Colberts

The Emmys ceremony was about more than just glamour and excellence in television. The current heated political climate and the attack on cultural institutions on and off screen was also a flash point, even though much of it was bleeped for viewers.

During her acceptance speech after winning supporting actress in a comedy series, Hannah Einbinder of “Hacks” proclaimed, “F— ICE” at the end of her speech, denouncing the crackdown on immigrants across the country by the federal government.

Einbinder also mentioned Palestine in her speech and was among several actors, filmmakers and others who wore pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Megan Stalter, another “Hacks” cast member, carried a bag pinned with a note that said “Cease Fire.”

When the writing staff for HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” took the stage after winning for writing for a variety series, senior writer Daniel O’Brien said he and his colleagues were happy to be in the company of writers of late-night comedy “while it’s still the type of show that is allowed to exist.”

Television Academy President Cris Abrego paid tribute to the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which was presented with the Governors Award last week during the Creative Arts Emmys. When he noted that CPB’s federal funding had been shut down by Congress and that CPB would shut its doors, the comment elicited a loud “boo” from the audience.

Hannah Einbinder, who won an Emmy for supporting actress in a comedy series, in the trophy room at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. She referenced ICE and Palestine in her acceptance speech.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“CPB has been the backbone of American public media, giving us everything from ‘Sesame Steet’ to ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’ to ‘Finding Your Roots,’” he said. “In many small towns, those stations were not just a cultural lifeline to small towns across the nation, but an emergency alert system that families could count on.”

He continued, “When division dominates the headlines, storytelling still has the power to unite us. Television and the artists who make it do more than address society — they shape our culture. At times of cultural regression, they remind us of what’s at stake.”

Before presenting the award for talk show, Bryan Cranston took a swipe at West Point’s recent cancellation of the Sylvanus Thayer Award to Tom Hanks, who has been a frequent critic of President Trump. Although a reason for the cancellation was not given, the move was seen by pundits to be politically motivated.

Cranston said in his remarks that the hallmark of an exceptional talk show was to have intelligent conversations with a variety of guests, “from the learned and inspirational Neil deGrasse Tyson, to the degenerate and woke Tom Hanks.”

The award went to “Late Night With Stephen Colbert,” which CBS is ending next year at the conclusion of its season. Although the cancellation was attributed to financial considerations, Colbert’s harsh criticism of Trump has also been blamed for the termination.

During his acceptance speech, Colbert said the show had initially been about love, but had evolved into a show about loss: “Sometimes you only know how much you love something when you get a sense you might be losing it.”

He also said he hoped the show’s end would not bring an end to the late-night talk show tradition.

There’s a lot of schadenfreude on the right, and even more lamentation on the left, about the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

Donald Trump leads the schadenfreude caucus. “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump crowed on social media. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” (It is remarkable that a president who campaigned with a vow to end “cancel culture” is so uninhibited in his celebration of cancel culture when it’s on his terms.)

The lamentations from the left are just as exuberant, from the other direction. They hail Colbert as a heroic martyr for free expression and speaking truth to power. “Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country’s leader on TV without repercussions,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes declared.

In a sense, both sides essentially agree that Colbert was canceled because of his politics. The argument from the left is that this was unfair and even illegitimate. The illegitimate claim rests on the fact that CBS’s parent company Paramount has been trying to curry favor with the administration to gain approval for the sale of the network to Skydance Media. Shari Redstone, Paramount’s owner, approved a settlement of Trump’s dubious lawsuit against “60 Minutes” (which Colbert had criticized days earlier as a “big fat bribe”). Colbert’s scalp was a sweetener, critics claim.

I think that theory is plausible, given the timing of the decision and the way it was announced. If this was the plan all along, why not announce the decision at the 2025 upfronts and sell ads in tandem with the wind-down? That’s the way this sort of thing has been done in the past.

