CBS canceling Colbert begs the question: Are more late night shows next?

Published On: July 27, 2025

The end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is calling attention to the mounting pressures on traditional TV and raising questions about the whether the time slot can survive the evolving viewing landscape.
The cost of producing late night programs has risen as the media industry has been upended by streaming and shifting consumer habits.
Jimmy Kimmel’s contract with Disney is set to lapse in 2026.

Two different perspectives exist on CBS’s decision to discontinue “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

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According to the first, the cancellation is a one-time departure from the illustrious period during which Paramount was attempting to navigate the bureaucratic process in order to eventually combine with Skydance Media, a merger that the Federal Communications Commission approved on Thursday after more than a year of uncertainty.

According to the other, it marks the beginning of the demise of late-night television.

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When Disney makes its decision regarding Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” next year, the entertainment world will have a clearer understanding of the situation.

Kimmel’s deal is scheduled to expire in 2026, but NBC recently extended the contracts of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, its two late-night hosts, to 2028.

Since 2003, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” has been a late-night mainstay, serving as a useful marketing platform for Disney’s portfolio of television and film productions in addition to being a standard talk show on the road. Kimmel regularly hosts multiple stars from the same project in addition to the customary one-on-one interviews, usually for popular films like the company’s animation series, Marvel, and Star Wars.

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In order to create hype for future Disney projects, clips from these conversations are shared on social media and on Kimmel’s YouTube channel, which has over 20 million subscribers.

In contrast, Meyers’ show account has just over 5 million subscribers, Colbert’s has 10 million, and Fallon’s has almost 32 million.

Kimmel is now the host of ABC’s celebrity edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” She also frequently hosts the Academy Awards, which are broadcast on Disney’s ABC. Kimmel may be more crucial to Disney’s long-term success than Colbert was to Paramount or CBS because of these supplemental responsibilities and his yearly role concluding Disney’s Upfronts presentation for advertisers.

The conclusion of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is drawing attention to the increasing strain on traditional TV and posing questions about whether the time slot can endure the changing viewing landscape, even though the next test of the media’s dedication to late night is still months away.

As streaming and changing consumer behavior have upended the media industry, the cost of creating late-night programming has increased. In recent years, the traditional pay TV bundle has lost millions of consumers, and with them have gone advertising dollars.

Media firms have had to readjust as a result of the changing equation.

Large corporations such as Warner Bros. Discovery and Comcast’s NBCUniversal have chosen to divide their cable TV networks into distinct corporate organizations.

Big series are increasingly being approved for streaming platforms rather than traditional networks at the programming level. High-paid news anchors’ salaries have decreased, and some have left established networks entirely to launch their own businesses. Additionally, live sports receive a large portion of the funding allocated to expanding both streaming services and traditional TV networks.

Thus, well-known titles are in flux.

According to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified in order to discuss nonpublic topics, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” employed roughly 200 people and made about $40 million in losses annually. According to someone acquainted with the show’s economics, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” employs about 250 people and loses about the same amount.

Although the pay-TV bundle continues to generate the largest portion of earnings for traditional media firms, this percentage is declining. This is mostly due to the fees that pay-TV distributors charge the networks to be included in the bundle.

Additionally, linear TV ad revenue has been steadily declining. After turbulent streaming-focused years, industry analysts and experts predicted that the ad business would stabilize in 2025; nevertheless, the recovery has been impeded by macroeconomic uncertainty.

Disney, NBCUniversal, and Paramount all reported lower ad sales year over year in their May quarterly profits.

When compared to the previous year, when the firm had the Super Bowl, Paramount’s first-quarter TV advertising income fell 21% to $2.04 billion, the company announced in May. Of all the live events on television, that championship attracts the most advertising expenditures. The business said that ad revenue would have been flat in the absence of the Super Bowl. The TV division of Paramount had a 13% decline in overall income.

Because live sports attract the largest audiences, the largest portion of the traditional TV ad spend that is still there has gone toward them. Because of the impending NBA, Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, and other sporting events, NBCUniversal recently boasted record ad sales volume during the most recent Upfront cycle.

In May, Disney revealed that its domestic linear networks’ quarterly income had dropped 3% to $2.2 billion, which it attributed to a decrease in ad revenue. However, Disney reported that ad revenue for ESPN and sports in general increased.

Although these obstacles support Paramount’s decision to axe “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the show’s finale has sparked skepticism.

Days after the longtime host openly criticized Paramount for its $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, Colbert announced that his program would end in May 2026.

During one of his show-opening monologues, Colbert referred to the settlement as a “big fat bribe” and mentioned the then-pending merger between Paramount and Skydance Media, which needed the Trump administration’s approval to move forward.

In a statement last week, officials from Paramount and CBS said the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against the challenging backdrop in late night.”

“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the business stated.

According to Nielsen, Colbert’s show has continuously garnered the most views of any show at 11:35 p.m., surpassing both ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” despite a dip in ratings over the past ten years.

Each season, however, Colbert’s ratings have been dropping. According to Nielsen, a significant statistic regarding the health of TV viewing, Colbert averaged nearly 1.9 million viewers during the most recent September–May period, with the bulk of viewers falling into the over-65 age group.

Similar trends can be seen in Kimmel’s audience, which decreased from the 2019–2020 September–May period to the most recent 2024–2025 period, when Nielsen reports that the average viewership was close to 1.6 million.

Colbert’s “The Late Show” was recognized as the highest rated broadcast late night show when Paramount announced its slate of highly rated TV shows during its most recent earnings report. These included “Tracker,” the top-ranked series, and “Matlock,” the highest-rated new series. The most popular late-night cable TV program was “The Daily Show,” which was also produced by Paramount.

Industry insiders have questioned if CBS could have looked other alternatives to eliminate “The Late Show” entirely in order to save money or save late nights. By removing the band from Meyers’ late-night show and moving Fallon from five nights a week to four, NBC was able to save expenses.

With “After Midnight,” a late-night program that aired after Colbert, CBS attempted to attract a younger audience to the hour. Comedian Taylor Tomlinson hosted the program, which focused on internet sensations that went viral.

The sitcom was canceled because Tomlinson declined to extend her contract, even though CBS had planned to renew it after the first two seasons.

Disclosure: CNBC’s parent company, NBCUniversal, is owned by Comcast.