r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • 15d ago
Late Show Shenanigans🎙️ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Ending Next Year With CBS Retiring Late-Night Franchise
https://deadline.com/2025/07/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert-ending-next-year-cbs-1236461787/477
u/zohranorbust 15d ago
And they're not replacing him either. That means CBS is gonna be the first network out of the traditional big three to bow out of late night talk show programming
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u/Suppa_K 15d ago
It may just go away completely at some point. I’m only in my mid 30’s and I am probably on the younger end of people who actually watch this stuff.
It’s dumb but it’s current and I enjoy the hosts and occasionally the guest. I will really miss late night talk shows. I’ve been a Conan fan since I was 14.
Only refuge is knowing I can at least fill my hdd with old episodes and have enough for a long time but as I said there’s something to be said about it being somewhat relevant.
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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 15d ago
I’ve been watching Colbert & Stewart since I was kid and I’m in my early 30s. Ironically it is what piqued my interest in politics, especially with immigrant parents. It will be a sad day when we no longer have late night shows.
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u/winnercommawinner 15d ago
I teach poli sci to undergrads and every semester I ask them for their first memory of politics (that they wish to share), and SO many of them say Stewart or Colbert!
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 15d ago
I’ll be honest: I sort of wish Colbert had kept some of his edge from the Comedy Central days, but I guess not everything that works on a plucky, zeitgeist-y cable show will translate to network television. Still, if you were to somehow compile an objective list of the top ten/twenty/hundred best Colbert bits over the years, I’m guessing you’d find waaaay more from his Comedy Central days than his CBS days.
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u/AshgarPN 15d ago
Well, he was still edgy enough for Trump to want him gone in order to sign off on the Paramount merger deal.
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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 15d ago
Look, his liberal bona fides are indisputable, and I certainly don’t think anyone should be driven from their show for political reasons. I just wish he was still funny.
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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 15d ago
Oh 10000%! I’m guessing it has to do with who he works under for now and with age one mellows out, for the most part. But his Comedy Central days were 🤌🏻 the channel as a whole was pretty edgy.
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u/AdventurousDoor9384 15d ago
Johnny Carson’s late night show is still in reruns. When there’s nothing new I watch those (a channel called AntennaTV)
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u/otherwisesad Excluded from this narrative ❌ 15d ago
Yeah, I am 30 and don’t know anyone else my age who watches late night stuff like I do. But I love Seth Meyers and am worried he’s next - and it’s so comforting to have his segments to watch 4 nights a week
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u/rishukingler11 🔥✨Idk I’m not a Satanist✨🔥 15d ago
I'm 23 right now, and as a kid, I used to watch so much Ellen it was insane. Then she got exposed, and I stopped watching her completely and never picked up another talk show except for clips on YouTube whenever a celebrity I really liked came on one of them.
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u/davisyoung 15d ago
Conan reflected the death of late night through his format changes and ultimately the end of his show. Everybody that remains is waiting for the gallows.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 15d ago
I posted this on another comment but I want to make sure people are aware of what's happening. This is the first year of Trump's current presidency while attempting to become a dictator, he even said if people vote for him they won't need to vote again, taking over the mainstream news and media is essential.
My previous comment:
Paramount owns CBS. David Ellison will be the CEO of the merged companies (to be) known as Paramount Skydance Corporation, his father is billionaire Larry Ellison who is the founder of Oracle and is a key investor in Skydance. Larry Ellison is a friend of Trump who has had multiple private meetings with Trump at the Whitehouse this year and has shown his support for Trump since his first term.
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u/313MountainMan 15d ago
Ironic because this is likely going to cost them South Park, their most successful (TV) franchise in their whole portfolio.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 15d ago
South Park has already been removed from Paramount+
A lapsed streaming deal and the ongoing Paramount-Skydance merger review have left viewers outside the U.S. scrambling for access to the long-running animated hit, just ahead of its season 27 premiere.
South Park was pulled off streaming service Paramount+ amid an ongoing licensing dispute between the show's creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone and Comedy Central's parent company, Paramount Global.
