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.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

One of the problems, I think, is that few celebrities no longer have mass appeal. I don't want to listen to Sarah Silverman talk about how exciting it was to work on Wreck it Ralph 4: PWN-Age. Few people do.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Apparently the creator of spy vs spy had something to say about this...

 

[not william stenchever]

Leno is a very easy-going and naturally funny auto mechanic who we won’t be hearing much from; because he’s taking care of his sick wife until one of them dies. I met him prior to that, when we happened to be hotel neighbors. For what it’s worth, I found him to be nothing more unpleasant than an older, blue collar guy from the Boston area who refuses to take himself seriously.

The man literally facetanked a jet of flaming pressurized gasoline while working on one of his nifty old automobiles and you can hardly tell. His chin is clearly ablative armor.

 

[OttoWest]

Colbert is Catholic but spent the early part of his career pretending to be Jewish ala Jason Biggs. But unlike Jason Biggs, who's career died a sudden and total death when he came clean to Woody Allen that he was Italian/Catholic and simply never corrected anyone that thought he was Jewish (which led to Woody getting Biggs blackballed in Hollywood via the Jewish whisper network), Colbert managed to get the Sedaris family and John Stewart to give him protection for pretending to be Jewish to further his career.

Colbert is one of 11 kids. There’s no hiding his Catholicism.

 

[Ultraman Orb Dark]

Show of hands, did anyone give a shit about this show before it got canned potentially because of Trump?

Does anyone at least know someone who gave a shit about the show and didn't start complaining about it because of Trump?

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY I GOT BUGS IN MY TUMMY

 

[Commander X]

The Late Show with Colbert, John Oliver's show, etc. were all the last stands of snarky millennial liberalism. Post 2015, the would-be inheritors of The Daily Show style stances, the ones who were supposed to keep it going were the heavily astroturfed "dirtbag lefitsts" like the Chapo Trap House podcast cretins, who added more swear words, making fun of incredibly detailed, specific "stereotypes" of their supposed enemies that had no basis in reality and totally edgy NYC libtard Brooklyn podcaster Marxism to the Jon Stewart/Colbert formula. As well as the also heavily astroturfed "BreadTube" people like PhilosophyTube. Daily Show-style snarky liberalism was mostly rooted in contempt for and sneering at "Middle America" and the ones who followed in their odious wakes, the Chapos and DSA-cels and BreadTuber adjacent people doubled down by sneering at people concerned with COVID lockdown restrictions, urban crime, or rising food prices on basic staples like meat, milk and eggs, sneeringly referring to these as "treats" ("Oh you Treatlerites want to destroy the country by voting for DRUMPF because eggs cost too much, boo hoo!"). Midway through the Biden presidency, the liberal millennial snark industrial complex started breaking down, resulting in them desperately attempting to compete with the meme Right and such by through such maneuvers like doubling down on the Treat discourse and trying to force memes like "Dark Brandon", "Dark Woke", etc. and how easily these radicals went to "down with the DNC machine, go Bernie!" to "Um, actually, this Biden guy seems pretty cool! Dark Brandon for the win!" to "Vote Blue no matter who! Kamala is indeed BRAT!" and it was all too obvious how many thumbs were being put on the scale to make these people look more popular than they actually were.

You saw how the CTH people and others started spiraling in the wake of defeats like Bernie losing and getting on bended knee before the DNC for the second time, the original GWB-era snarky liberal would-be trendsetters and cultural tastemakers are getting old, and very tired. The next generation snarkers who arose in the 2010s are entering middle age with nothing to show for it but unsustainable lifestyles into which ever cosmopolitan urban areas they transplanted themselves into, and (hopefully) a downhill slide into well-earned irrelevance and obscurity.

 

[The N Word]

#CancelColbert, big success. It just took a while.

 

[The greater a'tuin]

I think he should be okay. May be less houses

Why was he paid so much to sit at a desk and spew nonsense?

Bill Nye

This must be among the top 5 worst sell-outs of all time. The "gender is like ice cream" clip still hurts my soul to think about.

