Culture CBS is ending ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ next year

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/17/media/cbs-cancels-stephen-colbert

https://archive.ph/UAA9U

https://lite.cnn.com/2025/07/17/media/cbs-cancels-stephen-colbert

By Brian Stelter and Dan Heching, CNN
Thu July 17, 2025

In a shocking move, CBS is ending “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” next year, potentially exiting the late-night television business altogether.

The cancellation will take effect in May 2026, the normal end of the broadcast TV season, the network said.

The Thursday night announcement came just two weeks after the parent company of CBS, Paramount, settled a lawsuit lodged by President Trump against CBS News.

The settlement – and Paramount’s pending merger with Skydance Media – spurred speculation about Colbert’s future at CBS. Colbert, after all, is one of the staunchest critics of Trump on television.

CBS, however, said in a statement that “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.”

Colbert shared the news at his show taping on Thursday afternoon.

“Next year will be our last season,” Colbert said as audible ‘boos’ were heard in the live studio audience. “The network will be ending our show in May,” he said. “It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS,” he added, going on to say, “This is all just going away.”

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

 

[Whiskey]

Honestly, the writers at comedy central are the real stars of the early daily show and its offshoots. The quality tanked after they left.

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

What was the moment where you guys turned against him? For me, it was interviewing Anita.
Anyways, onto something amusing I noticed. So, on r/television, 4 of the hot threads right now are related to The Late Show ending.
I checked on one with the comments sorted by how controversial they are:

https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1m2ml9f/the_late_show_with_stephen_colbert_ending_next/?sort=controversial

No surprise, this is where the based comments are.

Nobody wants 8 minute interviews when podcasts exist now.

End them all. Can we do panel shows like in UK instead?

Good riddance, it was such a let down to see what he became after the Colbert Report

John Oliver next?

God willing

Thank God. Insufferable.

Do all of the late night shows. They're outdated, stale, old linear TV... Colbert never held a candle to Letterman.

Good riddance! He did it to himself trying to pander to his media overlords... Should have just left the conservative/Trump stuff alone. People don't tune in late at night to get a dose of more divisiveness. They just want to laugh, be entertained, and then go to sleep.

His show sucks. Ratings are terrible and nobody watches late night TV. If the ratings were good and his show was profitable, it wouldn’t be going away. To paint a narrative otherwise is very naive.

A fan seethes at the last one:

It's the highest-rated late night show, jackass. Has been for years.

Clapback to this fan

1. No, gutfeld dominates him in ratings.
2. late night show ratings are WAY down from what they were prior to Colbert

Most people are tired of unfunny political hack comedians.

"jackass"

 

[Chapalapachapa]

You could probably make a better show by

puting johnny carson corpse in front of a green screen

 

[Basement Dwelling Dork]

Wasn't this the dude who did skibidi biden?
If so then nothing of value has been lost.
Edit: Yep, I want to believe this 100% fucking killed his show.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

the fact of the matter is that nobody cares about late night tv anymore. half of its appeal was because it was the only thing on tv at that time of day usually unless you wanted to watch reruns or infomercials. with the internet and streaming services as popular as they are now you dont really need late night tv when you can just watch your favorite netflix show or some random twitch streamer.

as far as i am concerned late night tv died when guys like craig ferguson and conan o'brien left they were some of the last guys left who simply just wanted to do be funny and entertaining without pushing some agenda. the new guys like jimmy fallon or stephen colbert are just puppets for whatever the current agenda is.

theres no real soul or comedy in what they do. its just a desperate ploy to get boomers and any kids and teens they can to follow the heard like good little minions. im honestly surprised to hear colberts show even lasted this long since last i remember CBS was really hurting for money which is why they never bothered to replace james corden when he left the late late show. colbert was on borrowed time and has proven himself not to be the cash cow they need.

 

[Billy_Sama!]

What was the moment where you guys turned against him? For me, it was interviewing Anita.
Anyways, onto something amusing I noticed. So, on r/television, 4 of the hot threads right now are related to The Late Show ending.
I checked on one with the comments sorted by how controversial they are:

https://old.reddit.com/r/television/comments/1m2ml9f/the_late_show_with_stephen_colbert_ending_next/?sort=controversial

No surprise, this is where the based comments are.

He was a Democratic butt kisser more prominent after the 2016 election and I didn't really watch him. The event that destroyed him for me was that clip when Jon Stewart was on making fun of Vaccines and Colbert was visibly upset. Political Bootlickers are the worst for me.

 

[tehpope]

Wasn't this the dude who did skibidi biden?
If so then nothing of value has been lost.
Edit: Yep, I want to believe this 100% fucking killed his show.

Skibidi Biden is the 9/11 of tv. but Colbert being a leftist bootlicker for his whole late show career is what killed him. someone else already pointed this out in the thread:

Stephen Colbert somehow managed to take an already trash show and take it from 6.6 million viewers to 2.4 million in 10 years.

Letterman's last show was 13.7 million. Late night is dead, and the Comedy Central/SNL cancers killed it.

People went to late night shows to laugh. not to be preached at. TV is dying as well. Even though CBS is a free to air station, people would rather watch youtube or other free on-demand content. Especially on their own time and their own terms.

Never watched this wanker as I was either asleep or watching other shit. No tears shed from me. At this rate, I could do late night show hosting by feeding all my posts here into a LLM and have Microsoft Sam be the voice.

If someone could figure out how to get infinite Grey Leno with AI guests, I'd watch that shit all the time.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

Colbert was so fucking funny....before Obama. I miss those days....

 

[Billy_Sama!]

Colbert was so fucking funny....before Obama. I miss those days....