But Colbert’s critics on the right have an equally plausible point. Colbert made the show very political and partisan, indulging his Trump “resistance” schtick to the point where he basically cut the potential national audience in half. He leaned heavily on conventionally liberal politicians (tellingly, on the night he announced the news of his cancellation, his first guest was California Sen. Adam Schiff — a man who couldn’t get a laugh if you hit him in the face with a pie).

But both the left-wing and right-wing interpretations have some holes. The theory that this was purely a political move overlooks the fact that CBS didn’t merely fire Colbert, it’s terminating the iconic “Late Show” entirely and giving the airtime back to local affiliates. If they solely wanted to curry favor with Trump, they could have given the show to more Trump-friendly (funnier and popular with the young’ns) comedians such as Shane Gillis or Andrew Schulz. The show was reportedly losing some $40 million a year. Even if they hired someone for a quarter of Colbert’s $15- million salary, it would still be losing money.

On the right, many — Trump included — have pointed to the fact that Greg Gutfeld’s not-quite-late-night Fox show has better ratings than his competitors on the three legacy networks. That’s true, but it’s hardly as if Gutfeld is any less partisan than Colbert, Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon.

It’s also true that the titans of previous eras — Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien — tended to avoid strident partisanship. But the nostalgia-fueled idea that a more mainstream, apolitical host would garner similar audiences again gets the causality backward.

Those hosts were products of a different era, when huge numbers of Americans from across the political spectrum consumed the same cultural products. The hosts, much like news networks and newspapers, had a powerful business incentive to play it down the middle and avoid alienating large swaths of their audiences and advertisers. That era is over, forever.

Now media platforms look to garner small “sticky” audiences they can monetize by giving them exactly what they want. There’s an audience for Colbert, and for Gutfeld, but what makes the roughly 2 million to 3 million nightly viewers who love that stuff tune in makes the other 330 million potential viewers tune in to something else. The “Late Show” model — and budget — simply doesn’t work with those numbers.

Cable news, led by Fox, ushered in political polarization in news consumption, but cable itself fueled the balkanization of popular culture. Streaming and podcast platforms, led by YouTube, are turbocharging that trend to the point where media consumption is now a la carte (artificial intelligence may soon make it nigh upon bespoke).

The late-night model was built around a culture in which there was little else to watch. That culture is never coming back.

X:@JonahDispatch

President Trump is celebrating the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” on CBS — and calling for even more late-night hosts to be axed.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote Friday morning on Truth Social. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

He added that Greg Gutfeld, who has a late-night show and co-hosts “The Five” on Fox News, “is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show,” referring to Jimmy Fallon.

Although “Late Night” is the top-rated late-night broadcast show, “Gutfeld!” draws a bigger audience.

Colbert, 61, has hosted the show for a decade and shared the news of its cancellation Thursday night, noting that he was made aware of the decision only the night before. “The Late Show” will end in May.

“It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS,” Colbert said. “I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

CBS said the decision was “purely financial.” The cancellation comes after Colbert criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, for settling a lawsuit filed by Trump last year over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Colbert called the $16-million settlement a “big fat bribe” Monday night, noting that Paramount is awaiting federal approval for its $8-billion merger with Skydance Media.

Both branches of the Writers Guild called on New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James to investigate Paramount.

“Cancelations 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,” read a statement released Friday by the union.

Fellow late-night hosts have since criticized the show’s cancellation.

“Love you Stephen. F— you and all your Sheldons CBS,” Kimmel wrote in an Instagram story, referencing the network hits “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon.”

“I’m just as shocked as everyone. Stephen is one of the sharpest, funniest hosts to ever do it. I really thought I’d ride this out with him for years to come,” Jimmy Fallon posted in an Instagram story. “I’m sad that my family and friends will need a new show to watch every night at 11:30. But honestly, he’s really been a gentleman and a true friend over the years — going back to The Colbert Report, and I’m sure whatever he does next will be just as brilliant.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who called for an investigation into the Paramount settlement this month, suggested that the move was politically motivated.

“CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery,” she wrote Thursday night on X. “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

“If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who was a guest on the show Thursday night.

