CBS canned ‘The Late Show' over tens of millions in financial losses annually — not Stephen Colbert's politics: sources

Yahoo

2 days ago

CBS brass say they pulled the plug on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' because of its punishing losses — pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year — and claim politics had nothing to do with it, The Post has learned.
The 61-year-old host got canned just days after he took a dig at the Tiffany Network over its $16 million settlement with Donald Trump over a controversial '60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris as the network's parent Paramount negotiates with the Trump administration regulatory approval for its $8 billion sale to independent studio Skydance.
'I am offended, and I don't know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company,' Colbert said of the truce in his Monday night monologue.
'But just taking a stab at it, I'd say $16 million would help.'
'Gets no advertising'
But scathing jokes at the expense of CBS brass wasn't the problem, according to insiders.
Instead, the network's bosses could no longer stomach the fact that Colbert has been plagued with an increasingly dire shortage of advertisers.
That's despite Colbert's No, 1 ratings in his time slot and his status as a key face for the Tiffany Network.
In the end, Paramount's co-CEO George Cheeks decided to kill the show, sources said.
'Colbert gets no advertising and late night is a tough spot,' said a person with direct knowledge of CBS's decision.
'Colbert might be No. 1, but who watches late night TV anymore?'
Some Democrats voiced suspicion, citing the host's left-wing leanings and CBS owner Paramount's urgent need to gain an OK from the Trump administration for the merger with Skydance, the Hollywood studio behind the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise.
'CBS canceled Colbert's show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump — a deal that looks like bribery,' lefty Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote on X.
'America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.'
Skydance CEO David Ellison is the son of Donald Trump pal and tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
As The Post first reported, CBS just paid $16 million to Trump and has agreed to run millions of dollars more in MAGA-friendly ads to settle the president's lawsuit alleging that '60 Minutes' deceptively edited its 2024 interview with Kamala Harris to make her look better.
Trump, meanwhile, celebrated Colbert's canning in a Friday morning post on Truth Social.
'I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,' the president wrote.
'His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!'
Fervent denials
But despite Ellison's Trump ties, sources said Skydance and its partners at Redbird Capital — the private equity firm that will help run CBS once the deal is cleared — only heard the news of the show's impending cancellation just before it was announced late Thursday.
'Skydance had nothing to do with this,' one person close to the decision said.
'Colbert loses $40 million to $50 million a year, so George Cheeks just decided to pull the plug.'
The show's dominance in its time slot belies sharp declines in viewership as younger viewers move away from traditional TV.
'The Late Show' boasts nearly 2 million total viewers and 200,000 viewers in the key 25-54 'demo' — making it No. 1 in its time slot.
Nevertheless, that's a sharp decline versus the numbers it racked up in its heyday.
The ad data firm Guideline estimates that CBS's late-night shows together drew $220 million in ad revenue in 2024 — just half the $439 million they drew in 2018.
RedBird's Jeff Shell, the former head of NBCUniversal who will run the network once the deal is done, has been crunching the numbers and finding that CBS is a 'melting ice cube' with its losses and cost overruns, a source said.
'Truth-based' turn
The plan is to enhance CBS Sports and invest in 'truth-based' news at a network that conservatives have long ripped for its alleged liberal bias.
A Paramount spokesman declined to comment and would not deny that massive losses were tied to the show's cancellation.
Trump's lawsuit was impeding the approval of the deal by the Trump Federal Communications Commission.
The Post has learned that Ellison is now telling people that with the lawsuit settled the Skydance-Paramount deal will get FCC approval by mid-August.
While Ellison is predicting imminent regulatory approval, it will come at a cost: FCC chairman Brendan Carr is likely to demand conditions to remedy what he believes is left-wing news bias in programming that violates agency 'public interest' rules that govern local broadcasting as opposed to cable.
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