Critic's Notebook: The Awful Optics of CBS Canceling ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert'

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18 hours ago

In a shocking move that reflected just about every deeply felt insecurity in the TV industry, the entertainment industry and perhaps American media at large, CBS announced on Thursday, July 17, that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will wrap its run in May 2026, following the 2025-26 broadcast season.
Eager to emphasize that this wasn't a Colbert-specific thing, CBS, in its statement, said that the entire Late Show franchise is coming to an end. This isn't quite the same, in historical terms, as the legacy shift that would occur if NBC announced the end of The Tonight Show — The Late Show was David Letterman and then it was Stephen Colbert, not an endless and storied parade of hosts — but it's a degree of finality that few could have expected.
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Actually, the statement from CBS brass had a lot of things it wanted to emphasize.
'This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,' the statement read. 'It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.'
Methinks the CBS triumvirate — George Cheeks, Amy Reisenbach, David Stapf — doth emphasize too much, because they don't want imaginations to run wild.
And therefore, we must trust them, for official purposes.
I'm sure that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is absolutely ending because of a financial decision against the challenging backdrop of late night and it's not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.
The official reasons for the cancellation are whatever they are, and who am I to question the co-CEO of Paramount Global (and president and chief executive officer of CBS), the president of CBS Entertainment and the president of CBS Studios?
Nobody. That's who.
But official reasons and optics are two different things, and if the folks in charge at CBS didn't know what the optics were, they wouldn't have released a statement saying that what we think we can see with our eyes and infer with our common sense definitely aren't the truth.
The optics here may not have any connection to facts, but man the optics here suck — and they suck on a slew of levels that are ALL addressed in the statement as things that we're not supposed to be thinking about but can't help but think about.
So it's not related to anything happening at Paramount!
Good to know! What could possibly be happening at Paramount? A merger between CBS' parent company, Paramount Global, and Skydance? A massive deal that was seen as a major part of why CBS just settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over details from a Kamala Harris interview that basically everybody in the news business said was standard operating procedure? The deal, of course, requires FCC approval, and the FCC under Trump is looking a lot less like a nonpartisan commission and more like a direct arm of the Trump administration.
And what content could the statement possibly be referring to? Well, Colbert was not a huge fan of the settlement. Colbert has not been a huge fan of the president. If you want to send signs to the FCC and Trump that you really want to be allowed to merge with Skydance, canceling a show fronted by one of Trump's most vocal comic opponents would be a great way of saying, 'Hey, we're playing ball here!'
If Trump hasn't already enthusiastically gloated on social media about getting Colbert fired — which he definitely didn't do, because CBS' statement definitely says he didn't do it — he's bound to. (Update: He did on Friday morning.)
Then again, Colbert isn't going anywhere for 10 months and it's hard to imagine him agreeing to stick around for a swan song in which his content is being restricted by the network that canceled the show. So let's assume that he's going to spend a season lampooning Trump, even as a lame duck.
I wouldn't even say that Colbert has been Trump's stiffest critic in the talk show space. John Oliver is aggressive in his analysis on HBO, thumbing his nose at corporate parents who, all things considered, might prefer that he not do that. Jimmy Kimmel is toward the tail-end of a multi-decade journey from jovial, trampoline-loving young man to angry, dogmatic middle-aged man, eviscerating the current administration at every turn. No matter who is hosting on any given night, The Daily Show takes pride in taking shots at whoever is in power, finding shots at Trump to be particularly easy to come by. The 'A Closer Look' segment on Late Night With Seth Meyers rivals Last Week Tonight as TV's most scathing deep dive into whatever is most immediately infuriating in the current landscape.
There are less political talk show hosts. Jimmy Fallon plays his various games and goofs around with celebrities and, you know what? There's room for that! (I want nothing to do with it, but that's OK, too.) And when Seth Meyers isn't taking closer looks, sometimes he's just drinking with stars or making fun of his own errors. And you know what? There's room for that! And if Netflix would renew Everybody's Live With John Mulaney, I'd like to believe there's room for doing a talk show episode blindfolded or fighting a trio of 14-year-old boys on live television.
Or is there? As the CBS statement wanted to emphasize, this is about 'a challenging backdrop in late night.'
Even before All of This, CBS had already ended The Late Late Show after James Corden departed, replacing it with After Midnight, only to cancel After Midnight when host Taylor Tomlinson opted to focus on other professional projects.
At some point, CBS might just air whatever procedural or reality show is in the 10 p.m. slot, kick to local news and then play the national anthem and go black, just like back in the good old days.
And might everybody else do the same? Talk shows aren't watched like they used to be. Sure, they're one of the best vehicles going for movie stars looking to promote their latest aspiring blockbuster or politicians looking to show they have a sense of humor, but it's been 10 years of increased focus on YouTube and viral clips and nobody has quite figured out how to eliminate the pesky 'late night television show' aspect of things. But it sure feels like they want to try!
So the reasons CBS is actually ending The Late Show With Stephen Colbert are what they are.
The reasons it FEELS like CBS is ending The Late Show With Stephen Colbert FEEL like they include a precarious situation in which a multibillion-dollar corporate deal might hinge on doing everything possible to kowtow to a commission that isn't supposed to be political, but absolutely is; a political climate in which outspoken opponents to the current regime are more vulnerable than ever before to silencing ripples; and an entertainment economic landscape in which one of the most venerable of television genres is no longer profitable, and thus might go the way of live anthology drama and broadcast Westerns.
And even if none of those things has anything to do with anything …
It sure looks awful.
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