CBS cancels Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ after a decade—what it means for late night TV

CBS will cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert next May, ending a decades-old television institution amid a shifting media landscape and removing one of President Donald Trump’s most vocal late-night critics from the airwaves.

The announcement came Thursday, shortly after Colbert’s sharp criticism on Monday of a settlement between Trump and Paramount Global—the parent company of CBS—over a contentious “60 Minutes” story.

Addressing his audience at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater, Colbert revealed that he learned the night before that after ten years on air, “next year will be our last season. ... It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

The news was met with boos and groans from the audience.

“Yeah, I share your feelings,” the 61-year-old comedian responded.

Three top Paramount and CBS executives praised Colbert’s show as “a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist” in a statement that said the cancellation “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.”

In his Monday monologue, Colbert said he was “offended” by the $16 million settlement reached by Paramount, whose pending sale to Skydance Media needs the Trump administration’s approval. He said the technical name in legal circles for the deal was “big fat bribe.”

 “I don’t know if anything — anything — will repair my trust in this company,” Colbert said. “But, just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”

Trump had sued Paramount Global over how “60 Minutes” edited its interview last fall with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Critics say the company settled primarily to clear a hurdle to the Skydance sale.

Colbert took over “The Late Show” in 2015 after becoming a big name in comedy and news satire working with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” and hosting “The Colbert Report,” which riffed on right-wing talk shows.

The most recent ratings from Nielsen show Colbert gaining viewers so far this year and winning his timeslot among broadcasters, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes. On Tuesday, Colbert’s “Late Show” landed its sixth nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show. It won a Peabody Award in 2021.

David Letterman began hosting “The Late Show” in 1993. When Colbert took over, he deepened its engagement with politics. Alongside musicians and movie stars, Colbert often welcomes politicians to his couch.

Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California was a guest on Thursday night. Schiff said on X that “if Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, released a similar statement, saying “America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.”

Colbert’s late-night host counterpart on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel, shared Colbert’s announcement on Instagram along with the message: “Love you Stephen.” He then directed an expletive at CBS.

Colbert has targeted Trump for years. The guests on his very first show in September 2015 were actor George Clooney and Jeb Bush, who was then struggling in his Republican presidential primary campaign against Trump.

“Gov. Bush was the governor of Florida for eight years,” Colbert told his audience. “And you would think that that much exposure to oranges and crazy people would have prepared him for Donald Trump. Evidently not.”

Late-night TV has been facing economic pressures for years; viewership is down and many young viewers prefer highlights online, which networks have trouble monetizing. CBS also recently canceled host Taylor Tomlinson’s “After Midnight,” which aired after “The Late Show.”

While NBC has acknowledged economic pressures by eliminating the band on Seth Meyers’ show and cutting one night of Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show,” there had been no such visible efforts at “The Late Show.”

Colbert’s relentless criticism of Trump, his denunciation of the settlement, and the parent company’s pending sale can’t be ignored, said Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift.”

“If CBS thinks people are just going to swallow this, they’re really deluded,” Carter said.