If he wants to continue he should just produce his show on his own and air it on YouTube. No one really watches broadcast tv anymore.
Jon Stewart should do the same.
Google would probably cancel them there too if enough money exchanged hands between the right (err… wrong) people.
Speaking of ‘financial decisions,’ CBS isn’t entirely wrong there, money has to have exchanged hands somewhere for this to happen.
Firing Colbert and canceling his show, days after he criticized Paramounts Payola to Trump. Thats the “financial decision”
STEWART/COLBERT 2028
That would be a dream come true
CBS is a bunch of trumps cucks.
Highest rating show. Financial decision.
Nah. All who oppose Trump will be silenced.
Kimmel next
Late show was also just nominated for an Emmy.
Kimmel and John Stewart are in fact being targeted next.
I predicted that this would happen if the country started an irreversible slide into fascist warlord dictatorship, I just thought it would be much further down the road.
Watch, in about a year all of these comedians and liberal pundits are going to be replaced by right-wing grifters and podcasters capturing the stupid, populist attention spans of people who just want to stare at flashing lights and listen to people screaming about how evil trans children are interrupted by ads for essential oils and testosterone supplements. This isn’t an exaggeration, this is what we can expect.
Kimmel has already said this is his last season, voluntarily.
Daily Show is next. Maybe Seth Meyers.
Kimmel has already said this is his last season, voluntarily.
Remember that when Conan was forced out, he had specific gag orders about what he could say or not, so take the “voluntary” part with a few grains of salt until that potential gag order expires, if it ever does.
Really what’s happening is fascist censorship of opposition voices and satire is a powerful tool in speaking truth to power, making comedians highly threatening to fascists. Corporations like Skydance don’t care about civilization or a better world, they need line to go up, and the fastest, most efficient way to get that line up is to buy some fascists to run the country you’re located in.
He called it. He said that this would happen in order for the deal to go through. They are trying to silence as many people as possible like any other fascist authoritarian countries.
Source (skipped ahead to the right timestamp):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzvx3L3DQb8&t=248Happy Fediversary!
Account is 1 year old
Created on Fri Jul 19 2024
Get him and John Stewart back together. Throw in some John Oliver, too.
I can’t wait for it to be replaced with nonstop infomercials for supplemental medicare.
The jokes on them. people don’t watch it on TV. They just look for the YouTube video with Stephen Colbert in it. He can do that on his own
I feel like he just replaced Letterman a year or two ago and now the show is already ending. Where the hell did all the time go? How am I nearly 40 already?
If it makes you feel better, this has nothing to do with normal Hollywood celebrity shuffling and contractual disputes, this is entirely targeted political censorship. Colbert is/was the highest rated talk show on network television and was just nominated for an emmy.
That doesn’t really confort me much, given that I just realized that it has been TEN YEARS since Letterman left! I hate how quickly time started moving when COVID first hit. Time never slowed back down, it never slowed back down!
Ten years is nothing compared to the 40 years this country has regressed
Welcome to aging
Every week has been a month, and every month has been a week.
I’m surprised it’s that short. Thought it was at least 12.
I do feel the same. Somewhere around 2012 - 2015 life just stopped for me. I lost track of media and current hip topics and then life just spiraled into one long series of disasters, both personal and global and now I feel a thousand years old but can’t detect any time that’s passed. When I watch the news and current events, even though logically I know what’s going on, some part of my brain screams that everything looks “wrong” and like we’re in the wrong world.
Everybody is saying this is politically motivated and I don’t really think I buy that. Not ruling out the possibility entirely, though. Anything is possible but the logic just doesn’t work out to me.
First, CBS paid Trump. Trump didn’t pay them. They already capitulated by paying him off. Why would they capitulate further by getting rid of the most popular late night program if it was profitable?
Second, if this was political why are they keeping the show on until May of next year? Wouldn’t trump want them to cancel it sooner?
Third, they’re canceling the late show entirely. If they were canceling it to get someone critical of trump out of there why wouldn’t they just replace colbert with someone more favorable to him?
