CBS announced on July 17 that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is being cancelled and “The Late Show” will come to an end after a 33-year run in May 2026. While the cancellation may be surprising for those focused on Colbert’s ratings success in the linear TV space, and caused backlash from many who accused CBS of political bribery in settling with Donald Trump, Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics model reveals that “The Late Show” was lagging its peers in terms of the revenue it brought in on streaming.
We calculate that “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” generated just under $60 million in streaming subscriber revenue for Paramount+ in the US and Canada from Q1 2021 (when Paramount+ launched) to Q1 2025. That number is significantly lower than what other major late-night franchises delivered for their respective platforms during the same period: “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” brought in $184 million for HBO Max, and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” drove $122 million across Hulu and Peacock during the same time.
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This gap highlights a key challenge for Paramount+. While “The Late Show” drew a loyal and sizable linear audience, the platform struggled to translate that attention into meaningful streaming revenue. Streaming is just one part of a late-night show’s value equation (advertising, licensing and brand partnerships still matter), but in today’s media landscape, the ability to drive subscription revenue has become a top priority for platforms.
This is not to fault Colbert’s show, which is still hugely popular and not just with linear audiences. In the first half of this year, “The Late Show” was the third most in-demand late-night series in the US, with nearly 36 times the average series demand. This is pretty much on equal footing with demand for other top late-night shows.
This disconnect between audience demand and streaming revenue points to platform-specific monetization limitations. Paramount+ may not have had the scale, marketing efficiency, or content bundling strategies necessary to fully capture the value of “The Late Show’s” fandom. That raises a broader question for the industry: How should legacy media companies evolve their content strategies when even high-demand IP struggles to perform on their own platforms?
Figuring out how to make a traditional format like late night work is a problem mainly facing legacy entertainment companies. Newer players, such as Netflix and Prime Video, haven’t really explored the genre extensively. Still, it is an interesting thought experiment to think about whether a platform with the reach of Netflix or Prime Video could have realized more value from Colbert than Paramount+ was able to.
In an era where every content decision is increasingly judged through a streaming ROI lens, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” could be a casualty of misaligned monetization, not declining relevance. The show still has cultural weight and consistent viewer interest, but in the streaming-first future, that’s not always enough.
While many have questioned the relevance of the late-night talk show format today, this data does offer a glimmer of hope. “The Late Show” lagged its peers in terms of its streaming revenue performance on Paramount+. Other titles, such as “Last Week Tonight,” have generated multiple times more revenue than “The Late Show.” Adapting the late-night format to the new streaming-first reality can help the genre survive.
The post Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Generated $60 Million in Streaming Revenue Since 2021, Less Than Kimmel, Fallon and Meyers | Charts appeared first on TheWrap.
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