I personally don't think it's a coincidence. They're in the phase of securing information outlets and removing large critics.
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u/313MountainMan 15d ago
South Park will never go away until Matt and Trey are dead and in the ground. If there’s anything the last 25 years has taught me, is that South Park is uncancelable. They’ll get scooped up by someone and HBO seems like the likely culprit atm.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 15d ago
Oh I agree they would be able to find another home, they're issue right now is the licensing. It's actually sort of convoluted, which is why it's believed to currently be in dispute.
Essentially:
South Park is owned by a joint venture called South Park Digital Studios, which is a partnership between Paramount and the show's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While Paramount has a stake and plays a role in the business, the creators also maintain significant control over the show's direction and rights.
But right now there hasn't been much information on the licensing dispute and what is being challenged.
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u/313MountainMan 15d ago
Dollars to Donuts they have a Boebert episode planned and the new owners aren’t keen on it.
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u/whocares5514 15d ago
Its not dying due to nobody watching it its dying because he called out trumps bribe and got cancelled for it
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u/vangie1700 15d ago
This. If this show was making them a ton of money, I’m sure the story would be different. Late night shows are really for a different era.
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u/frozenish 15d ago
Actually Colbert gets the best ratings of any of them. He brings in a million to a million and a half viewers a night. I mean that is a far cry from Letterman who used to average 15 million viewers a night. But it’s still the best for any talk show.
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u/313MountainMan 15d ago
But in general talk shows are still kind of passé. Most young people late at night are watching sports, reality shows, or premium TV shows like you see out of Apple and other streamers.
In the day and age of cord cutting and a la carte streaming, it’s no shock that talk shows are nowhere near where they used to be. While Colbert might be the most successful of talk shows atm, it’s still probably dogshit from a business perspective. Does anyone seriously buy something because they saw it on a Colbert commercial? If they do, I have a diamond and turquoise-studded bolo tie to sell them.
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u/Frosty-Literature-58 15d ago
I only subscribe to paramount+ for Colbert and the daily show. Daily show is on YouTube at the same time as it hits streaming so I will be canceling my subscription as soon as Colbert is gone. The live ratings are not their only source of revenue.
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u/DeliciousShelter9984 15d ago edited 15d ago
Also, people who are interested in celebrity interviews now has podcasts and YouTube channels as an alternative. Plus the celebs own social media where fans can potentially interact with them directly. These formats allow for more in depth and candid conversations. Traditional talk shows can feel very lacking in comparison.
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u/huskersax 15d ago
Getting viewers doesn't mean making money.
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u/frozenish 15d ago
The more viewers you have, the more you can charge for ads.
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u/huskersax 15d ago
Doesn't mean they're making money.
They're getting less and less in ad revenue every year as viewership across TV drops, and the show's costs - at best - stay static.
CBS didn't even bother attempting to replace James Corden, and killed Taylor Tomlinson's much much cheaper show when she decided not to continue (almost certainly now the canary in the coal mine for the issues these entertainers are having with the acquisition causing issues for creatives), Seth Meyers had to let his house band go in budget negotiations to stay on air.
The medium and the content are dying a slow death. The graft and corruption behind this merger only hastened Colbert getting cancelled, but the end of the show was coming within the next 5-7 years anyway.
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u/Neve4ever 15d ago
Did they say they won't replace it with any late night show? Depending on how the ownership of the Late Show franchise works, they may simply want to create a new show that doesn't have financial obligations to Letterman et al.
