CBS cancels late show with Stephen Colbert “Spark Reaction”
“The Late Show” will be held until May 2026. Host Stephen Colbert will not be replaced and the show will be cancelled entirely.
This certainly isn’t the future Stephen Colbert had himself in mind.
The host of CBS’s “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” announced on July 17 that he has only been left from New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater. And he’s not the only one leaving.
“All this is going to go away,” the 61-year-old comedian told his applauded audience, explaining that he hasn’t been replaced, but the show will air its final episode in May 2026.
The news has caused a wave of shock through the entertainment industry. This isn’t part of the network’s lineup options, but has embraced recent television shows such as “Late Show” and “Tonight Show” starring “Jimmy Fallon” on NBC. With David Letterman defecting from NBC in 1993 to create it from NBC, the long-standing, culturally ingrained series as “Late Show,” a networking agency, becomes as immeasurable as the idea that CBS itself will disappear.
Or is it? It’s 2025, not 1993, and late-night television is becoming more expensive and less profitable each year as ratings subside and costs rise. YouTube clips may be viral, but they don’t make up for the loss of revenue as live audiences decrease. It was always the question of when, not when late-night television stopped being in traditional form. But no one thought it would happen pretty quickly.
This is the end of the era and I remember it in Hollywood history. There was a time after Colbert was cancelled. And it remains to be seen whether one of his remaining late-night compatriots, Jimmy Fallon and Kimmel, Seth Myers and John Stewart, will air in the coming years.
Why is CBS canceling “Late Show with Stephen Colbert”?
After Colbert’s amazing on-air announcement, viewers only had one question. Why? When I ask Paramount, the parent company of CBS, it’s simply about mathematics.
“This is a purely financial decision against the challenging late-night background. It has no relation to the performance, content or other issues of the show happening at Paramount,” says Paramount and CBS executives. “I’m proud that Stephen invited CBS to the house. He and the broadcast are remembered in the great Pantheon, who decorated the late-night television.”
“Other issues happening at Paramount” is the operational phrase in the statement, an oblique reference to our current efforts to finalize the $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media, and requires regulatory approval from the federal government. And Colbert is an outspoken critic of President Trump’s administration. There are few nights when Colbert doesn’t use his “Late Show” stage to thrust the president.
And even his own parent company has not escaped Colbert’s wrath. Just three days before revealing the news of the cancellation, Colbert used the bully’s pulpit to sharply criticize Paramount for what was deemed a surrender to Trump after CBS News settled an honor loss lawsuit with the president for $16 million. Colbert called it “a big fat bribe” and made an effort to smooth the path to Skydance’s merger.
“As someone who is always a proud employee of this network, I feel offended,” he said. “And I don’t know if there’s anything to repair my trust in this company. But I think stabbing it and $16 million would help.”
Paramount also owns Comedy Central. Comedy Central airs the anti-Trump “Daily Show” on par with John Stewart and other comedians. The company has recently said nothing about the future of its political late-night series (along with “Late Show” and “Jimmy Kimmel Live”) and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Talk Series in 2025.
Paramount’s hopeful new owner, Skydance’s CEO is David Ellison, the son of Oracle’s billionaire president, Larry Ellison, who hosted President Trump’s fundraiser and donated to Republican-friendly Superpacus.
As we know, is this the end of late night TV?
Critics and analysts are furiously debating whether the cancellation of “Late Show” was truly a financial move or more politically motivated, but whatever the ultimate truth is, it doesn’t affect the trajectory of the late-night genre.
CBS recently concluded its 12:30am series, the comedy panel show “After Midnight.” NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Myers” recently x live, studio bands as a measure of cost savings. “Tonight’s Show” went from five nights a week to four nights in 2024, attending other late-night shows. Jimmy Kimmel of ABC is a normal threat to leave the late-night grind behind. Conan O’Brien, who easily inherited the “Tonight’s Show” throne, moved from decades of traditional late-night television on NBC and subsequently TBS to the low-FI world of podcasts. Samanthaby’s TBS talk show has also been cancelled.
We are far from Johnny Carson’s time when American fathers calm us down to sleep every night, or compete with millions of viewers at 11:35pm. Today, the genre is well known as AA difficult financial sales and is viewed primarily by older audiences who are not appealing to advertisers. The YouTube clips certainly get hundreds of thousands of views, but even the one-off viral video King Fallon doesn’t get tens of millions of hits. Generation Z and millennials are increasingly turning their eyes to short video platforms like Tiktok. Monologues, two guests, and band format are markers of the past, stiff, indomitable, and increasingly markers.
If Colbert can’t survive this landscape, it’s not clear whether anyone can. “Late Show” had led the pack in ratings so far in 2025, according to Latenighter.com, citing Nielsen Ratings. Kimmel and Fallon were far behind in their metrics, averaging 177 million and 119 million respectively, but Kimmel was replaced by guest hosts over the summer.
What’s next for Stephen Colbert?
Colbert rose to fame with the “Daily Show” in the 2000s and played the conservative right-wing character as a satire that he continued his spinoff “Colbert Report” for nearly a decade from 2005 to 2014. He took over “Late Show” in 2015 after Letterman retired from the program in a very Bally-Foo transition, consistent with other late-night shifts, including Fallon’s 2014 acquisition “Tonight” from Jay Leno.
With a pair stripped of different glasses and his fake persona, the world met the real Colbert for the first time and quickly developed a comfortable routine. The political punchline ruled his nightly monologues with openly anti-Trump sentiment during the president’s first term and elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024. His stand-up is followed by traditional, creepy celebrity interviews and musical performances. In his political comedy chop, Colbert hosted more politicians, newscasters and thinkers than Fallon has in his Gimmick and Game Happy “Tonight.” On July 17th, Colbert welcomed Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat. But despite his preference for the political bar crown, many of Colbert’s segments are surprisingly soft and heartfelt, whether they’re tired of “The Lord of the Ring”, “Retirement”, or “Star Wars” or sharing a stage with his wife, Evelyn in one of her frequent cameos.
There was no indicator that Colbert was ready to slow down on “Late Show.” His appearance is energetic and smart whip on a daily basis. Fatigue hadn’t sneaked into his comedy. Also, there was no reason to believe he couldn’t continue the “Late Show” for another decade.
Of course, CBS had other ideas. Now he will soon become a stageless comedian. The town is a boxless thing that stands and screams. However, it is unlikely that he will remain idle after he takes the final bow. His options can vary, from podcasting like O’Brien to streaming and cable series like Stewart and Letterman, but streamers have not yet cracked the talk show format. His former “Daily Show” colleague, John Oliver, was a huge success at HBO, which won an Emmy Award last week. Or Colbert could come up with something of his own. No one was doing anything like “report” before he tried it.
But Colbert is at least not public and has yet to plan. He still laments what he will lose.
“I am very grateful to have this chair (to CBS),” he told viewers. “It’s a great job. I hope someone else has got it. It’s looking forward to doing it for another 10 months with this normal idiot gang. It’ll be fun.
Ready or not, the next 10 months will guide you through a new era of television. But hopefully, they won’t stop listening to Colbert’s opinions and everything else. His voice is too funny, too smart, too important to be able to go quietly at night.
