CBS Cancels Late Show With Stephen Colbert
By: Sarah Rumpf (Mediaite)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
CBS announced Thursday that it was cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert , citing a "financial decision" — raising eyebrows as the news dropped just weeks after the network's parent company Paramount announced it had agreed to a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump .
The story was first reported by Brian Steinberg at Variety , who wrote that the cancellation "comes as the economics of wee-hours TV have begun to accelerate, with media companies growing wary of the high price tags involved in producing the shows while the young viewers they try to attract watch more of them via digital video."
The Late Show has been helmed by Stephen Colbert since 2015, after he left his Daily Show spin-off on Comedy Central, The Colbert Report . The program was launched by David Letterman in 1993 when NBC passed him over for The Tonight Show and CBS lured him over.
CBS executives issued a statement:
We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire "The Late Show" franchise in May of 2026. 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. 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.
Still, as Steinberg's report noted, "[t]here has been growing speculation" that Colbert and other programs are "under growing scrutiny from executives at Skydance Media, which is slated to acquire Paramount Global, the parent of both CBS and Comedy Central." Colbert and his former colleague Jon Stewart (Comedy Central is also under Paramount's corporate umbrella) are particularly known for savaging Trump and his administration on their shows, and Skydance CEO and founder David Ellison is known to have made overtures to conservative media personalities recently.
At the beginning of this month, Paramount announced it had agreed to settle a lawsuit with Trump over his complaints about how a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris was edited for $16 million.
Many legal experts had criticized the lawsuit as weak and expected CBS would be able make a strong defense argument under the First Amendment, and political considerations are widely viewed as playing a key role in the decision to settle. The planned Paramount-Skydance merger took on larger political implications in the wake of Trump's re-election, due to his vociferous criticism of 60 Minutes and CBS News programs and reporters and the lawsuit he filed last November.
The president's ire with the network and the role his Federal Communications Commission appointee will play in approving the merger have loomed over strategic decisions at CBS, with a veteran 60 Minutes producer resigning in protest, other reporters publicly lambasting their employer, and longtime network veterans lamenting if programs like 60 Minutes will even exist post-merger.
Colbert addressed the cancellation in Thursday's cold open of The Late Show , a clip of which was shared on social media.
Here's how Stephen Colbert addresses the news of The Late Show's cancellation in tonight's cold open. (Full story: https://t.co/tmYOxRnnYe) pic.twitter.com/ype2dsE6Uy
— LateNighter (@latenightercom) July 17, 2025
"Before we start the show, I wanted to let you know something that I just found out just last night," said Colbert. "Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending The Late Show in May."
The audience booed, and several people could be heard shouting "No!"
Colbert paused while the booing continued for several seconds. "Yeah, I share your feelings!" he said, explaining that he wasn't "just being replaced," but the entire show "all just going away" — drawing more boos.
"I do want to say, that the folks at CBS have been great partners," he said, and said he was "grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home."
"And of course, I'm grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us every night," he continued, adding his thanks to his band, and the 200 people who work on the show. "We get to do this show for each other, every day all day, and I've had the pleasure and the responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last ten years."
"And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job — I wish somebody else was getting it," he said wistfully, and said he was looking forward to continuing to produce the show "with this usual gang of idiots for another ten months."
"It's going to be fun. Y'all ready?"
Given CBS' complete capitulation to Trump its hard to imagine this isnt because of Colbert's revulsion at Trump.
Paramount still needs Trump administration approval for their proposed sale.
He wasn't funny! He was political.
Good riddance.
The decision to cancel the show was political. CBS and Paramount have rolled over for Trump.
Colbert has the best ratings between Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel.
Praise the Lord! Is/was a incredible waste of programming time. Hopefully ABC will come to the same conclusion about The View ASAP! I've never thought Colbert was funny either.
Keep your eye on all of them. It's the cancellation watch.
That might be true, as long as your lunatic has a say.
They're not mutually exclusively.
Im not going to say politics DIDNT play a big role in the decision because i think it did , but i also think the other parts , such as market share , changing target viewer opinion and demographics and what i call the multi media fiasco of credibility and influence crash of 2024 , all contributed to whats happening .
The woman who owns Paramount still needs approval from the Trump FCC in order to complete the sale of Paramount to another company. Trump put the squeeze on her again because Colbert beats on him.
I wouldnt know about Colbert , he isnt a talking head i follow . so doesnt matter to me in forming my opinion as much as it does others .
Yep. You certainly got that right.
He wasn't just funny, he was hilarious. Colbert is very smart, has a lightning quick wit and regularly stuffed the horse shit that drips from conservatives' mouths back down their throats on a regular basis, which is why I'm sure many of them are bitter and angry at him and don't find him funny. I'm sure conservatives find it tough to see the humor when they're the dumb fuck morons that are the butt of all the jokes. I doubt the winners of the Darwin awards would find them very funny if they were still alive, but they are
.
"bad comedians say things to make people clap, not laugh"
Norm MacDonald, an actual funny comedian, might have been talking directly about Colbert when he said that. Dude did nothing but pander to seals who rewarded him with "claughter"
I'm sure that's the way it would look to those who are too dense to get the joke.
Colbert was and is a truth teller which has and always will anger those investing in lies.
Jerry Lewis disagreed:
"When asked what he thought of Colbert, Lewis said he should “work at Tiffany’s, because he’s dull,” adding, “you can’t take someone and place them in a spot that was excellence. He’s got a tough row to hoe, boy.”
Jerry Lewis Trashes Colbert, Says He Should Work At Tiffany's - The Interrobang
Well, there we go. Jerry Lewis will now be referred to as a white supremacist by many on the left
Colbert was funny only to a certain segment of the population who shared his particular political views.
Jerry Lewis died in 2017.
Riiiiight.
Tough day for progressive media, both cbs and the government stopped subsidizing them.
hard to believe softball interviews of Adam schiff aren’t drawing viewers outside the left wing fever swamp.
Maybe he can seek treatment for his TDS.
I have just the place.............
Long line............wonder if the left will champion treatment by offering bottled water and Taki snacks. And then, they can attempt to legislate a plan to make treatment more speedy so folks don't have to wait in line so long.
Here it comes...the censorship from the right.
I don't watch late night TV because I get up very early in the morning and I need my ugly sleep. But I've bits of his show and he is damn funny.
At this point at time, nothing connected to Trump can be accepted at face value. Nothing.
CBS says ending Colbert is strictly a financial decision, but this is the same company that caved to Trump in a law suit they were sure to win on the facts. The owner of Paramount, CBS' parent company, needs Trump administration approval for a merger that will make her much richer than she already is.
Considering that Colbert beats on Trump almost every night, AND the fact that CBS recently caved to Trump, this smells like more extortion from our criminal in chief.
AND that is part of what ultimately got him; the "evaluation" of the resultant "caving" and his disdain for it..........well, that and his $15million a year waste of oxygen and opinion "salary".
The only people that watch are the hard core Trump haters. ( Not like Gutfeld who has viewers from the whole political spectrum). He just got super boring and not worth the salary.
I don;t believe a word that CBS/Paramount says
Colbert show was reportedly losing 40 million a year, but to cancel it "fascism" because progressives have a right to have progressive propaganda on tv.
Here is definitely hoping and praying another leftist liberal shill masquerading as a alleged funny man by the name of Kimmel gets the axe next
Yeah, it's amazing how some have to view it thru a partisan lens rather than simply do a little digging themselves to verify that the show was losing money. Interesting article from the WSJ on the state of late night television. They could all be in trouble. Wonder if we'll go back to the day where the broadcast day ended with the National Anthem and then simply showed a test pattern until the next broadcast day started.