Not even the “Colbert bump” may save Stephen Colbert from the tough realities of company leisure. Late-night tv in its present iteration is little greater than a home of playing cards atop a wobbly desk. Stephen Colbert’s reign because the host of The Late Present is over, as is the present itself and the way forward for the talk-show format on CBS. After 30-plus years, the present made standard by David Letterman will meet an ignoble finish, being canceled and rising irrelevant in public discourse. As of Might 2026, the top of Colbert’s present contract, the destiny of late-night TV as an establishment appears to be like bleak.
Colbert, famend for his snark, accepted the information with grace and maturity, thanking CBS for the honour. Nevertheless, it appears the announcement hit a nerve, with many within the trade flinching on the precedent set by the present’s cancellation, whereas others celebrated it, calling it a present that had gone too woke. There’s a whole lot of noise, however one factor is being ignored within the media drama: American TV CEOs proceed to grapple with the lack of status viewing and dwindling content material choices to retain advertisers. You possibly can’t actually blame CBS for slapping the panic button while you analyze the onerous knowledge. It ain’t fairly.
“This Is All Simply Going Away”
‘The Late Present’s Cancellation Should not Come as a Shock
The Atlantic and The Hollywood Reporter described the information of The Late Present‘s finish as a “shock” and a “shocker.” With all due respect to our esteemed colleagues, that is disingenuous. It was so apparent we even predicted this again in January primarily based solely on statistics. The one surprising half is that Stephen Colbert was the primary among the many underperforming hosts to be axed. We’ll discover out within the subsequent few weeks or months, however at an estimated $15 million a yr, he might need been too pricey, and the promoting charges for late-night are too low to justify such expenditures, particularly for a tanking firm like Paramount.
“I am not being changed,” Colbert introduced to his viewers final Thursday. “That is all simply going away.” This isn’t a shock to anybody who has been watching the late-night implosion over the past 5 years. When a really unpopular James Corden was fired, his present was utterly discarded and wiped from the schedule fairly than being retooled. He was the canary within the coal mine, and nobody wished to confess it. That is the half nobody is listening to. It isn’t the host, it is the format. The truth that CBS did not even trouble to search for substitutes to salvage both of those established IPs is telling.
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Podcasts Nuked Late Night time TV Discuss Exhibits and No One Seen
If the leisure panorama is a battlefield, proper now community chat exhibits are shedding the battle of attrition.
It isn’t a novel or controversial notion that exhibits have been bleeding viewers. Virtually nobody in the important thing demographics watches community exhibits, and most late-night leisure struggles to take care of the million-viewer mark regardless of intensive promoting, in line with TVInsider. In perspective, these are numbers corresponding to far much less publicized comedy podcasts like Flagrant that unfold by mere phrase of mouth. The Colbert cancellation was foreshadowed by a whole lot of troubling downsizing and belt-tightening throughout late-night tv. Home bands have been excised, the Friday slot was eliminated, and grating advert reads have been injected to bolster slumping advert income. All of which achieved nothing however additional watering down a weirdly outdated style.
“The Paramount Conspiracy”?
It did not take lengthy for conspiracy theories to take root after Colbert introduced the top of his inherited present. They usually’re simply that proper now, conspiracy theories, barring any tangible proof of collusion or plotting. The Skydance-Paramount merger (takeover is extra correct) has already instilled panic amongst different late-night hosts, prompting contempt from Jimmy Kimmel and introspection from Jon Stewart, largely regarding Paramount’s alleged appeasement of the Trump administration to fast-track their Skydance acquisition.
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Jimmy Kimmel Slams Community for Canceling ‘Late Present With Stephen Colbert’: ‘F*** You CBS’
Jimmy Kimmel took to social media to blast CBS’s determination to cancel the late-night staple.
Stewart (additionally on a Paramount-owned present) remarked on his The Weekly Present podcast that he suspects The Each day Present is subsequent on the chopping block, getting ready himself for that day. Including that the one purpose the present has lasted so lengthy is that it is one of many final remaining actual exhibits on the Comedy Central channel. This miserable however poignant remark explains why Paramount wanted a bailout so badly to start with: it is the worst-managed media firm.
Why Cookie-Cutter Discuss Exhibits Are a Dying Breed
There are a number of extra urgent components apart from the sophisticated Skydance merger, together with a stagnant format, political materials that alienates half of the nation, and reliance on TV networks that youthful individuals usually do not watch. These are unhealthy traits, irreversible traits that have been unimaginable within the Carson period.
As we have already highlighted earlier than, the present highest-rated speak present on American TV is hosted by Greg Gutfeld of Fox Information at 10 PM, meting out right-wing humor, scooping up an underserved slice of the demographic — the mainstream comedy hosts (notably Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers) all skewing left, competing for a similar viewers in a shrinking pool. Many apolitical viewers, sick of the tradition wars, doubtless tuned out speak exhibits utterly, exacerbating the Nielsen scores loss of life spiral. Since 2020, a 3rd of the Colbert viewers has disappeared for good, Fortune reported in fall 2024. Sadly, as we speak, every little thing is politics.
One other enormous part that no one needs to handle is the declining presence of the large 4 networks within the popular culture panorama: NBC, ABC, Fox, and CBS. Fox has by no means had a serious speak present, and but its most infamous flop, the 1986 Joan Rivers chat present — additionally dubbed The Late Present — simply tops Colbert or Kimmel’s scores as we speak, in line with knowledge from the LA Instances.
In 2025, Colbert averaged 2.4 million nightly viewers. 38 years in the past, Joan Rivers was laughed out of the TV trade for less than pulling 2.7 million at a time when the American inhabitants was two-thirds of what it at the moment is. Let that sink in. In the meantime, podcasters face much less threat and better returns with smaller overhead, much less stifling manufacturing, minimal censorship, and extra freedom to discover extra subjects in non-ents longer than 5 minutes. Merely put, divisive speak exhibits are the weakest hyperlink within the community arsenal. Do not act stunned. And do not gasp when different exhibits fold within the coming years.