Embedded Fauxcahontas X post

The left’s hysteria is transparent. Paramount’s merger with Skydance still needs sign-off from the Trump administration and the FCC. Throw in a $16 million settlement to Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview, and Democrats are convinced there’s a grand scheme to silence their guy, all conveniently ignoring that Paramount might simply want to stop losing money.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Apparently, Colbert lambasted SeeBS owner Paramount for settling Trump's lawsuit. Paramount may have been unamused with his runt-rant as well as less than happy with his ratings and ad revenue.

And it does come down to the almighty dollar. Sort of wondering if he'll even last until May 2026, or might he self-implode on stage at some point. He's that f-ing crazy.

Have flipped the channel once in a while to either Kimmel or COAL-bert, and immediately changed channels because the venomous hatred of President Trump was just completely not remotely amusing. It is group therapy for woke-turds and lib-turds. Carson, Letterman, and Leno made fun of everyone. For Carson, he ridiculed (but not in a cruel way) Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and then George H.W. Bush. Along with mocking the VP's. Total fair game.

[SVPete]

IIRC, Letterman went full-partisan toward the end of his show's run, though his show ended before the 2016 primary campaign.

A quote of an X post from https://instapundit.com/732842/ :

Stephen Colbert’s legacy will be this…

“He was a gerbil of a man, an establishment shill, a toadie to big government, a follower instead of a trailblazer, a self-involved statist, a moral coward in the face of Woke McCarthyism, and a divisive, self-regarding loser who killed an entire late-night franchise because he sought applause from those who agreed with him instead of laughs from the rest of us.

“Most unforgivably, he sought only the approval of elites because he saw himself as too superior to entertain the rest of us.

“In short, Stephen Colbert will be remembered as a dick.

I wonder whether Letterman's partisanship hastened his departure.

Comedy has an equivalent of "Shut up and sing": Shut up and be funny!

[Ptarmigan]

They probably have to pay off his contract whether the show is on the air or not. And his staff of hundreds are likely unionized who can't be axed immediately. Gutfeld has mentioned this before both on TV and on his website. His show has a staff of about 15 people, most of whom work in other capacities on the network. The other late night shows typically have 15 writers and probably 15 executive producers, not to mention all the other supporting folks.

Coal-bert and Kimmel simply lost the ability to be funny when President Trump emerged on the political scene. That is their main mission: to be entertaining.

It is weird they would announce almost a year in advance.

I remember reading that they were going to axe Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect before 9/11. Of course he made that vile statement and got destroyed for it. It was replaced by the Jimmy Kimmel Live!

[Ptarmigan]

Leftist Redditors are upset that Stephen Colbert is out.   
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1m31u8d/cbs_axes_colberts_the_late_show_after_trump_deal/
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1m2zn0k/stephen_colbert_announces_the_cancelation_of_the/

[SVPete]

They need their daily dose of Trump Hatred.

[SVPete]

CBS Reportedly Lost $40 Million on Colbert’s Late Show This Year

https://latenighter.com/news/cbs-reportedly-lost-40-million-on-colberts-late-show-this-year/

Sources inside CBS have suddenly become much more forthcoming about the sobering economics of late-night television in 2025—go figure— revealing that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has recently been running at an annual shortfall of $40 million.

If that sounds unthinkable for the #1 rated show at 11:35pm, consider this: as Matt Belloni reports today in Puck, back in 2018, all of late-night television combined generated $438 million in advertising revenue. By 2023, that number had been cut in half, and it has continued to fall.

Given that The Late Show—with its handsomely paid host and a staff of roughly 200 employees—reportedly costs CBS $100 million per year to produce, that $40 million figure becomes easier to understand.

This is annoymorously sourced, but IMO, if SeeBS wants to dispute it I'd love to see their real numbers.

[Ralph Wiggum]

CBS Reportedly Lost $40 Million on Colbert’s Late Show This Year

https://latenighter.com/news/cbs-reportedly-lost-40-million-on-colberts-late-show-this-year/

This is annoymorously sourced, but IMO, if SeeBS wants to dispute it I'd love to see their real numbers.

