Why CBS Snatched Its Talk-Show King’s Crown

When CBS embarked on the project of replacing David Letterman as the host of The Late Show, in 2014, the network spared no expense. It hired Stephen Colbert, who had collected Emmys and acclaim while hosting his Comedy Central talk show, The Colbert Report; gave him total creative control; andfully revamped Manhattan’s Ed Sullivan Theater so Colbert could make the show’s longtime venue his own. After a shaky first year, Colbert found his footing in the lead-up to the 2016 election by focusing his opening monologues more pointedly on politics. The Late Show soon became the highest-rated talk show in America—a crown it has not relinquished since.

Ten years on, CBS has snatched the crown off its head. The network appears to have grown so dismayed with the state of late-night television that it has unceremoniously canceled one of the genre’s most successful stalwarts: In astatement last night, CBS announced that not only will this season of The Late Show—set to air through May 2026—be the program’s last, but the franchise will also be retired entirely. (“We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable,” the statement offers as explanation.) The decision quickly prompted plenty of speculation among industry observers, given Colbert’s recent, unvarnished scorn for CBS’s parent company, Paramount, after it settled a lawsuit with Donald Trump; the president had accused 60 Minutes, the network’s venerated TV newsmagazine, of deceptively editing an election-season interview with Kamala Harris. (CBS News, which produces 60 Minutes, denied the claim.) But whether or not there was some political motivation behind the cancellation (the network called the reason purely financial), the underlying point is clear: The Late Show is no longer valuable enough for CBS to bother protecting it.

As the business of television changes, late-night talk shows have found themselves in a particularly awkward spot. For one, people have stopped flocking to linear television as their evenings wind down. If they do turn the TV on, it’s often to check out what’s new to stream rather than to put up with a somewhat staid format interrupted by many commercial breaks. The customary celebrity chats and musical performances typically appear online not long after they air, and said celebrities now have many other outlets for plugging their projects: video podcasts, YouTube shows. The cost of producing one of those alternatives is also far smaller than the budget for a glitzy affair like The Late Show.