Colbert signs off with 6.7 million viewers in CBS finale
Colbert drew 6.7 million for his farewell, a one-night surge that still landed at about half of Leno and Letterman’s sendoffs.
Stephen Colbert signed off with 6.7 million viewers for his final Late Show, a huge spike from his season average of about 2.1 million but still a reminder that late-night TV no longer commands the mass audience it once did. The farewell aired Thursday, May 21, 2026, and stretched about 17 minutes beyond the usual hour as Colbert closed out an 11-year run on CBS and the 33-year Late Show franchise that began in 1993 with David Letterman.
CBS turned the Ed Sullivan Theater sendoff into a crowded industry reunion. Paul McCartney sat as the final couch guest, while Jon Stewart joined Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver in the goodbye. The lineup gave the show the feel of a generational handoff, but the ratings made the larger point more clearly: even a star-packed finale for one of broadcast TV’s signature comedy hours reached far fewer viewers than the genre’s biggest exits did a decade ago.
CBS had already said in July 2025 that the show would end in May 2026, describing the move as “purely a financial decision” and saying it was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” That explanation fit a late-night landscape in which the audience has been cut into smaller pieces by streaming, social video and on-demand viewing. Colbert’s program remained the most-watched broadcast-network late-night show, but its normal audience was only a fraction of the mass reach once available to network hosts.
The finale’s 6.7 million viewers were still well short of the farewell figures that defined earlier eras of late-night dominance. Jay Leno’s final Tonight Show in 2014 drew 14.6 million viewers, and David Letterman’s final Late Show in 2015 drew 13.76 million. Colbert’s number was roughly half of those peaks, a sharp measure of how much the national campfire has dimmed even as farewell episodes can still summon a one-night audience. The crowd in New York delivered a reminder that late-night remains culturally potent at the end of an era, just not nearly as singular as it once was.
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