Nolte: The Only Person Who Canceled Stephen Colbert Was Stephen Colbert

Nothing better exemplifies why Stephen Colbert’s Late Show suddenly got canceled than the fact that Colbert’s prime guest on the night of the cancellation’s announcement was … Adam Schiff.

Nolte: The Only Person Who Canceled Stephen Colbert Was Stephen Colbert
808
NEW YORK CITY - OCTOBER 8: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and guest Vice President KamScott Kowalchyk; Sonja Flemming/CBS via Getty Images
John Nolte18 Jul 20252,831
4:32
Nothing better exemplifies why Stephen Colbert’s Late Show suddenly got canceled than the fact that Colbert’s prime guest on the night of the cancellation’s announcement was … Adam Schiff.

Yes, pencil-necked Adam Schiff. Yes, serial liar Adam Schiff. Yes, the dull, charisma-free Democrat U.S. Senator from California who spent more time on TV spreading deliberate misinformation about the Russia Collusion Hoax than anyone not named Jake Tapper.

CBS is reportedly paying Colbert $15 million a year. On top of that, for some reason, Colbert requires a crew of 200 (and their salaries) to put on a late-night show with zero cultural impact that fewer than one percent of Americans watch. And still, he thinks it’s a good idea to invite on a dull and divisive politician to spout dull and divisive talking points.

“Does the end of Colbert’s show in May 2026 relate to the Paramount-Skydance merger? To Colbert’s criticism of Donald Trump? To the demise of late night television? Who’s to say?” the Hollywood Reporter wrote.

Either way, it’s certainly not Colbert’s fault. No, it must be an all-new problem with the “economics of late-night TV”:

It’s a brutal blow for late-night, which has already been struggling in recent years with CBS recently axing After Midnight, the show that replaced The Late Late Show with James Corden, instead of replacing host Taylor Tomlinson.

Blah-blah-blah…

There’s only one reason Stephen Colbert got canceled, and that’s that Stephen Colbert sucks.

That’s it.

All this guy does is use an hour of network airtime (on publicly-owned airwaves) to masturbate his own political sweet spot.

And now we know that appeals to only two million people in a country of 330 million.

The problem is not the economics of late-night TV. The problem is the economics of Stephen Colbert.

Bottom line: Colbert’s relentless, narcissistic act of political onanism will never deliver an audience big enough to justify the budget necessary to pay his $15 million annual salary and the salaries of a crew of 200.

Colbert should be on CNN or MSNBC, where the cost of production is more in line with his limited appeal.

Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show airs on a cable channel (Fox News) that’s available in millions and millions fewer homes than CBS. Nevertheless, Gutfeld! still humiliates Colbert in the ratings night after night. And I’ll bet dollars to rotten bananas Gutfeld’s production budget is a fraction of what CBS is wasting so that Colbert can drop his pants and pleasure himself every night.

Stephen Colbert is so unappealing that his ratings were actually lower — lower! — before he turned the Late Show into a version of the Rachel Maddow Show where the smug, dishonest host wears Harold Lloyd’s glasses.

Johnny Carson left a legacy—the best at what he did for 30 years, with shows so entertaining they are still rerun 30 years after he retired. David Letterman left a legacy—he created late-night for college kids. Arsenio Hall left a legacy—he proved Carson was vulnerable. When Colbert says his goodbyes next May and moves on to a podcast no one listens to, he will only be remembered this way…

Stephen Colbert was a gerbil of a man, an establishment shill, a toadie to big government, a follower instead of a trailblazer, a self-involved statist, a moral coward in the face of Woke McCarthyism, and a divisive, self-regarding loser who killed an entire late-night franchise because he sought applause from those who agreed with him instead of laughs from the rest of us.

Most unforgivably, he sought only the approval of elites because he saw himself as too superior to entertain the rest of us.

