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


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.
 
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DoomsdayElite said:
The cringe felt throughout the fucking Milky Way (with faint aftershocks in Andromeda).
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The cringe levels only go up the longer your memory is. To get there, we came from here:

There's selling out, and then there's selling your very soul.

I'll let people decide for themselves which has occurred.
 

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JustSomeDong said:
The cringe levels only go up the longer your memory is. To get there, we came from here:
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There's selling out, and then there's selling your very soul.

I'll let people decide for themselves which has occurred.
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The comedy jew was always cringe, and Stephen Colbert was always an unfunny faggot. You're confusing him being edgy for being "good".
Quite a bit of stockholm syndrome going on if people are now praising this talentless nobody like him going away is a tragedy. I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did, although it's not like he had much competition.
 
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The way all these fucking babies are crying about it, it's like as soon as the show is over Colbert is shot in the head. I wouldn't mind if it happened but it's not going to.
 
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30+GameOvers said:
You're confusing him being edgy for being "good".
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I never said he was good. I'm of the opinion that hasn't been "good" since Strangers With Candy, before he found profit in shitlib showmanship, and he's been really hit-or-miss in everything after that. I did like him as Professor Impossible on The Venture Brothers but he decided disingenuous hackery was more profitable and didn't keep it, much to the characters loss.

I simply wanted to reiterate why he is such a charlatan with a concrete example (as a chaser to the shot of "vax scene," I feel it's the best example, but it's certainly not the only example) of the type of ideological 180° he's pulled time and again.

I've found his brand of generic smug lib dishonesty to be cringeworthy since before he had The Colbert Report. The Preachings of Charlatans have failed to resonate with me for a about two decades. Hell, as a former liberal who has long since grown fed up with the "all style, no substance" pattern of American (nay, Global?) liberal politics, I'm basically a hipster of contempt for disingenuous and dishonest shitlibs like Colbert and Stewart.

People are always responding to shit that wasn't said. Hell, I agree with you, or would if you didn't try to "fact check" or "correct" me. This ain't reddit, you don't have to do that, here.
 
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Variety: Samantha Bee Says Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Was ‘Hemorrhaging Money’ and ‘People Aren’t Tuning In’: It’s a ‘No-Brainer’ to Cancel Amid Paramount-Skydance Merger (archive)

Former late-night host Samantha Bee is giving her take on CBS cancelling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

During a recent appearance on the “Breaking Bread with Tom Papa” podcast, Bee said she believes that ending Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” was a “financial decision,” as cited by CBS, but also thinks it was in part to “curry favor with the president” amid the merger between Paramount, CBS’ parent company, and Skydance.

“I think both things are true,” she said. “It definitely was hemorrhaging money. These legacy shows are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that…in sight, people are just not tuning in.”

Bee added, “People are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they actually don’t necessarily need a recap of the day’s events. They’re very well-versed in what has happened.”

She went on to explain that while hosting her TBS show “Full Frontal,” which ran for seven seasons from 2016 to 2022, not stirring controversy during network mergers was a “constant source of conversation.” From her experience, it seemed like a “no-brainer” for CBS to end “The Late Show.”

“It’s so much easier for them to cut it loose with this merger coming down the pike,” Bee said. “It makes the decision such a no-brainer, and probably the most agonizing decisions they were having were about how do we float this? How do we not get a lot of blowback? I’m sure they knew it was happening a long time ago.”

Although blunt about the fate of Colbert’s “Late Show,” she still thinks the sudden cancellation was “awful.”

“I love Stephen,” she said. “I consider him to be a friend. I think he’s amazing. I’m shocked, not surprised.”
 
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Ultra Ping said:
Surprisingly grounded opinion
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Probably the most grounded you're gonna get from someone who considers Colbert their friend.

I'll add on another piece to the log fire; in the age of the overbearing unions, it's probably genuinely easier to hindenburg a bloated show and build a new one from scratch than it is to try and wind it down to a sustainable level.
 
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Ultra Ping said:
Surprisingly grounded opinion
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Bee and her husband Jason Jones hate Colbert. Bee wanted to take over the 11:30 PM timeslot Colbert had, but he kept ghosting her and refusing to put in a good word for her. She basically had to leave CC to get her own show and not only did Colbert say nothing when she got into deep trouble calling Melania a cunt, there was some deep seeded resentment over the fact that Colbert and Stewart pretty much cut all contact with her and her husband the second they left the daily show and that neither Colbert or Stewart considered them actually their friends, unlike Carrell, Helms, Courdry, and Oliver.
 
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MirrorNoir said:
Bee and her husband Jason Jones hate Colbert. Bee wanted to take over the 11:30 PM timeslot Colbert had, but he kept ghosting her and refusing to put in a good word for her. She basically had to leave CC to get her own show and not only did Colbert say nothing when she got into deep trouble calling Melania a cunt, there was some deep seeded resentment over the fact that Colbert and Stewart pretty much cut all contact with her and her husband the second they left the daily show and that neither Colbert or Stewart considered them actually their friends, unlike Carrell, Helms, Courdry, and Oliver.
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Makes sense why she basically threw her ex Daily Show costar under the bus like that.
 
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