Goodnight and Good Riddance to the Late Show

Next May, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will officially cease production. CBS decided to end the program, which began in 1992 with David Letterman as host. After his retirement in 2015, Letterman was replaced by Stephen Colbert, who had previously been a regular guest on The Daily Show and hosted a show on Comedy Central.

The shocking announcement rocked the Democratic Party, which has come to rely on Colbert as a staunch supporter. Colbert frequently interviews Democratic Party leaders and focuses his “jokes’ on President Donald Trump and the Republicans.

Last Thursday night, Colbert interviewed U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), who posted on social media,  “If Paramount and CBS ended The Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”

Joining Schiff in criticizing the decision was U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She also blasted Paramount, the parent company of CBS, for agreeing to pay Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit regarding the editing of an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris on the program 60 Minutes.

CBS edited the interview to make her answer to a question about Israel sound intelligible. While show producers claimed the edits were routine, Trump argued that it amounted to election interference.

Even extensive editing from CBS, media bias in her favor, and a huge financial advantage were not enough for Harris to overcome her pathetic campaign and the electorate’s support for President Trump and his agenda.

The cancellation of one of their favorite programs, The Late Show, gives Democrats, who are already seething about Trump’s victory and his financial settlements with CBS and ABC, another reason to be enraged.

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Their favorite conspiracy theory is that the show was canceled because CBS is trying to gain favor with the Trump administration. In the days ahead, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will decide on the proposed $8.4 billion merger of Paramount with Skydance Media.

The FCC has spent 251 days reviewing the potential merger and receiving feedback from stakeholders and interested parties such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and its Hollywood Local 399, and the conservative public interest group the Center for American Rights.

While Democrats believe that the politics of the merger contributed to the show’s cancellation, the true reason was stated by CBS in their announcement about the decision. The network called it “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”

For perspective, Johnny Carson, as host of The Tonight Show, “at his peak” averaged 9 million viewers per night. David Letterman began hosting The Late Show in 1992. In his first season, the program was watched by 7.8 million viewers. When he relinquished hosting duties in 2015, the program’s audience had dropped to 2.8 million viewers.

In the last ten years, Colbert has not increased the audience for The Late Show; in fact, it has continued to fall. In the second quarter of 2025, the average viewership for Colbert’s show was only 2.42 million viewers.

CBS knows that the show's viewership will continue to decline, so it is cutting its losses. The Late Show employs 200 people, and CBS has been losing $40 million per year on the program, which costs $100 million annually to produce.

Not only does The Late Show lose money and attract relatively few viewers, but it is also politically one-sided. Colbert and his fellow late-night hosts are extremely liberal and love to skewer Trump and Republicans.

Their schtick is a departure from the tradition of Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, as hosts of The Tonight Show. Both were equal opportunity comics and made fun of Republicans and Democrats. As a result, their ratings were excellent. Starting in 1995, Leno beat Letterman, a huge liberal, in the ratings every year until ending his run as host of The Tonight Show.

The left-wing bias of the late-night shows created an opportunity for conservative comic Greg Gutfeld on Fox News. In his earlier time slot, Gutfeld averaged 3.29 million viewers in the second quarter of 2025, easily surpassing all the other late-night programs.

Gutfeld was praised by President Trump, who posted on social media, “He is better than all of them (other late-night hosts) combined, including the Moron (Jimmy Fallon) on NBC, who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

Trump was particularly happy that Colbert’s show was canceled. He has been a critic for quite a while. Last year, he posted that CBS could “pick almost anyone, right off the street, who would do better, and for FAR LESS MONEY.” On Friday, Trump wrote, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”

The future for Kimmel and Fallon looks bleak because their ratings have been even worse than Colbert’s unimpressive numbers. It should be no surprise to these networks, as the choices for viewers have never been greater. In addition, all the late-night hosts are preaching to the progressive choir, which is a minority of Americans.

It might behoove these network executives to examine the 2024 election results. The progressive candidate lost the popular vote, every battleground state, and her party is a minority in both houses of Congress.

Most Americans are moderate to conservative, not leftwing activists. Yet, Colbert and his late-night colleagues regularly produce content to mock President Trump and conservative values.

In the last few years, Colbert has displayed his allegiance to the pharmaceutical companies by promoting the COVID vaccines and denigrating those objecting to “the shot.” He also lampooned Americans who questioned the partisan investigations into President Trump and the 2020 election results.

Next May, President Trump will still be in office as Colbert leaves the airwaves, marking another departure of one of his enemies. As he works on his “Make America Great Again” agenda, Colbert will have more time to spend with his family and take as many COVID-19 shots as he wants.