CBS Cancels ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ – Weeks After Trump Settlement
Screenshot via CBS.
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.
“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?”
This article has been updated with additional information.