In short, Stephen Colbert will be remembered as a dick.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2025/07/18/nolte-the-only-person-who-canceled-stephen-colbert-was-stephen-colbert/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_campaign=20250718

[Zathras]

In short, Stephen Colbert will be remembered as a dick.

If he's even remembered at all. Hell I don't even think about him at all.

[Old n Grumpy]

I don’t know why they’re upset. They just canceled him. They’re not gonna shoot him.

[SVPete]

The gift that keeps on giving,   :

Colbert Flips Out on Air With Profanity-Laced Rant Against Trump

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/07/22/colbert-flips-out-on-air-blames-trump-for-cancelation-n4941981

His show cancellation apparently struck a nerve with Colbert, who responded in his monologue with the kind of smug self-satisfaction that helped tank his ratings in the first place. He then proceeded to make his cancellation entirely about Trump.

“For the next 10 months, the gloves are off,” he said. “I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump.”

As if he hasn’t been saying what he really thinks about Trump for the past decade.

Colbert pushed the conspiracy theory that the cancellation was due to his rant against Paramount for settling Trump’s lawsuit. He questioned how “The Late Show” could be a financial disaster when it’s number one in the ratings.

Then he set his sights on Trump, who had had the audacity to celebrate the show’s well-deserved cancellation.

“How dare you, sir?” Colbert said in mock outrage, before mockingly asking if an “untalented man” could deliver what he proudly called a “satirical witticism.” Then, in what he surely thought was a moment of comedic brilliance, Colbert stared into his so-called “Eloquence Cam” and barked, “Go f— yourself.”

1. On one hand, SeeBS parent Paramount paid Trump $25M for SeeBS's partisan editing the Kammie intershamview. On the other, Colbert's show - whatever the combination of ad revenue losses and staff bloat - loses SeeBS on the order of $40M a year and Colbert is a huge, angry, hate-driven lawsuit risk. A first grader could do that Math!

2. As DU demonstrates several times a day, a drunken Trump-hating sot could achieve the eloquence and profundity of GFY!

Writers Guild Wants NY AG Letitia James to Investigate Colbert Firing

https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2025/07/22/writers-guild-demands-that-ny-ag-letitia-james-investigate-colbert-firing-n4941977#google_vignette

The left saw Colbert as a Trump nemesis, skewering the president night after night in unfunny monologues and hosting guests whose claim to fame was being opposed to Donald Trump. For normal viewers, the constant anti-Trump caterwauling got to be tiresome and eventually, uncomfortable.

But the real reason Colbert was canceled was the changing landscape of late-night television. Pre-COVID, the genre was a profit leader for networks largely because the primary audience for the late-night talk format was the 18-35 demographic. Once the streaming revolution began in earnest after COVID, the first viewers to leave cable and satellite were from the same demographic.

Colbert's show wasn't a victim of government censorship or even its anti-Trump viewpoint. Simple economics spelled the end of Colbert.

But the Writers Guild won't accept that. As typical left-wingers, they think that Paramount dropping $50 million a year is nothing as long as someone is rattling Trump's cage on a nightly basis.
...
“Cancellations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society," the Guild said in a statement.

Trump-Hating Letitia shamvestigating Trump-Hating SeeBS for an obviously non-political, obviously financial, decision? I highly approve of Blue-on-Blue!

[SVPete]

Colbert Is Latest Casualty of Late-Night TV's Fade-out

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/colbert-cancelled-casualty/2025/07/19/id/1219304/

CBS executives said in a statement that dropping the show was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount."

Whether or not politics were at play, the late-night format has been struggling for years, as viewers increasingly cut the cable TV cord and migrate to streaming. Younger viewers, in particular, are more apt to find amusement on YouTube or TikTok, leaving smaller, aging TV audiences and declining ad revenues.