The Dubya era was the golden era of comedians and entertainers to roast on. What Colbert built on would become structurally his undoing especially his one sidedesses became apparent.

 

[Lucas Silva #4903141]

the fact of the matter is that nobody cares about late night tv anymore. half of its appeal was because it was the only thing on tv at that time of day usually unless you wanted to watch reruns or infomercials. with the internet and streaming services as popular as they are now you dont really need late night tv when you can just watch your favorite netflix show or some random twitch streamer.

The other thing is the spread of social networks and how that affected celebrities.
Before sites like ig, facebook, tiktok, etc. caught on as hard as they did in the 2010s, it was special to see celebrity actors on late night shows, even if it was just for a few minutes, and the real purpose was to promote some shitass movie they were in. Seeing them at all was special.

Now, we're all clear on how most of these chucklefucks are actually rather boring people, how some of them don't know shit about politics and are just blatant cheerleaders for their side...oh and as for the hot actresses? Well, in many cases, hot pictures of them are not difficult to find.
These shows needed to focus on actual humor. Not just getting people to clap like seals about politics via Clapter comedy.
Also

https://x.com/MattBelloni/status/1946236833668731390

The timing and optics are terrible, but Stephen Colbert’s show costs more than $100M a year to produce and is losing more than $40M a year. CBS execs had been mulling for a long time whether to pull the plug. Details

https://puck.news/was-colberts-cancellation-really-economic-for-cbs/

What? No fucking way, how does this shit cost so much?

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Edit: Yep, I want to believe this 100% fucking killed his show.

You are L8

But if that's true, who will the Skibidi Movie kill? Maybe Michael Bay.

 

[Baraka Obama]

What was the moment where you guys turned against him? For me, it was interviewing Anita.

Very early. I was optimistic about it, tried a few episodes but he wasn't funny, I used to tune in to Leno or Letterman monologues and get a solid 10 min chuckle reliably, barely cracked a smile with Late Show Colbert.

From then beginning it felt like propaganda.

 

[thx1138]

The only funny thing I saw Colbert do on CBS was freaking the fuck out when Jon Stewart questioned The Science(TM).

I mean Colbert was visibly dismayed.

 

[Fetch!]

Colbert was so fucking funny....before Obama. I miss those days....

The comedy central incarnation of his show specifically scouted out conservatives for the writer room just to keep the O'Reilly bit semi-honest. They more than pulled their weight brainstorming up jokes night after night. Chances are, if there was ever a skit you liked, they spearheaded it. And naturally, they were gone not long after criticizing King Obama became verboten.

Honestly, I think even the most liberal of the old writers had too much openmindedness and wrongthink in their blood to have been welcome on the CBS show, fucking DEI abomination that it was.

 

[Can't Stand Ya]

Putting aside his establishment worship/boot licking, a major part of the problem with Colbert is that he isn't funny as himself. He's very good at playing a character, like his Bill O'Reilly-inspired character on The Colbert Report and plenty of minor characters he's played on t.v. shows. But as himself, just standing in front of an audience and telling jokes? He's godawful. I think that's a significant part of the reason he ended up leaning so heavily into just being a political sperg. Being part of #TheResistance would guarantee him an audience, while his painfully unfunny comedy wouldn't.

 

[ExplodedWhale]

I very much hate myself and get Rolling Stone's shit slop to my email. I got this in the same newsletter today. Really drinks your drink that they can't lie about why it's not continuing don't it

Does anyone still watch the late night shows?

My very liberal retarded grandparents. Lol

"Water cooler TV" is on the decline save for some big Netflix and HBO hits once in a while. Now everyone lives in fragmented, hyperpersonalized algorithmic media bubbles.

I think it's also because there's so many streaming services now. It's over-saturated as fuck. Like I'm a zoomer but I remember there being a couple late night shows that all the adults watched. Obviously before the 100s tv channels that I grew up with, there was significantly less on tv so everyone watched the same thing even more.

Nowadays I can't have a conversation about watching a show or movie without it going like-

Person 1: hey did you watch that show on Netflix
Person 2: no I don't have Netflix. Have you seen that show on Hulu
Person 1: I don't have Hulu but have you seen that show on Amazon prime
Person 2: no I don't have Amazon prime but I do have YouTube tv premium Apple TV poopy butt fart farty fart app+ premium extreme 3000 for $60 a month

It's tiresome lol.

 

[The Nothingness]

What was the moment where you guys turned against him?

I became disillusioned with Colbert and Stewart during Obama's first term when I realized they were both puppets of the Democrat Party.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

This has probably been covered but did anyone else get diddler vibes from Stephen Colbert?

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I think it's also because there's so many streaming services now. It's over-saturated as fuck. Like I'm a zoomer but I remember there being a couple late night shows that all the adults watched. Obviously before the 100s tv channels that I grew up with, there was significantly less on tv so everyone watched the same thing even more.

It's the Streaming Wars, and free content, social media and parasocial relationship content, channels with 10-50 millions subs you've never heard of, everything mixed together. On-demand means you can binge whatever, whenever, obviously wrecking the ol' late shows.

AI is already being used to create very niche content, but we could be a decade or two away from generated video content personalized to the individual being treated as a legitimate form of entertainment. It's tough to say since there needs to be a lot of hardware and software progress to make it viable and cheap. IMEC has a roadmap through 2039. Any revolutionary computer breakthrough not on that roadmap would bring us even faster towards a point of no return.

 

[Neodanthril]

puting johnny carson corpse in front of a green screen

Ai Johnny Carson interviewing wtfboom and playing clips from the latest skibidi toilet