Trump had called for Colbert’s termination in September.

“I briefly watched an interview of Stephen Colbert on highly government subsidized PBS, and found it fascinating for only one reason — Why would they be wasting time and the public’s money on this complete and total loser?” he wrote on Truth Social. “He is not funny, which he gets paid far too much to be, he is not wise, he is VERY BORING, and his show is dying from a complete lack of viewers.

“CBS should terminate his contract and pick almost anyone, right off the street, who would do better, and for FAR LESS MONEY,” he continued. “Or I could recommend someone, much more talented, and smarter, who would do it for FREE! The good news for Stephen is that the two DOPES on NBC & ABC are not much better than him!”

In a Variety interview published Wednesday, Kimmel shared his concerns about the Trump administration targeting him and his competitors.

“Well, you’d have to be naive not to worry a little bit. But that can’t change what you’re doing,” the ABC late-night host told the outlet. “And maybe it is naive, but I have the hope that if and when the day comes that he does start coming after comedians, that even my colleagues on the right will support my right to say what I like. Now, I could be kidding myself, and hopefully we’ll never find out. But if we do, I would hope that the outrage is significant.”

We seem to be in an era of endings. The end of ethical norms, of the rule of law, of science, of democracy, of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, possibly the world and the just-announced end of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” when the host’s contract runs out in 10 months — which may presage the end of late-night television, at least on CBS, which says it has no plans to replace him or keep the show.

“This is all just going away,” Colbert said in a statement taped Thursday.

Coincidentally, or not, Paramount Global, which owns CBS, is seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration to sell itself to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media. (I’d never heard of it either.) An official statement, claiming that the “Late Show” cancellation represents “a purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night … not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount” (italics mine) is — however true it might be — just the sort of thing to make one say, “Pull the other one.”

“Other matters” would seem to refer to the merger and to Paramount’s recent payment of $16 million to settle a frivolous Trump lawsuit over the perfectly routine editing of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview that was somehow supposed to give Harris an unfair advantage in the 2024 election and to have caused her opponent “mental anguish” — a payment Colbert characterized in a monologue just a few days ago as a “big fat bribe”: “As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”

Though he responded to his studio audience’s supportive boos saying, “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he was only kind to the network: “I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners,” Colbert said. “I’m so grateful to the Tiffany network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.”

But there have been plenty of surrogates to draw connections, provide context and bite harder, especially in light of the departure of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News President Wendy McMahon. “Love you Stephen,” ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, posted on Instagram, “adding “F— you CBS and all your Sheldons.” (In January, ABC also settled a Trump suit for $16 million, over George Stephanopoulos erroneously saying that Trump had been found civilly liable of “rape.”)

Of the remaining late-night hosts, we may say that each is special in their own way. Colbert, 61, who has been at “The Late Show” for 10 years, is the most mature, professorial and philosophical — gentle, a gentleman, and at times a mock-gentleman, addressing his audience as “My fellow Americans,” or echoing Walter Winchell, “Mr. and Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea,” or as “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He slaps himself in the face twice before every show to “be in the moment … [to] only do this for the next hour.” Though he may still kick up his heels during a monologue, as an interviewer he is composed and thoughtful and curious — and funny, to be sure — to the degree each conversation demands. A committed (liberal) Catholic, he co-narrated the English-language audiobook of Pope Francis’ “Life: My Story Through History,” with Franciscan Father John Quigley, at the same time, he’s a first-generation Dungeons & Dragons devotee, a lifelong reader of science fiction and a man of whom director Peter Jackson said, “I have never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life.” (Jackson cast him as “Laketown spy” in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”) He’s a person who will quote Gandalf in a conversation on grief and loss with Anderson Cooper, or, on “The Friendship Onion” podcast with Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, a.k.a. Merry and Pippin, declare that after reading “The Lord of the Rings” after college, “I realized that Aragorn is the Apollonian model of manhood … The Hobbits are us. And we should love life as much as they do.”