Fourth, these shows have had declining ratings for years now and the writing has been on the wall for a long time that these shows were not going to be able to hang around for forever in today’s streaming climate. I think more cancelation announcements are likely.
As much as I hate trump and wouldn’t put something like this past him I really don’t think it’s likely that this has anything to do with him. Doing this for money reasons is fully in line with how terrible capitalism is for art and I can absolutely believe that this was some dumbfuck accounting decision.
CBS’ parent company, Paramount, is in merger talks with Skydance. Mergers must be approved by the federal government. (I thought it was the FTC, but I see the FCC mentioned in articles about this … don’t want to dig into the weeds here. The feds must approve.)
This used to be done by a theoretically impartial board which would make decisions based on benefit to the public. Now there isn’t even a pretense of caring about the public good. If Trump is happy with the tribute he receives, the merger will go through. If he’s upset, it won’t.
Yeah, CBS already folded and paid a huge fine as a “settlement” to a lawsuit they could almost certainly have won in court, but when you’re trying to appease a mob boss you just have to keep paying.
It’s true that putting the end date for Colbert a year out isn’t as extreme an appeasement than just pulling him off the air, but there are many factors involved. The mob boss has declared that he is pleased with the outcome, so mission accomplished.
Also Skydance’s owner is a Trump ally
It wasn’t a fine, it was a “donation” to Trump presidential library. It’s completely different
A fine implies that the money goes to the government, but here goes directly in Trump’s hands
Whoever downvoted MeaanBeaan here, why? I suspect you just disagree; that’s not a legitimate reason for a downvote. He bothered to offer his analysis, and at least to me it reads like a legit take on events, not trolling. If you disagree, say what you disagree with (like I did). If you’re too lazy to do that, just skip it. Downvotes are for trolls.
Tldr. Downvoted.
While I agree with your sentiment, don’t turn this place into reddit
I hope he uses this to go off the rails going into the election summer
He’s done in March 2026 though.
I thought he said May, but, anyway, I said going into the election summer
Edit : the midterms
Oh, my bad, it is May. I hope just his show going off the air helps drive enough attention to whatever he does next.
At least there’s a decent amount of time for his team to plan a new project, or leave the US or whatever.
I see some sort of streaming show or HBO. No way he and his writing team all leave the US. I don’t even know who could give him a decent platform anyway
I used to watch “Late shows” on YouTube, but after the 2nd time Trump got elected, I stopped consuming any political content from the US, and again after the “Liberation Day”, I stopped consuming any US produced media (including YouTube content creators). I just can’t deal with so much “Trump content”, nor do I want to keep to, in any manner, help content that thrives on that.
I just can’t deal with a second season of “The House of Trump”.
I’m not implying that this is why it got cancelled, just expressing the reason to why I even stopped watching it, on YouTube. Can’t say if others have done the same or not, but following American politics is… exhausting.
You think it’s exhausting, try living in it.
My parents already lived through a dictatorship, and I know the struggles that came along with it, including a post-colonial war and being subject to a thought police, that persecuted and prosecuted anyone, just for owning specific books, many of which were not even political. So while I have not lived through it, my parents did, much worse than you, and I was raised in a post-dictatorship regime completely aware of what the previous generation had to go through, thank you very much!
And has the old saying goes… “Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat itself”, and considering you are on the second Trump term, just after a 4 year hiatus, you guys must have the memory of a gold fish.
PS - I had a much longer and extensive post originally, but quite honestly, I do not want to enter a debate about this. But what you guys need is though love. In fact I believe that the only way that the US can escape the current political paradigm, is if you go full dictatorship, live under it for a few decades, and finally have a revolution. You are constantly on a situation where you move 1 step ahead, and 2 backwards, shifting between Democrats and Republicans, and with neither having the will to make a meaningful change to the system. I could say much much much more, but I wont, if only because, I no longer have the bandwidth for US politics, as I have already stated!
Good luck!
This sucks to see. Hopefully he’ll get picked up somewhere else and go back to a format closer to what the Colbert report used to be.
