The cruel joke of CBS ousting Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert’s CBS debut was shaky. When he officially took the reins of “The Late Show” from David Letterman in September 2015, Colbert blunted his comedy fangs to adopt a less partisan approach for the broadcast audience. It didn’t quite work. Nearly a decade spent cultivating a conservative-skewering persona on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” led to expectations that he’d bring a similar energy to “The Late Show,” and soon his toothless competition over on NBC was pummeling him in the ratings.

That changed when Donald Trump took office the first time around in 2016, and Colbert found his calling as the commander of late-night comedy’s opposition.  By May 2017, “The Late Show” had overtaken “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in the ratings and has remained on top ever since.

Colbert secured his reign by being one of Trump’s sharpest, brashest critics, a standing many see as the real reason that CBS is shutting down “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” at the close of the 2025-2026 television season.

But CBS isn’t just parting ways with Colbert. After May 2026, “The Late Show” itself — a show that’s aired on CBS since 1993 — will be history.

“I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away,” Colbert told his audience Thursday, later adding, “And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it.”

Nobody will. “We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable,” CBS expressed in its official statement. “He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late-night television.”

As for why that greatness couldn’t continue despite being top-rated and Emmy-nominated, the statement explains, “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. Our admiration, affection, and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”

This hearty encomium is jointly attributed to Paramount Global Co-CEO and CBS CEO George Cheeks; CBS Entertainment president Amy Reisenbach; and CBS Studios president David Stapf — an impressively titled chorus few are taking at their word.

When a company pays off a petty tyrant instead of defending the First Amendment and its champions on their payroll  — all for the sake of smoothing the way for a deal estimated to be worth $8 billion — that guarantees the audience won’t trust any explanation it offers. Even if there’s some truth to it.

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” spent the last nine seasons as the top-rated talk variety show in its time slot. Meanwhile, broadcast viewership has plummeted, and the late-night audience has diminished to a modest percentage of what it was in its heyday.

Streaming and digital platforms are hastening the extinction of the late-night format. Entertainment publicity appearances that once made late-night essential are now accomplished via podcast appearances or “Hot Ones” snack-downs. Social media platforms instantaneously connect celebrities to their fans. Topical comedy goes viral in the moment, circulating long before bedtime.

Ad revenues are plummeting, too. Consider these 2022 stats advertising intelligence firm Vivvix shared with Salon in 2023, when Colbert’s “Late Show” commanded the highest ad revenue of all the late-night shows, and has since 2018. Even then, the show’s $118 million take was down 58% from its 2016 height of $278.3 million. In the three years since, that erosion has only worsened.

(Craig T Fruchtman/Getty Images) The Ed Sullivan Theater, where “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is recorded live, showed a message of protest for CBS and Paramount written on July 18, 2025.

In 2023, Colbert’s lead-out James Corden also abandoned “The Late Late Show,” reportedly to get ahead of having that choice made for him. “Late Late” had run on CBS since 1995, but Corden’s show was reported to have cost $60 million to produce; by 2022, it was only pulling in around $24 million, Vivvix indicated. “The Late Late Show” was replaced by a revival of “@Midnight” retitled “After Midnight,” but it only lasted a year because its host, Taylor Tomlinson, decided she’d rather focus on her stand-up career.

Ergo, time has been running out for late night as we know it for years. What relevance remains rests in its hosts’ amiability and incisive commentary.

Since the 2016 election, Colbert, along with Seth Meyers and fellow Emmy nominee Jimmy Kimmel, have taken on the role of curling mordant humor around our angst and bludgeoning the right wing with the resulting instrument. Indeed, last September, the notion that Colbert and the rest might be punished for doing their jobs well was punchline material.

That was when a Rolling Stone article titled “What if Trump Wins?” warned that if Donald Trump returned to the White House, late-night comedians would be on his lengthy political hit list.

“There’s no nemesis too small,” it reads, before describing his first administration’s attempts to get Justice officials to twist campaign finance laws’ equal-time rule to find any anti-Trump satire broadcast on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” to be illegal. The story went on to quote an unnamed source who revealed Trump raised the topic of punishing late-night hosts again during his campaign.

“Finally, I made an enemies list!” Colbert crowed in a subsequent “Late Show” monologue, which happened to land the week before the 2024 Emmys telecast. “I mean, obviously, there’s no guarantee I’ll be arrested, but it’s an honor just to be nominated.

