CBS pulled the plug on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert this week, and if your first reaction was to throw a party, you might want to put the cake down and take a closer look at what this actually means.
It’s not just that one of television’s longest-running brands has been shelved. It’s not just that Stephen Colbert won’t be on your screen at 11:35 PM ET anymore.
The bigger problem is what it signals for the rest of the industry: when a major broadcast network can’t monetize one of its flagship programs anymore, we’ve got a much deeper issue than partisan fatigue.
No matter how you feel about Colbert — and let’s be honest, plenty of folks on the right saw his run as an unending monologue against everything they believe in — the cancellation of a show like The Late Show is the kind of media earthquake that causes cracks far beyond the walls of CBS.
Why? Because the media business — whether it’s television, radio, digital, or streaming — survives on a simple, ancient model: gather a big audience, then sell that audience to advertisers. That’s it. That’s the entire structure. And if that model no longer works for one of the most visible platforms in entertainment, we’re looking at a doomsday scenario for legacy media.
The end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert isn’t about a host getting stale, or viewers switching to Netflix. It’s about the fact that CBS, a network that has aired late-night programming for more than 30 years, no longer sees a path to meaningful revenue in the timeslot. Not just less profit. None. They are choosing to give up the real estate entirely. That should terrify anyone in this industry.
And yes, that includes you, even if you spend your evenings watching YouTube instead of network TV.
This is a bigger threat than just another late-night show falling victim to a changing culture. This is the collapse of a trusted format — one that networks once considered essential to their identity and bottom line. If a show that consistently led in the ratings and regularly beat its rivals can’t survive in the current advertising ecosystem, what hope does anyone else have?
What happens when advertisers no longer value mass media exposure? What happens when prime-time leads to prime losses? And most crucially, what happens when executives start to believe there’s no point in swinging for the fences anymore?
For decades, media was a scale game. The more people you reached, the more money you made. Period. Late-night television was a linchpin in that strategy. It was supposed to be cheap compared to scripted drama, flexible, live-to-tape, and packed with built-in advertiser interest. It was also the perfect platform to promote a network’s other programming.
Now? Now we’re watching a network decide that the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. And that’s a warning shot for everyone else.
If Stephen Colbert — a guy who regularly brought in the biggest audiences north of 2.5 million viewers — couldn’t deliver for CBS, then how does anyone justify the value of reaching a mass audience anymore? It’s a question that local radio stations, cable networks, and online publishers should all be asking themselves at the same time.
There’s a temptation in some corners of the political or cultural spectrum to cheer the downfall of people you disagree with. Colbert was no friend to conservative values. He often mocked the right, relentlessly, and was unabashed in his criticism of President Donald Trump. But celebrating the end of his show because you didn’t like the monologues misses the forest for the trees.
Because if there’s no value in producing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, there may soon be no value in producing anything that appeals to more than a niche. And if we end up in a world where the only successful media is hyper-targeted, identity-driven content that exists to confirm existing biases, we’ll be worse off — not better.
Even in its increasingly partisan form, late-night television was still a space where celebrities launched movies, political candidates softened their image, and viral moments captured national attention. To walk away from that is to admit that appointment television is dead. And if it’s dead, what comes next?
I’ve seen plenty of comparisons between Colbert and the likes of hosts like Johnny Carson and David Letterman since the news of Colbert’s ouster was announced. But the game has changed completely even since Letterman vacated The Late Show. Gone are the days of having three broadcast networks and a few dozen cable channels. Now? Hell, there are more than 500 separate channels included inside The Roku Channel, let alone broadcast TV, cable TV, and millions of channels on YouTube, Rumble, and Twitch.
You can criticize Colbert’s content, you can criticize the show’s wildly inflated budget, and you can say that this is another example of “Go Woke, Go Broke.” Fine. You’re entitled to your opinion. But I’ll counter with “If this can happen to a property like The Late Show — with a consistent audience of more than 2 million people, what makes you think it won’t happen to you or your show?” So if you think Colbert’s show getting axed is just a win for “your side,” you’re missing the broader problem.
There’s a reason advertisers spent decades throwing their budgets at big-audience properties like The Late Show. Because it worked. Because scale mattered. If it doesn’t anymore, then the model that supports everything from your local sports talk station to the NFL’s next TV rights deal is at risk.
We’re not just talking about a guy in a suit telling jokes at a desk. We’re talking about an industry bellwether being pulled off the air. That’s not just a programming decision — it’s a flashing red light for media at large.
So no, the end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert shouldn’t be a cause for celebration. It should be a wake-up call.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
People don’t trust the main street media anymore. The trust relationship has been broken.
Garrett, we do not always agree on things, but you did a great job here. The one thing I will say is if the show was good, if the numbers where better, the money should have flowed better, but when you go as left as his content was on a regular basis it is a tough sell. I managed Air America in Miami (WINZ) in my past. Very tough to make work and at the time we were among the better performing Air America station in the CC portfolio.
Ken, I think this situation is very closely related to AM/FM radio in that I have seen lots of folks, whether it’s in talk radio, sports talk, music radio, etc…have produced great shows, with high ratings and great content, and get blown out because the sales team hasn’t been able to monetize it. So my thoughts here — if they can be encapsulated by roughly one or two sentences are — are “If a company like CBS can’t make money on a show with at minimum two million viewers each night, that has the name recognition/heritage that a brand like The Late Show has, then I wouldn’t have a ton of faith that everyone else is going to get it figured out.” I don’t know if it’s a left vs right thing, for the record. And I didn’t include this in the story, but I don’t think it’s a “CBS capitulated to Trump” thing like others do. If what’s been reported is true and the show lost tens of millions each year, that’s not hard to connect the dots for why it ended. I think the bigger issue is the inability to make money on a show with millions watching each night, plus a somewhat sizeable audience on YouTube. Whether or not that’s a CBS problem or a legacy/mainstream media problem is something I’m interested in learning more about and watching in the future.
As always, appreciate your thoughts Ken!
Beyond the issues Searight laid out, the late night talk show has been a dying form for years. I can remember as far back as 10 years ago Conan O’Brien saying that the “two guests followed by a musical act” format was growing pretty stale – I know we have variations on it now, but kinda the same idea. And, with a zillion different media outlets and social media, there’s little novelty to watching a 5 minute interview with a celebrity that already is omnipresent.
Great piece, Garrett, from a writer that understands the impact of The Late Show cancellation. Every other article I’ve read gets into the politics of the story or makes it a criticism of the late-night format. The bottom line is that the show continues to bring over two million viewers to CBS. That is why I’m convinced this cancellation is a quid pro quo for regulatory approval rather than the inability to make the show profitable. I have been in this business and managed stations for over 30 years and have never cancelled a profitable show.
Maybe CBS needs to bring in a fresh group of sales executives. There are plenty of radio sales people who would sell the hell out of The Late Show’s audience.