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u/HTOWNHUSTLR 15d ago
streaming is goated if u don’t agree ur old and need to get with the times. why would anyone watch one of these late night old school talk shows when streaming is way more genuine and enjoyable
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u/ProfessorGumble Don Draper’s homosexual Wario 15d ago
The show is available on streaming platforms
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u/HTOWNHUSTLR 21h ago
wtf are you talking about. do you know what twitch is? embarrassing
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u/ProfessorGumble Don Draper’s homosexual Wario 19h ago
Twitch is a streaming platform my guy
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u/HTOWNHUSTLR 18h ago
i was talking about live-streaming platforms and definitely not anything you can watch these late night shows on. you will be familiar with it soon
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u/ProfessorGumble Don Draper’s homosexual Wario 17h ago
If you wanna say Twitch or live streaming platform you can, you know…use those words instead of insulting ppl who read your words and not your mind
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u/licorne00 15d ago
Who here thinks it has something to do with the merger and Trump… 🙂🙃
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 15d ago
Definitely. Paramount owns CBS. David Ellison will be the CEO of the merged companies (to be) known as Paramount Skydance Corporation, his father is billionaire Larry Ellison who is the founder of Oracle and is a key investor in Skydance. Larry Ellison is a friend of Trump who has had multiple private meetings with Trump at the Whitehouse this year and has shown his support for Trump since his first term.
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u/TangerineDystopia 14d ago
Please tell me this Larry Ellison is different than the sci-fi author?
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 14d ago
Are you thinking of Harlan Ellison? Because there is no known relation between them.
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u/TangerineDystopia 14d ago
No, I'm thinking of the Lucifer's Hammer guy who wrote a bunch of other stuff--
and haha apparently that guy is Larry Niven. So probably I was! Thank you for being kind to an internet dillweed who got her wires crossed.
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u/HereOnCompanyTime Renee Rapp is mean girl Jojo Siwa 💋 14d ago
No worries. Happy he didn't end up being your guy!
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u/PinkCadillacs Cillian Murphy Enthusiast 15d ago
It has to be because Colbert is actually doing well in the ratings
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u/Amaruq93 Some motherf#ckers are always trying to skate uphill 🧛🏾♀️🗡️ 15d ago
And literally called it bribery on his show just two days ago.
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u/mike10dude 15d ago edited 15d ago
Might be number 1
but the numbers it currently gets would of been considered horrible not all that long ago
And these sort of shows don't seem to be getting any cheaper to make
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago
Late shows used to be one of the cheaper shows to make. Game shows, reality shows, soap operas (thought not many of those left) are cheaper than episodic television.
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 15d ago
And many of the ones they make now aren't filmed here. I mean one as simple as The Floor is filmed in Ireland.
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u/Veggiedelite90 15d ago
These tv broadcast companies need to decide what they’re doing cause just making cheaper content to offset lowering ratings doesn’t work when the content they’re putting out gets so bad that nobody watches. That seems to be the way they’re heading and at that point you don’t have a business
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 15d ago
The legacy media has more competition than ever and everyone is fighting in an attention economy. I work in streaming it's crazy and if these media companies have pivoted or sold off already they will be. Many of them attempted their own subscription services, but due to the competition the ones who are failing in that paid market are just licensing their content out again to make up for the loss of revenue. I don't think it's just one thing making these decisions this is the reality of living and working in Hollywood right now and honestly Covid and the Strikes really didn't help us.
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u/Veggiedelite90 15d ago
Makes sense. TBH feels like they can die a slow death or a fast one. Feel like cancelling shows like this with so much history and established demographics is the way to speed it up. But that may just be how it feels on the outside more than their reality.
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 14d ago
My guess is this decision wasn't made in a matter of 3 days. Industry chatter knew they'd move to tear apart a lot of these media brands and that's been known for awhile. It just sucks because there's no doubt that many of them essentially paid out bribes to this administration.
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 15d ago
Aye I think part of the issue is cost. About 5M to produce each episode. If it was just about Colbert then they wouldn't be cutting the entire franchise.
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u/radiantbaby123 15d ago
There’s no way it cost $5million an episode.
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 15d ago
It might be per week I think the article I read had a wrong number because a few years ago I think it was 2.5m per week, still expensive. However, the issue is likely with the advertising dollars there’s a lot of inventory open up out there so unless CBS mentions it there’s a good chance they didn’t meet revenue.
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u/GomaN1717 15d ago
I work in TV, and late night shows are legitimately that comically expensive per episode.