The Colbert Report would be difficult to reformulate due to Colbert’s prominence and the fact that he’s been, ahem…overt…with his political opinions since he gave up the character. As ridiculous as it sounds, a lot of people literally thought he was conservative when he was doing the character both on Daily Show and Colbert Report, which afforded him a lot of opportunity to play it up. I don’t think that would be the case if he went back. Plus, a few critical writers who contributed to segments like “The Word” moved on towards the end of Colbert Report, and I think they were really critical to the quality of the show that “Late Show” never quite matched…
…Or maybe he could just dive right back in and it would be awesome. What do I know about show business I’m just some guy.
tl;dr - Late Night was killed by the Internet. This has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the increasing irrelevance of television.
Late night is dying. This isn’t a conspiracy. This isn’t bowing to Trump. It’s just good timing for Trump.
Before I say anything else, I need to make one thing abundantly clear that these headlines keep being sketchy about. Colbert was not cancelled. His contract just wasn’t renewed. That is a pretty big distinction. One of them is ending a contract pre-emptively, the other is just deciding to not continue with those services after an agreed upon point.
Everyone keeps suggesting this is because of Trump but you’re ignoring what has been happening to both the Late Show and Late Night in general for years. The entire format is dying. Most people don’t watch the show live anymore, they do it on YouTube. Financially that’s not viable for the studios. The cost they put into it doesn’t equal out over the amount they can get back from YouTube. It doesn’t make financial sense for them to keep making the show when no one is watching it on its primary method. They could try to pivot the entire show to YouTube but that also would be kinda hard to justify the cost.
Like all of you in these comments seem to forget that Conan was reduced to 30 minutes before being cancelled, not having any Late Show replacement. Seem to forget that Corden was cancelled and replaced with an internet game show. Seem to forget that Samantha Bee’s show wasn’t replaced by any late show either.
Or Lily Singh’s. Or that the Outstanding Variety Talk Series has gone from 6 entries in 2019 to just 3 entries in 2025. Or the fact that Colbert has lost 1 million viewers from 2019 to 2025 while still retaining topdog for Late Night in viewership? If the other hosts didn’t get bumps in viewers (they didn’t) then it’s because they just stopped watching…Why? First off, the entire market is saturated. You’ve got too many Late Night hosts to choose from, all of them in essentially the time slot or close to it. All of them then talk about the exact same thing. The only thing you’re watching one show over the other for is the host or the guests that episode. Then there’s the focus on American politics which makes sense because it’s an American show but it alienates people outside the country from watching it on YouTube. And due to it having a heavy focus on American politics, like a lot does now a days, a lot of people are exhausted and don’t want to tune in. They want an escape not another reminder. Not to mention the fact that attention spans have become shorter and we’ve gotten accustomed to on-demand viewing.
Seth Meyers is probably the only host who could easily survive this. Fallon and Kimmel have way too much money dumped into their shows, granted Fallon has more shows so maybe more pull. Meyers runs everything on a shoestring and has a hard focus on politics, not splitting his attention. He focuses the majority of his non-Guest screentime on politics with stuff like A Closer Look as well so his show doesn’t feel quite as pulled in two directions. The guest conversations are also super relaxed and casual, seeming to focus more on smaller celebrities than having constant big ones. He’s already basically an Internet show so the transition for him is fine. Kimmel, Colbert and Fallon? They’re too big, too grandiose, too expensive and now have far too little profit from the investment.
Edit: Downvote me all you want. This isn’t some grand plan to try and silence Colbert. The only people who listen to him are left leaning to begin with. He’s not reaching anyone new or changing minds. He’s not being the single educating point. Him being cancelled on its own might have a point but considering every late night show has been talking about the death of Late Night for years? This is a reach. Enjoy your bizarre conspiratorial nonsense. I’ll go shave with Occam.
Edit 2: I messed up and said Lily Singh’s show wasn’t replaced by another Late Show. It was. The Amber Ruffin Show.
Sure, Jan.
YouTube killed the tv star?
YouTube is where I watch the late show…
Lol, this has pretty much zero to do with YouTube IMO.
