CBS Cancel Colbert raises questions about late night

There are two ideas about CBS’ decision to end “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Initially, I say that cancellation is a one-time exit from the famous time slot – Paramount I was pushing red tape and was about to eventually merge with Skydance Media. This is a transaction approved by the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday in Limbo for more than a year.

The other says it marks the beginning of the end of late night television.

The entertainment industry has a better sense of where the truth is next year Disney It determines the fate of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

NBC recently extended its contract between two late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to 2028, but Kimmel’s contract is expected to expire in 2026.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” has been a late-night staple since 2003, serving as a typical talk show on the circuit, as well as a valuable marketing hub for Disney theatre and slates of television content. In addition to traditional one-on-one interviews, Kimmel frequently holds several stars of the same project. Many are looking for blockbuster titles from Marvel, Star Wars and the company’s animation franchise.

Clips from these chats will be fed to Kimmel YouTube With over 20 million subscribers, the channels across social media will help generate buzz for upcoming Disney projects.

For comparison, Fallon’s show account has around 32 million subscribers, while Colbert stands at 10 million and Meyers exceeds 5 million.

Kimmel is also a frequent host of the Academy Awards airing on Disney’s ABC, and is currently the host of ABC’s celebrity version of “I Want to Be a Billionaire.” These supplementary challenges and his annual job closing out Disney’s front presentation for advertisers may make Kimmel more important to Disney’s long-term future than Colbert for Paramount or CBS.

Still, while the next test of media’s late-night commitment is a few months off, the end of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” brings attention to the increased pressure on traditional television and raises questions about whether time slots can survive the evolving vision.

The cost of creating late-night programs is rising as the media industry is covered by streaming and shifting consumer habits. As traditional pay TV bundles have lost and disappeared millions of customers in recent years, there are also advertising dollars.

The changing equation forced media companies to re-abuse.

A company like a large company Comcast’s nbcuniversal and Warner Bros Discovery I chose to split the cable television network into separate corporate entities.

At the programming level, big shows are becoming increasingly greenlit as they are released on streaming services rather than traditional networks. Highly paid news anchor salaries have been eased, with some moving away from traditional networks completely and launching their own ventures. And much of the money spent on the bulging of both linear television networks and streaming services is allocated to live sports.

It leaves a familiar title to Flux.

“Late Show with Stephen Colbert” employs around 200 people and records an annual loss of around $40 million. According to anyone familiar with the show’s finances, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” employs around 250 people and loses roughly the same amount.

Pay TV bundles still cover the largest share of legacy media companies’ profits, much of which comes from the fees paid TV distributors hand over to the networks included in the bundle, but that figure is declining.

Linear TV advertising revenue is also on a stable downward slope. Industry analysts and experts have been hoping that the AD market will stabilize in 2025, in a turbulent streaming-centric era, but macroeconomic uncertainty is hampering the recovery.

Quarterly revenue reported in May, ParamountNBCuniversal and Disney each reported a decline in advertising sales compared to the previous year.

Paramount reported in May that first quarter television advertising revenue fell 21% to $2.04 billion. This is primarily due to a comparison with the previous year period when the company had a Super Bowl, which beckons the most ad dollars of live events on television. Without the Super Bowl, advertising revenue would have been flat, the company said. Paramount’s overall TV segment revenue fell 13%.

Of the remaining traditional TV ad spending, the largest share will be drawn to live sports, attracting the largest audience. NBCuniversal recently promoted record ad sales volumes during its recent advance cycle with upcoming slates in the NBA, Super Bowl, Winter Olympics and other sports.

Disney reported in May that its domestic linear network quarterly revenue fell 3% to $2.2 billion, due to a decline in advertising revenue. Still, Disney noted that ESPN and sports advertising revenues generally saw an increase in advertising revenue.

These headwinds help justify Paramount’s decision to cancel “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” but the timing of the program’s end raised doubts.

The announcement that Colbert’s Show would take on the final bow comes days after tenure convened publicly to a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump and compilation of a “60-minute” interview with former vice president Kamala Harris.

Colbert, in one of his show-opening monologues, called the settlement “a big fat bribe” and referenced the then-maintained merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, which required him to advance approval from the Trump administration.

Paramount and CBS executives issued a statement last week stating that the cancellation was a “pure financial decision on the challenging late-night background.”

“It has never been related to the performance, content or other issues of the show happening on Paramount,” the company continued.

Although Colbert’s show ratings have declined over the past decade, the program consistently achieved the show’s best vision at 11:35pm, bringing out ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “The Tonight Show” starring NBC’s “Jimmy Fallon.”

Still, Colbert’s ratings have declined every season. Nielsen said that in the recent period from September to May, Colbert has averaged around 1.9 million viewers, with the majority of viewers in the age group of 65 and above.

According to Nielsen, Kimmel viewers have painted similar pictures, with viewers falling from September-May period 2019-2020 to the latest viewers from 2024-2025.

When Paramount listed the slates of highly rated television shows in its final revenue report, including “Tracker,” the Top Rate Series and the newest series “Matlock,” Colbert’s “Late Show” as the highest rated broadcast late night show. Originally from Paramount, “The Daily Show” was the top late-night show on cable television.

Some industry experts have questioned whether CBS has been able to explorate other ways to save money, in addition to canceling the “Late Show” completely, or whether it was able to save the late night. NBC cut costs by eliminating the band at Myers’ late-night show and shifting Fallon to four nights a week instead of five.

CBS tried to bring the younger demographic into an hour on “After Midnight,” a late-night show that followed Colbert. The show was hosted by comedian Taylor Tomlinson and focuses on the internet phenomenon of the virus.

CBS intended to renew the show after the first two seasons, but Tomlinson decided not to extend the deal, and the show was cancelled.

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCuniversal, the parent company of CNBC.