CNN
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Network late-night shows have been losing viewers for years, but “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is primed for a ratings bump right now.
That’s because Monday night will be Colbert’s first new episode since CBS shocked the media sector by announcing “The Late Show” will end next May.
Colbert is slated to have two Hollywood stars, Sandra Oh and Dave Franco, as his guests. Later in the week, he will interview Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Last week’s cancellation announcement sparked speculation among fans that CBS might have pulled the plug for political reasons, given Colbert’s status as an outspoken critic of President Trump. The network, however, said it was “purely a financial decision” in a declining broadcast industry.
Additionally, as some insiders have pointed out, if CBS was trying to appease Trump, why leave “The Late Show” on the air for an extra ten months of Trump mockery?
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ESPN and MSNBC veteran Keith Olbermann, who has been through the TV cancellation wringer several times, made that point on X over the weekend.
He responded to a woman who said, “We are officially at the ‘pulling comedians off the air who criticize our dear leader’ phase of fascism,” and said, “Sorry. That’s not what happened here. If it had, they wouldn’t be keeping him on until next MAY.”
The timing coincides with the end of the September-to-May broadcast TV season and the expiration of Colbert’s current contract.
Jed Rosenzweig, founder of the late-night TV news website LateNighter, told CNN that Colbert “obviously” won’t pull any punches when it comes to Trump.
“But his comments about the show’s cancellation last week seemed very carefully chosen — gracious, even — toward his CBS bosses, whom he praised as ‘great partners,’” Rosenzweig observed.
“Maybe he meant it. Maybe he doesn’t blame his direct bosses for the decision. Or maybe he’s just doing what he can not to burn the house down with ten months still to go,” Rosenzweig said. “He’ll be fine, of course — but he also has 200 staffers to think about.”
The slow-motion ending of the show led one person close to Colbert to describe it to CNN as a “casualty of the merger.”
CBS parent company Paramount has been struggling to secure approval from the Trump administration for its pending merger with Skydance Media.
In an unusual move that Paramount insisted was unrelated, the company settled Trump’s legally dubious lawsuit against CBS News earlier this month by agreeing to pay $16 million toward a future presidential library.
Colbert bashed that decision on “The Late Show” last Monday, likening it to a “big fat bribe.”
Last Friday, the Writers Guild of America encouraged the New York State attorney general to investigate Colbert’s cancellation as a possible “bribe” too.
The conjecture isn’t likely to go away. “The timing seems so obvious and keeping with Paramount’s quid pro quo theme,” a former CBS executive speaking on condition of anonymity told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “If it were just financial, why announce this now?”
Networks typically make lots of show renewal and cancellation decisions in the spring, around the time they ask sponsors to make significant ad spending commitments for the upcoming season, a process known as the “upfronts.” Announcing a drastic change in the middle of the summer is far less common.
But the financial pressures are real. Advertisers have been pulling back from late-night spending in response to weakening ratings and growing digital competition, and “The Late Show” had become unprofitable, according to sources close to CBS.
Reactions to the cancellation have generally split right down party lines. An article on the pro-Trump website Breitbart framed the story this way: “While the left is lamenting the loss of Stephen Colbert, their CBS late-night shill, the network had already given Colbert years of operating at a huge loss before finally cancelling him.”
And, of course, Trump celebrated the end of Colbert’s show in a Truth Social post last Friday.
“Let’s face it: Even if CBS says Trump had nothing to do with it, Trump thinks he did,” Bill Carter, who authored two books about late-night TV and has covered the industry for decades, said on CNN. “He’s already come out and celebrated that Colbert has been ‘fired,’ because that’s what he wanted.”
“It’s kind of a dark turn for the country,” Carter said, “to think, well, ‘We can’t have people being satiric about our political leaders because they can basically eliminate them if they put pressure on their corporate owners.’ It’s a bad sign for the country.”
With the sustainability of the late-night business model in question, fans are also wondering about the fates of NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel, though both shows might stand to gain audience share once CBS retires its 11:35 p.m. brand.
“I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next,” meaning to be cancelled, Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.
Kimmel’s most recent Instagram post was a photo from his summer vacation in Jackson Hole, where he attended an anti-Trump protest with his family last week. The comedian held up a sign mocking Trump and declaring, “MAKE AMERICA GOOD AGAIN.” His wife, Molly McNearney, the head writer and executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” also held up a sign. It read, “DON’T BEND THE KNEE.”
Kimmel and Fallon’s shows will both return with new episodes on Monday night. (Though Kimmel has guest hosts all summer long.) But Colbert is certain to elicit the most interest.
“Colbert is one of the greatest practitioners of the winking aside,” Rosenzweig said, “and I expect we’ll all be parsing his words for subtle digs at his predicament and his parent company tonight and throughout the next ten months.”
