I’ll note that Colbert has the highest viewership (and therefore ad revenue) in his time slot. This is almost surely about the Ellison family, which now controls CBS, wanting to silence him.
I’ll note that Colbert has the highest viewership (and therefore ad revenue) in his time slot. This is almost surely about the Ellison family, which now controls CBS, wanting to silence him.
Well yeah, some people cannot handle their opinions being challenged, but you are also guilty of insisting on a hardline that seems unlikely to be the only explanation. If media companies are looking to axe people, it makes perfect sense they would pick someone who is not growing while also deplatforming someone who speaks against their ideals. So Colbert lost almost 1/4 of viewership over 5 years, but how does that compare to Kimmel or Fallon viewership? Without a baseline for comparison, your statistics are just arbitrary. The Times even said that ad revenue is about half for all Late Night shows compared to 2018, but if there are also half as many shows, then the profit/loss should be similar.
Overall, I don’t believe anyone would cancel a show that still draws over 1mill viewers for “financial reasons”. Redo the budget, sure, but not cut the entire program.
Edit: well written and reasoned though. The comment was a good conversation contribution. It’s unfortunate downvotes always represent agree/disagree instead of productive/counterproductive.
Good point. I will grab that information. However, I will say that if Colbert loses a million viewers and neither one of the other ones manage to pick up those viewers? They’re clearly not going back into late night.
This isn’t the whole year but seasonal averages to a point for 2017-18. Variety says that the stats were
TheWrap says that for the 2018-2019 season, the stats looked as follows.
Deadline says the stats for 2019-2020 were as follows.
Deadline says for 2020-2021 the stats were as follows:
Couldn’t easily find anything for anything after that. The current 2.4 million viewer number is from all the articles talking about Colbert being cancelled. But even just from those years you can see the obvious trend. People were leaving late night.
Fun side thing I found was this. An article from 2 years ago talking about how Streaming is killing Late Night.
Oh I also found:
This medium post on Late Night dying
This HollywoodReporter article on how Late Night is downsizing.
Substack post on the death of late night
ScreenRant saying the last days of Late Night
Forbes article pointing out that Late Night shows are just recap shows
Fortune article talking about Late Night fading to black.
Even the New York Post saying it’s nearly over for Late Night
MovieWeb on Late Night embracing its descent into oblivion.
Radio Station WROR talking about why late night is dying
EVEN JIMMY KIMMEL SAID LATE NIGHT HAS NO FUTURE. Just went on a podcast and said he has no hope for the future of the format or for his own career.
But they didn’t cut off the series partway through a contract. They just decided not to renew Colberts or bother spending the money rebranding or bringing on someone else.
Colbert alone costs them $15 million per year and his contract was up for a renewal. They were either going to have to pay him the same or more. Maybe they could get away with less but most agents are not going to allow that. Either way a fight would have been had to pay him less. Then you’ve got the extremely prime location of the Ed Sullivan theater which could be used for a whole host of things. Then there’s paying the guests, the acts and the various departments that keep the show running. You could make running a late show pretty cheap but they just… didn’t. The Late Show with Colbert is a pricey thing to keep running.
I also want to say here that I’m not trying to defend CBS in cutting the show off. Frankly I couldn’t care one way or another. I used to watch him a lot and loved him but now I’m just sorta meh and don’t care. The thing that weirded me out was that this stuff has been being talked about for years with declining viewers and late night going away and seemingly everyones immediate reaction was SOLELY to point the finger at Trump. Like he may have been a factor but I seriously doubt he was the driving factor.
I do buy the financials line. They’re trying to look profitable for a merger and the show doesn’t drag in as much money as it could and signing another expensive contract with someone in a field that has a declining viewership? I don’t see how that’s just thrown out the window instantly just to say it’s to silence Colbert. Considering no one will stop talking about it… didn’t really work out that well, huh? Not to mention the fact that we had this shit over a decade ago with Conan. Colbert will be fine and will end up landing a job doing more or less the same thing while bringing over his staff. Dude cares about the people who work for him.
But my evidence more than anything? They’re a fuckin business trying to merge with another one. Literally the only thing that matters to them is profits and they’ve said they don’t want to get involved in pre-written long term contracts. The writing is on the wall here. It’s one shitty company absorbing another shitty company and everyone just started pointing the finger at… Trump.
I couldn’t give less of a fuck what makes these people boo when I’ve seen what makes them cheer. If they wanna downvote me with imaginary internet points that mean nothing to wrap themselves up in a comfy blanket and keep pretending then by all means.
I wonder how many people are shifting to watching that content in clips instead of the whole show. The monologue, little bits, individual interviews. People may prefer to just watch the sort of clip and skip the rest, which is easier to do in YouTube instead of loading the episode up and seeking around.
If that were significant, it would suggest a different production approach, since there’s not much point in producing it in a continuous bit. Also the best person for a monologue may not be the best person to conduct an interview.
Of course it’s worth wondering why the most successful would be the next to fall, rather than the least. The other cancelled shows were generally the low performers. Maybe because it’s more expensive, or maybe because of appeasing Trump. The decline might have made it an easier decision, but they may have wanted to grease the wheels if the deal a bit
I was one of them. Pretty sure I’m not alone considering the sliding TV ratings and the large YouTube ratings. I had no interest in sitting around watching 5 minutes of ads in between clips when, even without adblocker because I wanted to support the show, I only had to sit through like 30-45 seconds of them. I stopped watching Colbert about a year ago but that was mostly out of mental fatigue of constant American news so I stopped watching Seth Meyers and stuff too.
There is the problem that one of those links I posted brings up as well. Late Night shows are basically recap shows but they’re really bad at doing so. They often film at around 4-5pm EST, at least Colbert does, so anything after that fact just won’t end up on the show until the next night. But we all have a phone in our pocket now that tells us the information instantly with social media that has everyone talking about it. Late Night hosts are no longer “talking about what the Nation is talking about”, like they often like to say. They talk about what happened yesterday. Honestly? If Late Night shows all went live every night instead of being pre-recorded? I think they’d do awesome. Colbert’s live shows got more numbers than any of his other ones. People were there for the IMMEDIATE feedback and they got it.
Recap and redundant content, oh look a musical guest… but I can hear any of those and way more on demand. An interview with a celebrity, who if I cared I could watch a ton of elsewhere. Of course some interview better than others, and seeing a Jon Stewart interview is worthwhile, but not sure if I’m in the mood to watch a monologue at the same time I’m in the mood to watch an interview. Which is really the big thing about these shows is that it’s a long set of not really connected content that used to make sense with broadcast television but makes less and less sense with on-demand video dominating.
Exactly. It’s a wide scale variety show that exists in a world where you can easily switch back and forth yourself. The medium as a whole is dying. If it was live at least you’d have instant feedback to what’s going on and an incentive to continue to watch, not hearing what is now effectively old news.
That was some good rounding out of the data, thank you. I see better where you are coming from. Colbert being 15M per year is beyond crazy. I had no expectation of his salary being that high. Unless they were using him to pull more subscribers for other shows there is definitely no reason to have that salary on top of the production costs.