Americans used to religiously turn on Johnny Carson or Jay Leno before bed, but nowadays many fans prefer to watch quick clips on social media at their convenience. Advertising revenue for Colbert's show has dropped 40% since 2018 - the financial reality that CBS said prompted the decision to end “The Late Show” in May 2026.
...
The show's ad revenue plummeted to $70.2 million last year from $121.1 million in 2018, according to ad tracking firm Guideline. Ratings for Colbert’s show peaked at 3.1 million viewers on average during the 2017-18 season, according to Nielsen data.

For the season that ended in May, the show’s audience averaged 1.9 million.

[SVPete]

CBS Is About to Have a Big, Expensive Stephen Colbert Problem — and Howard Stern Is the Precedent

https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/07/22/cbs-is-about-to-have-a-big-expensive-stephen-colbert-problem-and-howard-stern-is-the-precedent-n4941985

Question for CBS: What the hell do you THINK is gonna happen with Stephen Colbert, who’ll be on your airwaves for another 10 months?!

If you still can’t figure it out, I’ll break it down for you:

1. His audience consists of liberals;
2. He needs these liberals to follow him to YouTube (or wherever he goes) when his show ends;
3. The easiest way to be “must-see” news/entertainment for liberals is to attack Trump/conservatives in increasingly “newsworthy” ways; and
4. Since Colbert knows he’ll be off the air anyway, you’re not gonna be able to control him.

As my colleague Matt Margolis noted, on his first night back since his firing was announced, Colbert attacked the president with a profanity-laced tirade.

Question for CBS, Part II: You do realize Colbert’s profane attacks will only escalate, right? Is that something you REALLY want on your airwaves for the next 10 months?

Look, CBS had every right to yank Colbert off the air. It’s bad business to pay a guy $15 million to be the public face of an entertainment brand that’s losing $40 million annually. So, even before, the CBS economic model and the Stephen Colbert economic model were no longer on the same page.

But now? You’ve just given Colbert a 10-month window to build and grow a leftwing audience that he intends to take with him!

Monday’s F-bombs are a sign of what’s to come.

Prediction: Stephen Colbert will be removed from the airwaves well before May 2026, and Stern-esque litigation will likely follow.

At this point, I think it’s inevitable.

I don't know how the coming 10 months will play out, but Colbert is in a position of knowing that whatever he does, right now he's out sooner or later. He also is in a position where he could play political martyr and try to gin up pressure on SeeBS to back down. So, be a whatcha gonna do, fire me? A-hole or play victim, which way will Colbert go?

[Ralph Wiggum]

CBS Is About to Have a Big, Expensive Stephen Colbert Problem — and Howard Stern Is the Precedent

https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/07/22/cbs-is-about-to-have-a-big-expensive-stephen-colbert-problem-and-howard-stern-is-the-precedent-n4941985

I don't know how the coming 10 months will play out, but Colbert is in a position of knowing that whatever he does, right now he's out sooner or later. He also is in a position where he could play political martyr and try to gin up pressure on SeeBS to back down. So, be a whatcha gonna do, fire me? A-hole or play victim, which way will Colbert go?

He will get himself ass-canned for cause by Labor Day.

Maybe you'd be better off learning how to code, COAL-bert.

[ADsOutburst]

Democratic Sens. Schiff and Warren practically tripped over themselves, racing to social media and demanding an investigation, as though Colbert’s show was a sacred institution under assault.

Demanding... an investigation???

An investigation of what???

I've come to expect megalomaniacal nonsense from the left, but this is over the top, even for them.

Here, I'll conduct the investigation for you. The findings are as follows: Colbert's show sucks. It turns out, making a monothematic show about bashing Trump doesn't sell. And Colbert is so pretentious, he even pronounces his own name wrong.

[Ptarmigan]

It’s not just Colbert — network late-night TV is dead
https://nypost.com/2025/07/19/entertainment/its-not-just-colbert-network-late-night-tv-is-dead/

Everybody was shocked — shocked! — when Stephen Colbert announced this week that CBS canceled “The Late Show.”

The despondent media reacted like a meteor was about to smash into Earth.

But how surprising was Colbert’s kibosh really?

Simply, late night shows are on their way out.