ADVERTISEMENT Late-night talk shows are enormous totems on the US media landscape so news that CBS is axing its version after more than 30-years has sent shockwaves across the industry.
Stephen Colbert is bidding farewell to ‘The Late Show’ after the network confirmed the programme will wrap up next May, triggering a wave of support from fellow hosts, with many calling the decision both shocking and sad.
“I’m just as shocked as everyone,” said Jimmy Fallon, adding that Colbert is “one of the sharpest, funniest hosts to ever do it.” Fallon posted on Instagram that he had hoped to “ride this out with him for years to come”, and joked that his friends and family would now need a new 11:30pm routine.
Seth Meyers echoed the sentiment, calling Colbert “an even better person” than he is a comedian. “I’m going to miss having him on TV every night,” he added, before teasing that Colbert can no longer use the excuse that he’s “too busy to hang out”.
‘Last Week Tonight’ host John Oliver called the news “terrible” and “very, very, very sad”, saying he’d always loved both Stephen and the show. “It’s incredibly sad,” he said during an appearance in Erie, Pennsylvania. “Late-night shows mean a lot to me, not just because I work in them, but because even growing up in England, I would watch Letterman’s show, which of course was Stephen’s show, and think about what a glamorous world that was,” he remembered, adding that he was “partly excited to see what they’re going to do for the next 10 months.”
Jimmy Kimmel kept it short and sweet – “Love you Stephen” – while Andy Cohen told interviewers it was “a very sad day for CBS” and described the network as “turning off the lights after the news”.
But not everyone was mourning. US president Donald Trump – a long-time target of Colbert’s monologues – took to Truth Social to say, “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired.”
Colbert, 61, told his audience last week at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York that he’d only just been informed of the decision. “Next year will be our last season,” he said. “It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.” The crowd responded with groans and boos. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” Colbert replied.
CBS insists the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” – and that it had nothing to do with content or performance. In a joint statement, senior executives called the show “a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist”.
Still, the timing raised eyebrows. The news came just three days after Colbert criticised the legal settlement between Donald Trump and Paramount Global, CBS’s parent company, regarding a long-running dispute over a 60 Minutes segment. Two US senators have since called for transparency on the matter, questioning whether the show’s end is really about the bottom line.
Colbert took over ‘The Late Show’ in 2015, following David Letterman’s retirement. Over nearly a decade, he transformed the programme into one of the most politically pointed and consistently sharp voices on American television – regularly skewering Trump and other political figures with satirical precision.
Now, with 10 months left, fans and fellow comedians alike are watching closely to see how Colbert plans to wrap things up. As Oliver put it: “That man will not stop.”
