What the End of The Late Show Really Means

The Atlantic

6 days ago

When CBS embarked on the project of replacing David Letterman as the host of The Late Show, in 2014, the network spared no expense. It hired Stephen Colbert, who had collected Emmys and acclaim while hosting his Comedy Central talk show, The Colbert Report; gave him total creative control; and fully revamped Manhattan's Ed Sullivan Theater so Colbert could make the show's longtime venue his own. After a shaky first year, Colbert found his footing in the lead-up to the 2016 election by focusing his opening monologues more pointedly on politics. The Late Show soon became the highest-rated talk show in America— a crown it has not relinquished since.
Ten years on, CBS has snatched the crown off its head. The network appears to have grown so dismayed with the state of late-night television that it has unceremoniously canceled one of the genre's most successful stalwarts: In a statement Thursday night, CBS announced that not only will this season of The Late Show —set to air through May 2026—be the program's last, but the franchise will also be retired entirely. ('We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable,' the statement offers as explanation.) The decision quickly prompted plenty of speculation among industry observers, given Colbert's recent, unvarnished scorn for CBS's parent company, Paramount, after it settled a lawsuit with Donald Trump; the president had accused 60 Minutes, the network's venerated TV news magazine, of deceptively editing an election-season interview with Kamala Harris. (CBS News, which produces 60 Minutes, denied the claim.) But whether or not there was some political motivation behind the cancellation (the network called the reason purely financial), the underlying point is clear: The Late Show is no longer valuable enough for CBS to bother protecting it.
As the business of television changes, late-night talk shows have found themselves in a particularly awkward spot. For one, people have stopped flocking to linear television as their evenings wind down. If they do turn the TV on, it's often to check out what's new to stream rather than to put up with a somewhat staid format interrupted by many commercial breaks. The customary celebrity chats and musical performances typically appear online not long after they air, and said celebrities now have many other outlets for plugging their projects: video podcasts, YouTube shows. The cost of producing one of those alternatives is also far smaller than the budget for a glitzy affair like The Late Show.
These arguments always get trotted out as nightly programs drop off the map—like when The Late Show 's lead-out, The Late Late Show, didn't survive its host James Corden's departure; and when its follow-up, the Taylor Tomlinson–hosted variety show At Midnight, lasted just over a year before the comedian decided to return to performing stand-up full time. Questions about the genre's relevance are also why Late Night With Seth Meyers had to get rid of its house band to survive, and why Comedy Central chose not to replace The Daily Show 's former host Trevor Noah. Instead, the cable channel was satisfied with bringing back Noah's predecessor Jon Stewart for one night a week, rotating the other episodes amongst the current cast.
And yet: Even though Puck reported that Colbert's program was losing more than $40 million a year for CBS, there's something quite shocking about a network simply giving up a foothold as established as The Late Show. Brand names are hard to come by in television, and The Late Show was a big one: Letterman built it up over the course of the 1990s, after NBC passed him over as Johnny Carson's successor to The Tonight Show. Colbert then inherited a program defined by its past host's curmudgeonly brand of snark and fundamentally remade it into a much more thoughtful and authentic show. He's proved capable of deep, empathetic interviews with guests and spiky, aggressive political joke-making (by broadcast TV's rigid standards).
Still, Colbert would never be able to achieve the ubiquity that Carson and Letterman enjoyed before the advent of streaming. The occasional clip might go viral, and entertainment sites will write up the best parts of the monologue; the talk-show desk, however, no longer comes with a seat of cultural power. Colbert was once the most irreverent member of his late-night brethren (people forget what a bomb-thrower his satirical The Colbert Report character could be), but he has since become more of a fatherly figure—one I value as part of the TV firmament but who doesn't exactly scream 'cutting edge.'
Then again, 'cutting edge' is not something CBS has sought in a long time. It's hard to know what could possibly take over for The Late Show when it vanishes in mid-2026. Sitcom reruns? Movies you could just as easily catch on Netflix? The point of network television is to offer something that has a live jolt to it—sports, stand-up, the occasional drama or comedy shows that become appointment viewing. As the medium dissolves from relevance, its owners instead seem content not to create anything of cultural importance. The Late Show is not the juggernaut it once was, sure. But what's most tragic is to think of it being replaced by nothing at all.