“Now, no doubt it’ll all be decided this weekend in Los Angeles,” he continued. “Whoever wins the Emmy for best talk show will be sent to a camp. . . So, to my old colleague, Jon Stewart, I just want you to know I voted for you. Of course, if Jon wins, he’s only incarcerated on Mondays.”

People familiar with the authoritarian playbook must have suspected it would eventually come to this. Such regimes rely on a compliant media propaganda machine, requiring satirists to be among the first to go along with journalists, academics and any other critics with irritating addictions to fact, law and reason.

I’m guessing any CBS officials reading this may take issue with the insinuation that Colbert was axed to appease Trump, although pretty much everyone is saying exactly this because Paramount Global recently paid Trump $16 million instead of battling his ridiculous $20 billion lawsuit to defend the journalistic integrity of its “60 Minutes.”

That settlement is widely viewed as a means of clearing the way for Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media — a deal that can’t be finalized without approval by the Federal Communications Commission, currently headed by Trump appointee Brendan Carr. Skydance CEO David Ellison is Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s son, and Larry is a close friend of Trump’s. And there are many indications that the younger Ellison intends to push CBS News rightward.  The New York Times reports that he is in talks to acquire Bari Weiss’ right-leaning The Free Press.

In June, Oliver Darcy said in his Status newsletter that Ellison has been mulling a role for Weiss at CBS News. He’s also been seen rubbing elbows with Trump at UFC matches.

As New York Times critic James Poniewozik wryly observed on Bluesky, “I mean, mergers are financial decisions.”

So even if CBS’s top trio is telling the truth about cancelling “The Late Show,” no amount of laudatory perfume can cover this stink. A certain snake oil salesman ensured that would be impossible.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

Yes, what about those other hosts? Fox’s Gutfeld draws more viewers than Colbert but enjoys less virality than him, Kimmel or Meyers. Nevertheless, ABC and NBC bosses must be eyeing this situation with great interest as they consider their respective bottom lines. Gutfeld may end up being the last one standing.

(Comedy Central) Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” election night special

The one name Trump didn’t mention was Stewart’s. “The Daily Show” is also nominated for a best talk series Emmy and, like “The Late Show,” falls under Paramount’s purview. Stewart hasn’t held his tongue about Trump either, and certainly didn’t mince words concerning his parent company’s settlement, saying on his July 8 telecast that it sounded illegal.

The Writers Guild of America agrees with him. Variety reports that the union is urging New York state’s attorney general to investigate Paramount for bribery, citing “significant concerns” that Colbert’s firing was intended to bribe Trump into sanctioning the Skydance merger.

During Thursday’s episode of “The Daily Show” companion podcast “The Weekly Show,” Stewart admitted he wasn’t sure his show would survive an Ellison regime either. (Status revealed that it, too, could be on the chopping block.) “They may sell the whole . . . place for parts, I just don’t know,” he admitted. “And we’ll deal with it when they do.”

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Whatever happens, I don’t believe for a second that we’ll see Stewart back down, Meyers pull his punches in his “Closer Look” segments, or Kimmel tone down his monologues. The latter responded to news of Colbert’s firing with an Instagram story post expressing his love for Colbert and adding, “F**k you and all your Sheldons CBS.”

Next to all that fire, Colbert’s summation of what may mark the beginning of late night’s end seemed far more gracious: “I’m so grateful to the Tiffany network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.” Knowing how canny Colbert can be, one could note his choice to drop CBS’s classic moniker as a coded “tip of the hat, wag of the finger.”

CBS earned the Tiffany nickname under Bill Paley, the network head responsible for empowering Edward R. Murrow to take on Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy and Walter Cronkite to define the caliber of journalism that led to the birth of “60 Minutes.” Paley had the foresight to grant Norman Lear the creative freedom to critique America’s race and class divisions through his comedies, beginning with “All in the Family.”

The Tiffany designation is associated with high-quality, discerning, bold programming choices. By interfering with “60 Minutes” editorial coverage to placate Trump and now abandoning Colbert, Paramount Global has clouded that legacy.

As for Colbert, he now has 10 months left with “The Late Show” and very little to lose. But I doubt this will be his last stop on TV. An unleashed Colbert would be an asset to a streaming service, which is where Letterman and Conan O’Brien have ended up. Or, like John Oliver, he might end up over on HBO or some other place that’s willing to let him do and say what he wants. For the immediate future, as Colbert reassured the audience, “It’s gonna be fun.” And we can count on mockery being directed toward the people who most richly deserve it.