The era of late night TV is currently gasping for air, lying in a hospital bed, and waiting to die. That may sound grim, but it's no less true. We recently learned that CBS is canceling "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in May 2026. What's more, Colbert isn't merely being replaced. Rather, CBS' parent company Paramount is simply ending the "Late Show" franchise, one of the pillars of late night TV for more than three decades. With that, not only is late night on life support, but TV as we used
to know it is also on its deathbed.
When Colbert took over "The Late Show" from David Letterman in 2015, it was a very different time. Traditional television still had a lot of relevance, with Colbert having become a star on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" before getting the highly-coveted gig succeeding Letterman. Meanwhile, Netflix was, more or less, the only meaningful streaming service in town. That was then, this is now.
In 2025, Netflix generates more revenue than the entire global box office combined. Aside from Netflix, we have Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video, and a host of other smaller streaming services competing for attention. Elsewhere, large media companies are selling off TV networks like it's going out of style -- namely, because it is going out of style, as these former centerpieces of pop culture are losing relevance/viewership each year. To that end, CBS executives, in a statement, labeled this as a purely financial decision, saying the following:
"We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire 'The Late Show' franchise in May of 2026. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television. This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount."
Read more: 15 Best TV Shows That Were Canceled After Only One Season
The End Of Late Night Is The End Of An Era
Dating back to the golden days of "The Tonight Show" when Johnny Carson was hosting, these shows have been pillars of the larger American cultural conversation. Even when Jay Leno took over, he was followed by "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." At the time, NBC could easily sustain not one but two major talk shows with millions of viewers, all while Letterman was going strong on CBS.
The fact that CBS would outright cancel "Late Night" rather than change creative directions is telling. The network similarly previously canceled "The Late Late Show" after James Corden left in 2023 (rather than find a new host) and also recently axed the late night comedy program "After Midnight," so Colbert is not an isolated case. Indeed, these former pillars of pop culture have been struggling to find relevancy in the modern, increasingly splintered media landscape for years.
To that end, NBC took "The Tonight Show," now hosted by Jimmy Fallon, down from five nights a week to four last year to save costs and maybe save the show for a little while longer. How long will Fallon last? What about "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" over on ABC? It's worth noting that Colbert averaged around 2.4 million viewers, while Kimmel gets around 1.7 million and Fallon trails with just 1.1 million, per LateNighter.com. This is to say nothing of "The Daily Show" or "Late Night with Seth Meyers."
All of these shows are pulling in fractions of the audience they once had and, as such, are starting to make less and less financial sense for the larger corporations that back them. With Colbert, though, the timing is certainly questionable. Paramount only barely settled a lawsuit President Trump filed over a 2024 "60 Minutes" interview with then-presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Trump claimed the interview was edited in a way to mislead voters, and while Paramount labeled the suit "meritless" (and has released all the footage publicly to support its claim), it still paid up.
Trump, of course, is a vocal critic of both Colbert and Kimmel (and vice versa). Meanwhile, Paramount is currently awaiting regulatory approval of its merger with Skydance, which was first announced last year. That being the case, it's hard not to wonder if the "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" being canceled was in any way politically motivated.
Political Or Not, The Message Behind The Late Show's Cancellation Is Clear
I am not here to go down that particular rabbit hole at this particular moment. Either way, the message is clear: "The Late Show" is expendable. After all, would the company have canceled Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" universe shows if Trump didn't like them?
The fact that Colbert has the best ratings in American late night television currently and is the first to go feels like the writing on the wall. How likely is it that Kimmel or Meyers gains those viewers once Colbert leaves? Might NBC and ABC look at what CBS is doing and consider a similar move? It all feels possible right now. Moreover, the ending of what TV once was in favor of what it's becoming, for better or worse, feels entirely inevitable in light of "The Late Show" going away.
Broadcast and cable TV viewership fell below 50% of total viewership in 2023. It has only continued to drop since then. Likewise, DirecTV is bleeding after losing the NFL Sunday Ticket rights, with more and more sports rights headed to streaming rather than traditional TV. All the while, Netflix continues to dominate with its original programming, and even shows made for networks tend to find their audience on streaming. The collapse of late night TV feels like pulling that crucial Jenga block out near the end of the game, causing the tower to start shaking. It's not over yet, but it soon will be.
The fact is that late night's relevance and viewership have been in decline. The circumstances might feel suspect; heck the whole situation may seem f****d up. Be that as it may, the unfortunate truth is that late night has been on life support for some time. The writing has been on the wall, and it's now unavoidable. With the collapse of late night imminent, one of the last bastions of traditional television is on its way out. Aside from cable news, very soon, almost nothing will remain to help keep it alive.
TV will still exist, sure, but it is destined to become a lifeless shadow of what it once was. The point of no return is upon us.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
