The end of ‘The Late Show’ is yet another sign that TV is changing

Analysis: CBS has announced it is canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” after its upcoming 2025-2026 season, which marks the end of an over 30-year era for the brand.

“The Late Show” first launched in 1993 following a series of unsuccessful attempts at late-night programming, leading CBS to switch gears and fill the daypart with movies, repeats and specials under the “CBS Late Movie” and “CBS Late Night” banners.

Ahead of  “The Late Show” launch, however, CBS lured away David Letterman, who was then hosting “Late Night with David Letterman” on NBC and re-entered the late-night comedy TV business. Letterman retired in 2015 and CBS moved Colbert, who was then hosting a satirical commentary program on Comedy Central, over to “Late Show.”

While the Letterman era saw mixed ratings and Colbert’s tenure got off to a bumpy start, the network was able to build the show into the top-rated late-night show, ahead of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

However, sources have indicated that the show, like much of legacy media, appeared to be losing ground as advertising and viewer habits shifted. There have been reports that the show, which reportedly requires a team of around 200 to produce, was not profitable, though neither CBS nor the production companies involved have confirmed that.

Some have noted that the timing of the announcement, coming as CBS parent Paramount Global is eager to close a merger deal with Skydance Media that requires federal approval, and an increase in unfavorable jokes about Donald Trump, seems questionable. 

“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,” the announcement read. It appears CBS was anticipating the inevitable questions about the reason for the cancellation and any potential correlations when penning this release, and hence the reference to other possibilities.

There have also been reports that, once the Skydance-Paramount deal closes, CBS will become the target of significant cost-cutting efforts. 

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The announcement’s reference to the “show’s performance” may raise a question mark at first glance, but “Late Night” would not be the first to be well-rated but not financially viable. While higher ratings did, at least in the days of linear TV’s domination, typically mean higher advertising revenue, it’s not always the case, as there can be other factors at play, including production costs, the types of advertising and viewers a show attracts and how a program fits in a network lineup.

‘Late Night’ losing house band amid budget cuts

CBS has slowly been pulling back on its late-night investment in recent years. After James Corden left “The Late Late Show” in 2023, the network opted to cancel the program altogether rather than continue production under a new host. 

CBS, along with NBC and ABC, has also cut back to producing four original episodes of their late-night talkers each week. Previously, these programs typically offered five original episodes per week, though the Friday edition was often taped Thursday. Kimmel typically doesn’t air new episodes at all during select summer months, while others take extended hiatuses a few weeks per year.

Instead, the network filled the slot with a revival of the current events-oriented game show “After Midnight” hosted by Taylor Tomlinson. The move was widely seen as a way to cut costs at the 12:37 a.m. eastern timeslot.

“After Midnight” ended earlier in 2025 after Tomlinson said she wanted to put more focus on her standup touring. Until then, repeats of “After Midnight” are airing until back-t0-back installments of “Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen” take over near the start of the fall TV season. “Comics Unleashed” previously served as an interim program between the end of Corden’s run and debut of “After Midnight.”

“Unleashed” is billed as a late-night talk show, so it’s worth noting that CBS, at least for now, appears to be sticking with a similar format in that timeslot. 

Late-evening TV viewership has also shifted in recent years. Local news, which typically airs at 11 p.m. in most markets except the central time zone, has been losing ground as viewers shift to digital for information about what’s going on, which has, in turn, affected the number of people who stick around to catch late-night comedy shows. 

All of the networks make significant effort to distribute clips from their late-night talkers across digital and social media. This content can be monetized, though the current digital advertising ecosystem means that, at least for now, there is essentially a finite limit to how much revenue these snippets can add to a show’s overall bottom line. 

Some networks have also seen social media as a way to attract viewers back to the full-length shows, but it’s not easy to track this type of referral and, even if it is working to some degree, linear TV viewership in general continues to shrink.

Some big questions about the end of “Late Night” still remain, including what CBS will do with the timeslot. The network’s announcement was notably quiet on that matter. 

It’s possible it could go back to using the slot to air movies (perhaps with a focus on Paramount Pictures’ library), though it’s unclear if current trends would make such a move financially viable.

The slot could also potentially do well with airing true crime content, perhaps under the network’s “48 Hours” brand, either with original programming or repurposed content. The network could also air Paramount+ shows in the slot, potentially serving as a springboard to drive subscriptions there. 

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It could also fill the spot with a mix of updated and purposed news stories, similar to “CBS News Roundup” (or essentially move up the start time of “Roundup”), from across the CBS News portfolio, including content culled from “CBS Evening News,” “48 Hours” or “60 Minutes.”

The network’s news and owned stations division has also been investing heavily in resources, such as the slate of virtual set studios it has been building out, that could also make it easier to pull content from these newsrooms and incorporate it into a national or regional news feed with a consistent look, so this could help drive an expanded news block without adding more significant production needs at the network level. 

It’s also possible that some of these options could be combined to complete a full five days’ worth of programming blocks — or the network could go in a completely different direction.

CBS could also opt to give the timeslot back to local affiliates, though it’s not clear how likely that would be. Further, local stations might also struggle to fill the slot with original programming, since they also tend to program overnight hours with a mix of repeats and syndication. 

Overnight programming has often been tricky for networks in general. In earlier days of broadcasting, stations would actually sign off in the late night or early morning hours, often due to a lack of viable programming.

More recently, comedy and talks shows have become the fare of choice on big three networks in the U.S. — though ABC notably began airing “Nightline” in one of its late-night slots starting in the 1980s as a way to counter program to CBS and NBC’s schedules. Cable networks, meanwhile, tend to fill their overnights to repeats of their primetime blocks or culling content from their archives. 

The term “late-night” (with or without the hyphen and with alternate capitalization) is often used as a general term to the time period typically starting between 11:30 and 11:37 p.m. eastern and stretching over the next two hours, with 11 or 10 p.m. newscasts often known as “late local news.” It can also be used to refer to the genre in general. That said, NBC brands its post-“Tonight Show” late-night offering “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” “Late Night” is also used at the fictional name of the show the character Debra Vance pursues on HBO’s “Hacks.”

It’s not clear what’s next for Colbert. 

It’s likely he could pursue another hosting gig after his “The Late Show” ends, though it’s not clear if another opportunity would arise at the network level. He could opt to head to launch a streaming show, as there have been rumblings that streamers have expressed interest in the idea of offering late-night programming (or, at least, the general format of late-night).

Another option would be to branch out on his own — creating an independent, most likely digital, offering. Several other big names from broadcast and cable have pursued similar arrangements, with varying degrees of success. This production model typically has lower production costs, potentially making it more financially viable. Operating outside the bounds of large, publicly-held media conglomerates, can also make this option more viable.

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On a broader scale, CBS’s move is likely to watched closely by NBC and ABC — as well as other networks — to see how well the cancellation decision holds up with viewers, advertisers and, perhaps most importantly, the bottom line. If CBS is successfully able to launch a viable replacement for “The Late Show,” it could trigger more late-night cancellations or changes in the coming years.