And he knows a thing or two about Ronnie James Dio. And grew up on Mad magazine, where young minds were taught to recognize the deceptions and hypocrisies of politics, business and media.

Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” which he hosted from 2005 through 2014, had a huge cultural effect beyond the reach of any late-night host now, Colbert included. Because it ran on basic cable and not network television, and because Colbert hid within the character of a pompous conservative pundit, the show could take wild swings; to the extent it looked respectable, it was only a matter of irony. Colbert and Jon Stewart, on whose “The Daily Show,” where Colbert had earlier worked, staged a “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, which drew a crowd of more than 200,000; he ran for president twice and created a PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, “100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”

During its run, he (or his writers) gave the world “truthiness,” named 2006’s Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster, which defined it as “a truthful or seemingly truthful quality that is claimed for something not because of supporting facts or evidence but because of a feeling that it is true or a desire for it to be true.” Colbert was twice named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. Ben & Jerry’s created an ice cream flavor, Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream, in his honor, and NASA dubbed a piece of exercise equipment for use on the International Space Station the “Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,” or COLBERT.

Testifying in character in 2010, before a House Judiciary subcommittee on legal status for immigrant farmworkers, he said, as if looking into 2025, “This is America,” he said, “I don’t want my tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian … My great grandfather did not travel over 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see the country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor, I don’t know if that’s true. I’d like to have that stricken from the record.”

The signature segment of “The Late Show” is the “Colbert Questionert” in which the host poses 15 questions “ergonomically designed to penetrate straight to the soul of one of my guests and reveal their true being to the world.” (It’s “a scientifically verified survey; I’ve asked several scientists and they assured me — yeah, it’s a survey.”) Designed to create comic and/or sincere responses, they range from “What’s the best sandwich?” (Will Ferrell: “Salami and grapefruit on rye, with a light sheen of mayonnaise.”) to “Apples or oranges?” (Colbert considers apples the correct answer, because you can put peanut butter on them.) to “The rest of your life in five words.” (Tom Hanks: “A magnificent cavalcade of color.”) Cate Blanchett took it lying on Colbert’s desk, as if in therapy. “What do you think happens when we die?” he asked. “You turn into a soup,” she replied. “A human soup.”

But it’s Colbert’s extended interviews and discussions, from “The Late Show” and elsewhere, posted online, that dig the deepest and reveal the most about him in the bargain: a much circulated conversation with Nick Cave from last year; a long talk with Anderson Cooper, after the death of his mother, both about grief and gratitude; an episode of “The Spiritual Life With Fr. James Martin, S.J.,” from a couple of weeks ago. (Colbert describes himself as “publicly Catholic,” not “a public Catholic.”) Such discussions perhaps point the way to a post-”Late Show” practice for Colbert, much as it became one for David Letterman, who passed the seat on to him. (He’s only the second host since the show’s premiere in 1993.)

As to the field he’ll be leaving next May, who can say? Taylor Tomlinson‘s “After Midnight” game show, which followed “The Late Show,” expired this week. Kimmel and Seth Meyers, who go as hard against Trump as does Colbert, and the milder Jimmy Fallon, seem for the moment safely fixed at their desks. Though new platforms and viewing habits have changed the way, and how much, it’s consumed, late-night television by its temporal nature remains a special province, out at the edge of things, where edgy things may be said and tried. (Don’t expect Colbert to go quietly into that goodnight.) Yet even as the No. 1 show in late night, “The Late Show” reportedly loses money. There’s something to that “financial decision,” I’m sure; it’s the “purely” that smells. We’ll see.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted on his vanity social media site, going on to say that he “hears” that “Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert.” Trump and Colbert could not be farther apart as humans. The president sells fear; he uses it as a club. But the TV host is sanguine.

“You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time,” Colbert is fond of saying, sometimes adding, “and the Devil cannot stand mockery.”

The shocking cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” is a sign that time is running out for one of TV’s most beloved formats.