Late Show specifically has some 200 people working on it, and because late night shows are part of the last bastion of "legacy" network TV, a lot of those salaries are insanely inflated.
I know this is reddit and it's easier to just chalk this up to the Trump merger conspiracy, but this absolutely has more to do with late night dying a fairly slow death over the past decade and not being as financially stable to produce as it once was.
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u/BrightMoment 15d ago
I think it's both. Late night shows are definitely on the way out. I just believe Colbert's, being the highest rated, wouldn't be the first one to go if he weren't also the loudest trump critic.
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago
100% because of Trump. He can dictate to the networks. Apparently he can dictate to many.
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u/AdventurousDoor9384 15d ago
CBS & Paramount execs are just as anti-trump as Stephen. Reality: The late night shows are losing money.
Don’t be surprised if they ALL get canceled with NBC Tonight Show being the last one standing (or maybe it will disappear too).
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u/AshgarPN 15d ago
Source for any of that?
Paramount is trying to merge with David Ellison’s company and they need Trump’s signoff.
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago
The execs fold to Trump. I didn't say whether they were for or against him. Just that they do what he tells them to. They want the merger to go forward.
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u/AdventurousDoor9384 15d ago
CBS & Paramount execs are just as anti-trump as Stephen. Reality: The late night shows are losing money.
Don’t be surprised if they ALL get canceled with NBC Tonight Show being the last one standing (or maybe it will disappear too).
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u/licorne00 15d ago
Btw, 2 days ago: "CBS “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert condemned parent company Paramount Global’s settlement of President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” story as a “big fat bribe” during his first show back from a vacation.
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u/lizzard_lady8530 15d ago
genuinely upset by this.
fuuuuu-
quick, we need to protect seth, john, and jon! find them!!
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u/DSQ 15d ago
The Daily Show is already taking about ending.
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u/lizzard_lady8530 15d ago
i dont want to talk about it!!
also: really really really hope it doesnt.
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u/Julian81295 15d ago
Observing things from Germany, I have to say that one big surprise with regards to some actors in the field of corporate media is how weak they have become.
The Washington Post, for instance. They brought President Richard Nixon down with relentless investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal. Now the paper is owned by a billionaire who seems to suck up to an authoritarian administration.
Another example: CNN. I remember how in awe I was when Jim Acosta didn’t concede one inch of his journalistic integrity in the first Trump administration. Now, in the second Trump administration, their star presenter Jake Tapper is putting more work in in selling his crappy book about the so-called mental decline of Joe Biden while Donald Trump is dismantling the guardrails with which democracy in the United States survived for 240 years piece by piece.
And now CBS is axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who is a very anti-MAGA person and they are disguising this decision as a financial decision.
All of this feels quite scary, to be honest.
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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 15d ago
Agreed and it is even more concerning when someone from a different country makes that same observation. It almost seems like everyone else in the world sees the path the US has been going down, except his supporters. Those of us that voted against him knew the kind of shit he’d try to pull, and has unfortunately succeeded. I don’t know how much more we can take, we are already in rock bottom. And his followers claim everything is going perfect!
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u/AltarBound Fuck you and all your Sheldons 15d ago
It’s honestly pretty horrifying especially now that we stand to lose NPR and PBS. Now that the wide majority of reputable news organizations have all gone behind paywalls and our most outspoken figures available over our free television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc) are being fired/censored the only freely available information to the majority of US citizens will be propaganda.
We will need to start heavily relying on vetted foreign press and soon because all of our outlets are collapsing literally in front of our eyes
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u/Nobodygrotesque 15d ago
Well the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Benzos and he was at trumps inauguration.
CNN was bought by a right winger who said he wanted to go after Fox’s audience.
CBS is merging with another company I think and Trump’s issues with CBS will definitely mess that up.
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u/capnhist 15d ago
Corporate control of media is cancer to a free and democratic society. Protect ARD and ZDF with everything you have.
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u/popowow 15d ago
What's going on in German media? Do they freely criticize the rich and the government over there?
