“It’s not just the end of our show,” Stephen Colbert told his surprised audience last night, “but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
Indeed. And, likely, so is the entire late-night comedy genre — about a decade or more after its actual demise:
TV’s ongoing problems with late night have come for Stephen Colbert, with CBS announcing Thursday that it plans to end his “Late Show” after the next TV season, citing a “financial decision.”
The maneuver — which ends years of original late-night programming at CBS that started when the network lured David Letterman from NBC in 1993 — comes as the economics of wee-hours TV have begun to accelerate, with media companies growing wary of the high price tags involved in producing the shows while the young viewers they try to attract watch more of them via digital video.
Was this really a “financial decision,” or did Paramount and Skydance finally get tired of Colbert? The timing is curious, as AFP pointed out this morning:
Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show”, long a staple of late night US television, will end in 2026, the CBS network said Thursday, days after the comedian blasted parent company Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump as “a big fat bribe”.
CBS said in a statement the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” and was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at (parent company) Paramount.”
Others joined in to suggest that Colbert got canceled in retaliation, notably Senate Democrats Adam Schiff and Elizabeth Warren. However, if that were the case, Paramount would have canceled the show now, rather than give Colbert another year on the air.
The truth is that late-night shows are becoming albatrosses. CBS won’t be the last network to look at the “financial decisions” around late night, as Variety hints later in the same report. Some of it has to do with the evolution of television away from the “must see” scheduled-event paradigm to streaming. With younger viewers less enchanted with live TV and more apt to curate their own entertainment, late-night comedy has become one of the first genres to become passé. But that’s not the only thing going on here:
It’s no secret among staffers and executives associated with late night that the business of the format has been in decline. Young people are the very consumers jumping first to new streaming behaviors that are less tied to watching programs at a specific time and date. Hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Colbert continue to generate headlines and digital memes and still build sizable live audiences that the networks– and their distributors and advertisers — covet. But less so, and the ranks of the hosts have narrowed in recent years. So too have episodes of the shows. None of the medium’s regular hosts holds forth on Fridays any longer, with Fallon’s “Tonight” the last to give up the fifth night of the week.
Still, CBS’ decision has puzzled others in the industry. The exit of a popular late-night host is the kind of thing that might be announced during “upfront” meetings with advertisers in May, so as to boost interest in the program for its last year on air. Indeed, Johnny Carson unveiled his decision to leave NBC’s “Tonight Show” at a presentation to advertisers in 1991. David Letterman was celebrated at one of CBS’ regular upfront spectacles at Carnegie Hall, a decision that helped whet appetites for his last few months on “Late Show.”
CBS isn’t packaging the end of Colbert’s show because there’s no comedy or charm to package. The comedy has given way to political activism, and especially in Colbert’s case, a weird form of entertainment best known as regime comedy. Colbert and his fellow late-night comics made defending Joe Biden and Democrats into the primary purpose of their shows; Jimmy Kimmel even fronted for a doddering Biden at a fundraiser that later became notorious when Barack Obama clearly had to guide a confused Biden off the stage.
The nadir of this decline came from Colbert himself, with his creepy “Vax-Scene” promotion of Biden government diktats on COVID vaccinations. Remember this propaganda effort, intended to shut down questions about the efficacy and safety of the vaccines that Biden and his team had mandated in the military, schools, and workplaces? Colbert just ignored all of that — and its attendant censorship by the federal government — to dance with syringes in the cringiest moment ever on late-night television:
Colbert isn’t alone in this, although he may have been the most shameless about it. All of the network late-night comedy shows signed up for La Résistance in the first Trump term, and became increasingly strident in their attacks on Republicans while ignoring or outright covering for Biden, even while his incapacitation became obvious, at times in their presence. Late night stopped being about comedy a decade ago, and became all about progressive-elite confirmation. Samantha Bee may have pioneered the “clapter” genre, but Colbert et al embraced it passionately and fully.
This transition left the late-night genre increasingly dependent on a rapidly narrowing demographic. Rather than adopt a broader approach to political satire, as Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and even David Letterman had done in establishing the genre, every single late-night host went full SNL or even beyond it. They stopped being funny, and what’s more, they stopped being interesting. And in a world where fans can get their celebrity fixes by following the accounts of their favorite stars, their guest chats didn’t hold much appeal, either.
Those are the reasons why CBS pulled the plug, and why all of the networks have cut back on production over the past few years. They have reduced set costs, dropped Fridays, and done everything to stanch the cash bleed from these expensive struggle sessions. CBS is just the first to throw in the towel, letting Colbert finish out his contract but bailing out of the genre otherwise. Eventually, late night will go the way of the comedy-variety hour — another great TV genre that died under the weight of the mediocrities who succeeded the geniuses.
Regime comedy is dead. And I feel fine.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Hot Air’s conservative reporting and analysis that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership!
