Stephen Colbert’s CBS Show Is Canceled. Is This the Death of Late Night?

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has been canceled by CBS. The news landed like an earthquake on Thursday evening, coming amid swirling ongoing questions about the future both of late-night in the TikTok age and of CBS’s parent company Paramount, given its pending merger with Skydance Media. CBS ending one of the most venerable franchises in broadcast TV history—it dates back to 1993, when David Letterman joined the network after an acrimonious split from NBC—will only lead to the raising of more anxious eyebrows.

CBS made the announcement in a statement that also called Colbert “irreplaceable.” This, the network said, is why the series itself will end in May 2026, rather than continuing on with a new host.

“We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television,” the statement continued. “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Colbert broke the news to his live audience while taping Thursday’s show, which airs at 11.30pm. His announcement met a chorus of boos. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” Colbert replied. “It’s not just the end of our show, but the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.” He ended by thanking CBS, viewers, and the show’s crew of 200 people.

Colbert recently celebrated his 10th season of hosting The Late Show, which has often ranked no. 1 in the ratings for its timeslot and has been nominated for the top variety talk-series Emmy for nine years running, including this season. Ten years ago, this category recognized six separate shows. Now it’s down to just three, due to a downturn in submissions. Across late night, ratings are down as viewers migrate to watching clips on YouTube and other social-media platforms—and even among that group, there’s a lot more competition for eyes than there used to be.

The Late Show’s fellow Emmy nominees, The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, have similarly been on the air for decades. The former also airs on a Paramount network, Comedy Central. Daily Show flagship host Jon Stewart has a contract that expires in December of 2025; Jimmy Kimmel’s current contract expires in 2026, and he may not sign another one. “I think this is my final contract,” he told the LA Times last year. “I hate to even say it, because everyone’s laughing at me now — each time I think that, and then it turns out to be not the case. I still have a little more than two years left on my contract, and that seems pretty good. That seems like enough.”

The news of The Late Show’s cancellation will echo loudly through the TV landscape. Earlier this year, CBS canceled its 12.30am show, After Midnight, which Colbert executive-produced, after host Taylor Tomlinson decided to leave the show. The network declined to find a new host for the program, or to replace it with another original series. Tomlinson’s onetime timeslot competitor, Seth Meyers, continues to host Late Night on NBC, but his show has also been the victim of a harsh financial reality. Meyers lost his house 8G Band last year—a move that one of its members, Eli Janney, attributed to budget cuts. Several media outlets have spent the last few years covering late night’s dwindling resources and relevance, and Colbert’s exit will do little to turn that tide.

In its statement about the cancellation, CBS surely hopes to bat away inevitable speculation that the decision has anything to do with Skydance—the media company founded by David Ellison that’s set to merge with Paramount in an $8 billion deal. Earlier this month, Paramount settled a defamation lawsuit that the Trump administration launched over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with vice president Kamala Harris for $16 million—a result which was harshly condemned by observers ranging from senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to Paramount employee Jon Stewart.

“It doesn’t feel like scrutiny on news networks—it feels like fealty,” Stewart said on a recent episode of The Daily Show. “They are being held to a standard that will never be satisfactory to Donald Trump. No one can ever kiss his ass enough.” He also called the settlement “shameful.”

Stewart’s show has since been trailed by rumors that it, too, could be up for cancellation. Stewart addressed those whispers this week on his podcast. “They haven’t called me and said, like, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that office, Stewart,’” he said. “But let me tell you something: I’ve been kicked out of shittier establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet.”