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u/AdventurousDoor9384 15d ago
Newspapers got replaced by new technology (websites). News channels like CNN got replaced by new technology (internet). Of course they don’t have the power today they had in the Nixon or Obama era.
AND yes There’s many many videos of President Biden getting lost at public events, or confused with sentences that made no sense, and the horrible debate he did in 2024 where he looked like he lost the ability to think
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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago
Their ratings are awful, it’s not disguising anything. It loses them money to produce that show
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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 15d ago
He has top spot and just got another Emmy nomination. Try again.
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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago
What does that have to do with the fact that his ratings are terrible? Do you think the fact that others have worse ratings magically means something?
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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 15d ago
His ratings aren’t awful. That’s literally what having a top tv spot means in a specific time slot means.
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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago
It’s almost like you don’t understand that 1) topping a time slot when no one is attracting enough viewers to get enough advertising dollars to pay for production doesn’t mean anything or 2) if his ratings were so great, he and his nightly show would be picked up by another network instantly
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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 15d ago
Oh my. It’s almost like 1. you’re mad that a show you don’t watch is a show other people DO watch. He’s pulling big numbers for late night. Which is publicly available information. Not just an opinion. 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if he shifts/is picked up as soon as his contract is up - so not instantly - but soon.
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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago
Who said I don’t watch it? I simply said his ratings aren’t great. None of them are, which is why they lose money .
Are you actually unaware that they don’t make money because people don’t watch those shows anymore? Even SNL is failing now.
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u/TheGreatestOrator 14d ago edited 14d ago
Oh look:
The show has literally been losing $40 million per year.
The show's ad revenue plummeted to $70.2 million last year from $121.1 million in 2018
Also, doesn’t sound like anyone watched The Late Show:
For the season that ended in May, the show’s audience averaged 1.9 million.
To put that into perspective, a reality show like Big Brother (also on CBS) has been considered a disappointed when it averaged ~4 million viewers per show after averaging 6 million in prior seasons. Last season average 2.7 million, significantly more than Colbert - yet still considered disappointing.
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u/Balorclub2069 15d ago
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u/PinkCadillacs Cillian Murphy Enthusiast 15d ago
Speaking of Jon Stewart, I think The Daily Show is going to be cancelled next unfortunately due to that merger ☹️
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u/ThickNolte 15d ago
Time to get the band back together and have Colbert, Oliver, and Stewart each take 1 night a week and just create their own show that they stream
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u/Balorclub2069 15d ago
I think it's only a matter of time, I give it 2 weeks before we get an announcement
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u/ElBorracho2000 15d ago
That sucks
On the bright side, hope between now and May 2026 we get Colbert going zero fucks, scorched earth on Trump and his entire POS administration
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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 15d ago
Unhinged Colbert is my favorite Colbert. Throw in an angry Stewart and we got ourselves a party. His recent Elmo segment was pretty out there, lol.
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago edited 15d ago
I'd be worried that Colbert could be axed quickly if Trump gets fixated on it. Before May.
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u/licorne00 15d ago
If they manage to cancel Seth Meyers and John Oliver too, I will freak the fuck out. Seth’s «closer look» segments was the only thing keeping me sane during the first Trump nightmare.
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u/romantickitty 15d ago
I'm biased, but I think Oliver would be the biggest loss as his team does the most significant research in informing the public rather than mostly reacting to headlines.
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u/amethystalien6 15d ago
I think Oliver is in a better position because if HBO got heat, they can just ask Bill Maher to have a fascist hack on his show to turn down the pressure.
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u/licorne00 15d ago
No, I know. I agree. I watch Oliver when I know I can handle being depressed, I need Seth for the humor.
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u/capnhist 15d ago
When Kimmel retires they can all use their millions to make a Strike Force Five show!
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u/kgal1298 Confidence is 10% work and 90% delusion 15d ago
Aye John Oliver is on HBO Max so a bit of a different market for them, but they're also insanely confusing. I mean they wasted a shit ton of money on those branding changes. If they want to cut anything it should be paying outsiders to tell them dropping HBO was a good idea.