2 scoops
2 terms
1 cancellation

Speaking of ice cream, top kek I wish TDS could be this great again.

 

[Eventide]

Anyone remember the podcast "Strike Force Five" that these late night show hosts did?

View attachment 7662096
I dare you to tell the difference between any of them (except for Oliver with his twit accent.)

I actually couldn't!

Well, aside from Fallon - he kept giggling, and obviously John Oliver 'cause he British.

But the rest? They all sound like the same smarmy unfunny asshole. Hard to tell it's a 5 person podcast!

 

[Dropa5pack]

The worst thing for a comedian is to get famous, once that happens they start taking themselves seriously, and mistake people laughing at their jokes as wanting to hear them philosophize. It’s really amazing the amount of comedians who have followed this path from Carlin, to Colbert. So many comedians really believe that they have it all figured out, and don’t really care about comedy they actually want authority.


Too many Bill Hickses, not enough Sam Kinisons.


Edit fixed plural on names

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The Late Show was better with David Letterman.

Letterman wasn't a soy-pushing "woke" cultist.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Midway through the Biden presidency, the liberal millennial snark industrial complex started breaking down, resulting in them desperately attempting to compete with the meme Right and such by through such maneuvers like doubling down on the Treat discourse and trying to force memes like "Dark Brandon", "Dark Woke", etc. and how easily these radicals went to "down with the DNC machine, go Bernie!" to "Um, actually, this Biden guy seems pretty cool! Dark Brandon for the win!" to "Vote Blue no matter who! Kamala is indeed BRAT!" and it was all too obvious how many thumbs were being put on the scale to make these people look more popular than they actually were.

Well, if these retards were behind "Dark Brandon" then it's no wonder their whole sphere is falling apart now. I dunno which one is sadder, that or Skibidi Biden, but at least we know which one is going to get you fired.

 

[YouGuysAren'tThatSmart]

First James Cardon now him?! Jimmy Fallon and and Seth Myers when?

 

[TeaBaggins]

RIP Strangers With Candy era Stephen Colbert, because he's nowhere as funny as he was when he was on that show.

 

[Jerkedupasshole]

Lukewarm take but Colbert hasn't been funny since he stopped voice acting for adult swim.

 

[TeaBaggins]

The worst thing for a comedian is to get famous, once that happens they start taking themselves seriously, and mistake people laughing at their jokes as wanting to hear them philosophize. It’s really amazing the amount of comedians who have followed this path from Carlin, to Colbert. So many comedians really believe that they have it all figured out, and don’t really care about comedy they actually want authority.


Too many Bill Hickses, not enough Sam Kinisons.


Edit fixed plural on names

We need more Norms. (RIP)

 

[Pluciferous]

Colbert’s decline from the ballsiest comedian on cable TV, to the most boring late night talk show host on network TV, is quite sad.

Some of the folks in this thread seem to be too young to remember his glorious early phase. If you have Paramount+, you can watch Strangers With Candy, and marvel at how a modern woke SJW would instantly have a brain hemorrhage if accidentally shown it.

He also impressed half the nation at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner where he spent his entire speech shitting all over Bush’s dumbass wars to Bush’s face (skip to 50:00):

https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/2006-white-house-correspondents-dinner/165915

Later on, he inexplicably developed a chummy relationship with Henry Kissinger, interviewed Anita Sarkeesian even though his staff should have seen through her, and stopped saying unexpected and offensive things. The gigachad now serves pure slop.

 

[Flamin Park]

This seems to me compelling proof of hell and the devil, because clearly that's where the show sourced the script.

The devil is portrayed as a masterful musician, he'd never put his name to this sort of trash

 

[AN/ALR56]

Check it out yo:

Lasted from 1993 (David Letterman) to 2026.

Guess the cash to pay retarded British failed comedians who fled to Hollywood because the cocaine was cheaper and thought California was the best thing ever while shitting on anything mildly American (insert NHS is better than the American health system joke while waiting in line in the UK kills half as much people by itself than gun shootings in the US does.) and how Europeans are totally superior to le dumb Americans (sketches where anyone outside of California are inbred hicks with Alabama accents and driving white trucks).