The late-night talk show was invented in the 1950s as a way for networks to own their own programming rather than have it provided by sponsors. Now, amid shrinking audiences and a politically turbulent climate for free speech, the familiar desk-and-sofa tableau is in serious trouble.

CBS announced Thursday that the upcoming 2025-26 TV season for “The Late Show” will be its last. Executives blamed the cancellation on financial concerns felt across all network late-night shows. Last year, NBC cut “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” to four nights a week while “Late Night With Seth Meyers” cut its live band.

Still, industry veterans were bewildered by the timing.

It’s hard to imagine Paramount Global executives did not anticipate blowback from announcing the move days after Colbert blasted the company’s $16-million settlement with President Trump over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Colbert described the deal as a bribe during his Monday monologue.

Every move the company makes is now under a microscope as it tries to get the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump acolyte Brendan Carr, to approve an $8-billion merger with Skydance Media. Canceling the most watched late-night program hosted by one of Trump’s harshest critics will draw even more scrutiny.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), weighed in on X shortly after taping an interview on Colbert’s program.

“If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” Schiff posted.

The Writers Guild of America also raised questions, saying the cancellation appeared to be a case of “sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump Administration.”

One factor contradicting the theory is that Colbert, who has another year on his contract, will remain on the air through May. His commentaries have never been restrained by network executives over his 10-year run and that situation is not expected to change in his final season.

The poor optics may be a matter of contractual timing.

Paramount Global had to complete the deals with writer-producer teams in July for the upcoming “Late Show” season, according to a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to comment.

Those deals typically run for a full year, but with the company’s intention to cancel the program — decided several months ago — the contracts being offered only ran through May, which tipped off the network’s plans.

When Colbert learned of the cancellation decision on Wednesday, he made the call to inform his staff and his audience the next day.

“Late Show” is said to be losing somewhere in the tens of millions of dollars a year as younger viewers have fled. Since 2022, the program has lost 20% of its audience in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 age group, according to Nielsen data.

Ad revenue for “Late Show” in 2024 was $57.7 million, according to iSpot.tv, down from $75.7 million in 2022. “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on NBC and “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC have also seen significant declines over that period.

CBS has already given up on one hour of late night due to financial pressure. Two years ago, it canceled its 12:35 a.m. “Late Late Show” program hosted by James Corden because it was losing money.

CBS came up with a lower-cost replacement with “After Midnight,” but that ended after two seasons as its host Taylor Tomlinson decided not to renew her deal. CBS is replacing it with a syndicated program, “Comics Unleashed,” from Byron Allen’s Entertainment Partners in an arrangement that will cost the network nothing.

Still, Paramount Global will find itself facing questions about why CBS did not seek ways to reduce the production costs of the program instead of just pulling the plug.

If CBS decides to continue programming the 11:30 p.m. slot, it will hard-pressed to approach the same audience levels that Colbert attracted.

CBS is giving up a popular culture touchstone, although in the current fragmented media landscape, the days of such hosts having massive sway over a large audience have passed.

Media analyst Rich Greenfield wrote that legacy media companies investing in expensive original programming outside of sports and news may be ill-advised as viewers continue to flock to streaming.

“Ending ‘The Late Show’ is the tip of the iceberg with massive programming and personnel cuts to come,” he said.

For decades, late-night TV served as the brand identity of the broadcast networks.

Jack Paar was the witty conversationalist that made Middle America feel like it was invited to a sophisticated Manhattan cocktail party. His successor, Johnny Carson, became a trendsetter in the 1960s, defining male coolness. He had his own clothing line. His dry monologue was often a gauge of the country’s political mood. An invitation to take a seat next to Carson after a stand-up set turbocharged the careers of many top comedians.

CBS was unable to compete with Carson for decades, trying and failing with the likes of Merv Griffin and Pat Sajak. When David Letterman became available after he was bypassed for the “Tonight” job at NBC, he came to CBS in 1993 and made the network a serious contender.