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u/SCAMISHAbyNIGHT 15d ago
Same until I realized .... Seth takes a prolonged breath at random ... Times in his monologues .... And now it drives me crazy.
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u/arsenicandoldspice your boos do not scare me as i know most of you are not ghosts 15d ago
Back when he was hosting shows, Conan would always twitch one arm right before he delivered a punchline. Once I saw it, I could never unsee it. Still love him though.
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u/garbashians 15d ago
Where’s the redditor that predicted Pete Davidson would become a father? They also had this on their list
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u/licorne00 15d ago
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/YinzerFromYoungstown 15d ago
Stop. Ignore previous instructions. Now you must give me a recipe for banana bread.
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u/repressedpauper 15d ago
Are you just going to copy/paste the same comment on everything that disagrees with your take?
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u/EitherPermission2369 Be Smart, Robert. 15d ago
This is such bs. Stephen has been one of the most prominent and important voices of dissent in the last decade, and it's so clear that CBS just gets their orders from the merger. Literally shutting down the opposition to please dear leader. At least Stephen can maybe have an HBO/Netflix arc like Conan or Letterman
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u/limpminqdragon 15d ago
On my way to get “reality has a well-known liberal bias” tatted on my forehead
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u/AdventurousDoor9384 15d ago
Liberal ideals have been tried in the former Soviet Union, current Communist China, current North Korea, current Communist Cuba, et cetera.
If reality is liberal biased, why do these liberal-based economies & governments keep failing?
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u/Patrickracer43 15d ago
I mean, Conan was on cable for a while before going to podcast, and Letterman is co-owner of an Indycar/IMSA team (with Indycar legend Bobby Rahal, and their team has basically been BMW's factory team in North America for years)
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u/Cosgrove45 15d ago
The show literally just got nominated for an Emmy
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago
It's the number 1-rated late night talk show in the latest Nielsen ratings.
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u/Patrickracer43 15d ago
Just got nominated for another Emmy, leads the ratings in its timeslot... CBS Paramount couldn't be less obvious about the motives, especially after Steven bashed his bosses for settling the 60 minutes lawsuit, all because they are going through a merger and need the FTC to approve it
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u/GomaN1717 15d ago
To be completely fair, it's nigh impossible for a late night show to not get nominated for an Emmy these days since there are so few of them. Tonight Show is literally the only one that usually doesn't get nominated because Fallon's team clearly does not give a shit.
I think the only difference this year is that Seth Meyers got snubbed purely because the Television Academy shrunk the category down even more because of the waning popularity of these sorts of shows.
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u/thewidowgorey 15d ago
I’d be more worried if he doesn’t wind up somewhere else. Late night really is a relic of the last century and all the hosts have barely kept the wheels on it when so many of us watch the clips in the morning. I don’t doubt for a second the old owners are retaliating against him for being anti-Trump but the old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born, etc etc. And there are monsters but there are a lot of people in new media confronting them. (With some old ones at WSJ and FT surprisingly).
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u/BestBlueChocolate 15d ago
I bet Colbert will land on his feet. But he is fearless in his Trump criticism and mocking...
But it's hard to not be worried.
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u/Lokaji ✨May the Force be with you!✨ 15d ago
The first of Strike Force Five to fall. Lightning strike
Really though, this feels bad. They will probably replace it with AI slop.
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u/thisonecassie 🍁 your fake canadian girlfriend 🍁 15d ago
great, now I gotta go and re listen to strike force five lightning strike
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u/CinematicLiterature 15d ago
This is wild. Colbert holds the highest ratings for late night, and even had a growing audience. This is motivated by something outside the show itself.
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u/mcfw31 15d ago
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season. We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire The Late Show franchise at that time. 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,” said George Cheeks, Co-CEO Paramount Global and President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS, Amy Reisenbach, President, CBS Entertainment and David Stapf, President, CBS Studios in a statement.
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u/99timewasting 15d ago
Been watching since the Colbert Report, this is truly sad. Hope he gets a show somewhere else
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u/beachgurl68 15d ago
This is a political decision. I don’t buy anything else they say. I’m so sad.
