CBS ends Colbert’s Late Show as late-night economics deteriorate

CBS said on July 17, 2025, that it would end The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after the next TV season, describing the move as a “financial decision.” The cancellation closed out CBS’s original late-night franchise, which began in 1993 when the network brought David Letterman over from NBC. Colbert’s final Late Show aired on May 22, 2026, drawing a firm line under an era that once anchored the network’s identity after dark.

The decision landed as the economics of late-night television continued to weaken. Nielsen said streaming accounted for 44.8% of total TV viewing in May 2025, the first time it surpassed the combined share of broadcast and cable. That shift matters because late-night programming has long depended on a broadcast habit: a dependable slot, a national audience and an advertising model built around nightly appointment viewing. As younger viewers increasingly consume monologues, interviews and viral clips through digital video, the cost of producing a full studio show has become harder to justify against its shrinking linear audience.

The broader attention economy helps explain the pressure. YouTube said its U.S. creative ecosystem contributed $55 billion to U.S. GDP in 2024 and supported the equivalent of 490,000 full-time jobs. Pew Research Center has found that Facebook and YouTube are the social platforms Americans most often use regularly for news, with about a third of U.S. adults saying they regularly get news on each site. In other words, the audience has not vanished; it has dispersed across platforms that reward short-form distribution, creator economics and algorithmic reach rather than the expensive infrastructure of a nightly network show.

That is why raw view counts no longer tell the whole story. A digital clip can travel farther than a broadcast segment ever could, but it does not automatically recreate the institutional power, advertising certainty or cultural gatekeeping that a late-night franchise once commanded. Reaction to Colbert’s cancellation was immediate, with Jimmy Kimmel publicly voicing support, while some lawmakers and commentators questioned whether CBS’s explanation fully captured the decision. However the politics are read, the business math is clear: the old late-night model is no longer insulated from the shift that has already remade television itself.