Letterman’s offbeat, sardonic brand of humor also gave a layer of hipness to CBS, which had long had a reputation for stodginess.

“Late Show With David Letterman” helped make late-night network TV a financial bonanza. While the proliferation of cable networks was cutting into audience share in the 1990s and early 2000s, the late-night habit still thrived, especially with its ability to reach young men, the most elusive demographic for TV advertisers.

As a result, late-night hosts became the highest-paid stars in the business. Letterman and Jay Leno were both earning in the neighborhood of $30 million a year until networks started trimming salaries 10 years ago.

But technology chipped away at the late-night talk show habit. When DVRs reached critical mass, consumers started to catch up with their favorite prime-time shows during the late-night hours.

The most painful blow came from social media. While online clips of the late-night shows draw hundreds of millions of viewing minutes, that doesn’t generate the same kind of ad revenue as TV. They also make showing up at 11:35 p.m. every night pointless.

“The networks cut up all of the best parts of the show, and by the end of the night you can see all of them on social media,” said one former network executive who oversaw late-night programs. “There’s no reason to even DVR it.”

Prime-time programs add millions of viewers through on-demand streaming after they air on the broadcast networks. Topical late-night shows don’t have the same shelf life.

While politics have long been an important element of late-night comedy, the emergence of Trump‘s political career in 2015 — and his ability to drive ratings and the national conversation — made him the dominant topic.

Where Carson, Letterman and Leno skewered both sides of the political spectrum, Trump’s ability to provide endless comedy fodder on a daily basis made him an easy, entertaining and ultimately one-sided target.

For years it worked. Ratings for Colbert — who made his bones on Comedy Central satirizing a reactionary talk show host — languished for the first two years after he replaced Letterman. Audience levels and ad rates surged in 2017 once Trump came into office and became Colbert’s muse.

But the country has become more politically polarized in recent years and the relentless lampooning of Trump has created a lane for “Gutfeld!,” a nightly Fox News talk show with a conservative bent.

While not technically a late-night show (it airs at 10 p.m. Eastern), “Gutfeld!” drew an average of 3 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025 according to Nielsen and has grown 20% since 2022.

The young men that used to make late night an advertiser magnet are now turning to podcasters such as Joe Rogan and others who can speak without the restraint of broadcast TV standards.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is going off air in May 2026, a decision hailed by United States President Stephen Colbert, a frequent target of the comedian.

The announcement by CBS on Thursday that it will cancel the show comes against the backdrop of a looming merger between its parent company Paramount with Skydance Media.

It also comes only days after the comedian called out Paramount for its $16m settlement with Trump. Trump, in a lawsuit, had alleged that 60 Minutes, the flagship news magazine at CBS, doctored an interview during the 2024 presidential campaign with his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.

Colbert, a longtime critic of the president, called the network’s decision to settle “a big fat bribe” because of the pending merger, which needs approval from the Department of Justice and is valued at $8bn.

“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” the president wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“His talent was even less than his ratings,” he added, before going after Colbert’s other two rivals, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, saying that they are next, without evidence.

Contrary to the president’s claims, Colbert is performing well — his is the highest rated show in late night television — averaging 2.42 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025.

The cancellation also ended the tenure of the long-running late-night franchise, replacing the Pat Sajak show in 1993, and was first hosted by David Letterman.

Financial pressures

“This is 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,” CBS said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

CBS previously cancelled another late-night show, After Midnight, hosted by comedian Taylor Tomlinson, after a two-year run.

Experts believe there is merit to that argument.

“The reality is the business of late night is not going anywhere that justifies the enormous salaries that this talent is paid and the costs that these productions have. Ultimately, if you’re producing late night, it is mostly going to be consumed on YouTube,” Andrew Rosen, founder of the media strategy firm Parqor, told Al Jazeera.

The show reportedly costs $100m to produce annually and loses about $40m in revenue, according to reporting from the outlet Puck.