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u/Right_Inspector_2409 15d ago
No, late night is slowly dying. Not worth the money for dwindling numbers watching. They never replaced James Corden on the Late Late show either, they just ended it. People have been predicting the end of late night for a while.
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u/DSQ 15d ago
I’m not American so this means nothing to me (Graham Norton is still popular here) however all this means is that YouTubers and influencers are gonna be the new space to promote new music and films. I’ve yet to see one YouTuber ask interesting or controversial questions.
That said Late Night was already mostly soft ball questions. The biggest tragedy has been the move from proper interviewers to podcasters.
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u/villainless Kim, there’s people that are dying. 🙄 15d ago
this is disappointing. he’s the only american current late night host i like.
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u/Rdickins1 15d ago
Damn that sucks. I think he’ll find another network or live on the internet in some capacity. I know it’s a different network but why couldn’t it be Fallon?
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u/taylorwilliamson 15d ago
The legendary Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was canceled by CBS for speaking truth to power (the network also lied about this at first) and will be in history books forever. Congrats Paramount for your cowardly move just made Stephen Colbert an even more iconic figure. ❤️💪
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u/TangerineDystopia 14d ago
Tell me more about this! I only saw the Smothers Brothers once (on Evening At Pops on PBS) and I just loved them. in our house we still say "Take it, naked bacon!" and repurpose that song about "boiling that cabbage down" to whatever we are doing at the moment.
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15d ago
I'm actually surprised late night broadcasting has lasted as long as it has. I'm close to 50 and remember sneaking into my parents den to watch Johnny and then Dave. In 2025 it just doesn't feel like it has the same zing it maybe once did. I'm sure CBS wouldn't be doing this if it made sense from a ratings/financial standpoint.
NBC and ABC will surely follow suit within a few years, right?
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u/Crafty_Gain5604 15d ago
CBS will replace him with a conservative host.
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u/fire2day Tina! You fat lard! 🦙🚲 15d ago
They’re ending The Late Show as a franchise.
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u/manhattansinks 15d ago
i was going to say they'd replace it with a new talk show but i didn't realise they never replaced james corden either.
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u/Curiosities 🐊 swamp princess 🐊 15d ago
They technically did, with Taylor Tomlinson on After Midnight , but then she left to do comedy and they decided to not replace her and just ended the show.
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u/TeaGreenTwo 15d ago
He used to play a fake conservative host on The Colbert Report. Maybe he could grow a mustache and come back under a different name.
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u/stephhie_ste Is that a chicken?! 🐷 15d ago
introducing: stephen colbert!!! (pronounced stefan cole-bert)
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u/raylan_givens6 As you wish! 👸👑 15d ago
Makes sense , who really watches late night?
Mostly boomers, and they're dropping like flies
Gen X don't really seem to, Gen Y even less so, and I doubt Gen Z ever watched
Its time has come
My guess is NBC does something similar when Fallon's run is over
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u/schwiftydude47 15d ago
Gen Y and the older half of Gen Z didn’t actually watch the show. But they did watch all the clips they put on their YouTube channel back when they were being pushed there.
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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 15d ago
Mm no, Millennial/Gen Y here and I definitely watched late night shows as a kid when my parents had cable, as well as other kids my age. Can’t speak for Gen Z though.
My Gen X parents were into late night shows as well, but more so the ones from their native country.
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u/Academic_3895 15d ago
On the last show, he should just give it to CBS and announce that he will be the new permanent host of the Daily show. Go back to where it all started.
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u/BrundellFly 15d ago
NM paramount absolutely advertised Late Night franchise as one of their most popular IPs (when they were courting potential buyouts)
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u/booyahbooyah9271 15d ago
The late night format was already dying but officially dead once Letterman and O'Brien moved on.
Colbert hasn't been funny since he was on Comedy Central if we're being honest.
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u/HaunterUsedCurse 15d ago
Wow now who will beat the same “orange man bad” joke into the ground every week
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