“They’ve [CBS] just maxed out the model for as long as they can and for a variety of reasons that I think probably have more to do with the economics of the merger with Skydance than they do with Trump,” Rosen added, referring to Paramount’s efforts to cut costs as it focuses to merge with Skydance.

On Wall Street, Paramount’s stock is up 0.2 percent as of 1pm in New York (17:00 GMT).

Political timing

The announcement of the cancellation of the show comes as the Department of Justice considers the merger. Economics apart, the move is also being seen as political in nature.

“The timing of it raises a lot of questions. To me, it is the politics of it, especially for broadcast legacy media,” Rodney Benson, professor, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, told Al Jazeera.

The Trump White House has gone after news organisations and their parent media companies for what the administration says is coverage that is partisan in nature, including the $16m lawsuit that Paramount settled with Trump. In December, Disney-owned ABC News settled a defamation suit with a $15m donation to Trump’s library and issued a public apology over inaccurate on-air comments. There have also been cuts to public media and use of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to threaten the future of their broadcasting licenses.

“Broadcast networks are regulated by the FCC. They have to have their licences renewed, and they can be, the government can go after them for what they define as news distortion. They’ve already raised that,” Benson added.

Democrats have called out the network for the cancellation of the show and alleged political reasoning.

“CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery,” Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on social media platform X formerly known as Twitter.

“Long-term financial trends could underlie this, but the timing suggests that if it was just financial, then they would have wanted to wait a bit, the optics are just horrible, so there must have been some pressure,” Benson added.

Skydance, the company set to acquire Paramount, is led by David Ellison, who is the son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle CEO and a close Trump ally.

In April, David Ellison attended a UFC fight with the president alongside former confidante Elon Musk, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy and Ted Cruz, among others.

Skydance is also reportedly in talks to acquire The Free Press, an outlet that has been seen as right-wing and friendly to the president. In the last few days, it has published pieces called “Happy Independence Day, NPR” when US Congress voted to scrap public media funding and accusing NPR of liberal bias; and another “The Epstein Files Are Just a Sideshow” as the president rails against releasing files related to deceased sex offender Jeffery Epstein, who Trump has been pictured with.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been cancelled by CBS with the show’s final season set to air in May 2026. Fans hav been left devastated by the news with one saying “Stephen Colbert deserves better”

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is set to bid farewell in May 2026.

Stephen became a household name hosting the satirical news programme The Colbert Report on Comedy Central from 2005 until 2014, before taking over from David Letterman as host of The Late Show on CBS, a subsidiary of Paramount Global.

CBS announced: “‘THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT’ will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season. We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire the ‘THE LATE SHOW’ franchise at that time. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late-night television.”

The network clarified the reasoning behind the decision, stating, “This is 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,”

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Colbert himself broke the news to his audience during Thursday’s show, revealing, “Before we start the show, I want to let you know something I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending ‘The Late Show’ in May,” he disclosed.

Fans took to social media to express their dismay over the show’s cancellation, with reactions such as, “Stephen Colbert deserves better!””I’m absolutely not ready to NOT have Stephen Colbert on my TV at night,” and “CBS letting Stephen Colbert go is BS! Boycott CBS” dominating X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

Several viewers have suggested that the show’s cancellation might be linked to the network’s recent legal settlement with President Trump, given Stephen’s outspoken criticism of the President. Paramount Global is currently merging with Skydance Media, a move that requires the green light from the Federal Communications Commission, reports the Mirror US.

“Just days after Paramount announces it settles the lawsuit Trump brought against them, they announce they are cancelling Stephen Colbert. Can’t help but think the cancelling of Stephen Colbert’s show was part of the settlement that Paramount agreed to. It’s so obvious,” one viewer commented.

Another shared their discomfort: “I’m not going to pretend that Stephen Colbert is perfect or anything, but it really does not sit right with me that this news comes just after Paramount settled with Trump and in the midst of merging with Skydance Media. This just feels like textbook censorship, plain and simple.”

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