The End of Late Night
Greetings, readers. I’m continuing a little bit of a summer theme of unique topics. Thanks for sticking with me. Today I wanted to take up one of the major topics of the week, which is the end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Was it political retribution? Was it financial? Perhaps both. Let’s dig in.
When CBS/Paramount announced on July 17th that it was cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, it marked not just the end of the Colbert show, but the retirement of the entire Late Show franchise, which had been a staple of American television since David Letterman launched it in 1993 after his previous run at NBC.
But even beyond that, the announcement perhaps marked the beginning of the end of the style of late-night television so many Americans have become accustomed to as they wind down from their days, fall asleep in bed or on the couch, or as a five-year old Joey Lawrence told Johnny Carson in 1982, when kids are up sick in the middle of the night.
Letterman and Leno, Johnny Carson before them, and before him others like Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar, and Steve Allen, (not to mention the Fallons, Kimmels, and Conan O’Briens of more recent times), have been welcomed into American homes for generations. But that may all be changing.
Why was The Late Show cancelled?
A good controversy gives all sides legitimate gripes, and this one fits that bill perfectly. The announcement to cancel Colbert was met with anger, shock, and sadness in many quarters. In other places, it was met with giddiness. To supporters, the timing was questionable, at best. Here is what happened in the lead-up to the cancellation:
On July 1st, CBS/Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to resolve a defamation-style lawsuit stemming from the network’s editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election campaign. Trump claimed the editing misled viewers to favor her position. The agreement did not include an apology but required future release of transcripts from presidential candidate interviews and allocated the settlement money to Trump’s future presidential library.
Later in the month, Stephen Colbert addressed the settlement on air, calling it “a big fat bribe,” and adding, “Apparently it’s cheaper to pay off the President than to stand by your hosts.”
All the while, a massive media merger was simultaneously moving forward. The CBS/Paramount parent company was in final negotiations with Skydance Media to consolidate operations, a deal requiring regulatory approval from the FCC. Some critics speculate the timing of the cancellation was designed to eliminate political friction before the merger vote, and to indicate acquiescence to Trump and the FCC, which is meant to be independent from the president, but is often highly influenced by the person who sits in the White House as the president appoints its members and selects its chair. Getting rid of Colbert made the FCC vote more likely to pass, many argue.
On July 24th, just one week after the announcement to shelve the Colbert show, the FCC did, in fact, approve the Skydance acquisition in a 2-1 vote by the FCC.
For the past ten days, protestors have gathered outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan where Late Show is taped, calling for Colbert’s reinstatement and demanding transparency about the CBS/Trump deal. David Letterman himself has weighed in, calling the cancellation “pure cowardice” and accusing CBS of "kneecapping the very voice that built their credibility." Members of Congress and others including trade support groups in New York and Hollywood are asking for investigations.
But for others, Colbert had long been a polarizing figure. His sharp monologues often skewered conservatives and the Trump Administration, making him a lightning rod for criticism in an increasingly divided media landscape. Upon news of the firing, President Trump offered his thoughts, saying on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! [Fox News late night host] Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.” Diplomatic, as ever.
The Dollars of It All
CBS/Paramount’s official statement announcing the end of The Late Show was blunt: “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.” Those “other matters happening at Paramount,” loomed large, though, with both the Trump suit and the merger containing dollar signs and many digits and commas signs behind them.
But the money played another role, too. Late-night television, once a crown jewel of network prestige and ad revenue, has been leaking audience for the past decade and, with it, revenues. Even shows with strong viewership are struggling to compete with changing audiences and competition from cheaper, more agile digital content.
According to CBS/Parmount, The Late Show was losing about $40 million per year. That is a figure that is difficult to verify. But according to Nielsen ratings, the average nightly audience for Colbert peaked in 2016-2017 at around 3.2 million views per night. In 2025, the average nightly viewership was about 2.4 million, a drop of 25% since the peak. On the one hand, that drop of 25% is not Earth-shattering (although it’s also not great), but the key dynamic at play is that the audience drop-off has been the most notable in the 18-34-year old demographic, which has dropped by 70% in the past ten years, per Nielsen.
In reading about late night trends and researching for this week’s article, here is what I found to be the killer statistic: in Q2 of 2025, on a nightly basis, there was an average of just 219,000 viewers per night of Colbert in the age 18-49 demographic. This was per Latenighter, which also reported Jimmy Kimmel narrowly won the highly advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic with 220,000 nightly viewers, with Jimmy Fallon trailing badly at 157,000. Many young people (and, yes, I’m including my fellow elder-Millennials under this label), are just not watching late night TV anymore. 219,000 for a nationwide program is just not a lot. It’s the population of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or about five well-attend Major League Baseball games.
Where did everyone go? Speaking for myself, I am asleep at 11:35 pm. But others are watching different things.
A quick trivia question, and don’t scroll down for the answer. What is the top entertainment viewing platform for Gen Z? And I’ll tell you, it’s not cable TV. Per data from the Pew Research Center in 2022, over 95% of teens report using this platform, and 71% report using it daily.
The answer: YouTube. I can say from observing the viewing habits of my own kids, who are actually young enough to be part of Gen Alpha (the generation after Gen Z), YouTube dominates. It is faster pace, more tailored to their viewing habits and interests (those algorithms are really effective…), and the commercials are shorter, snappier, and sometimes you can skip through them. To an audience with a shorter attention, those are all real advantages of YouTube over cable television and the traditional late-night offerings. You can consume a lot of content on YouTube in the same hour you might spend watching The Late Show. And perhaps most importantly, you can do it anytime you want. You don’t have to be awake or tune-in at exactly 11:35 pm EST.
I, myself, do not watch a lot of YouTube, but I honestly am not sure the last time I watched network or cable TV for anything besides live sports. If I have watched TV five times this year, I would be surprised (other than for sports). I suppose every once in awhile I turn on CNBC around 9:30 am to see what the markets are going to do that day, but in general, I don’t think I know a single person my age or younger who watches cable news regularly, or the daytime talk shows, or anything on the networks in the evenings. I am old enough to remember when evening network TV was, literally “Must See TV,” and how you just had to be at your TV on Thursday night at 8:00 pm for Friends and 9:00 pm for Seinfeld. But those days are long gone, and with it, perhaps something is lost of our American cohesion as there are fewer and fewer moments, shows, and programs that bring vast swaths of us together (we are a long way from Walter Cronkite “telling it like it is.”)
But that’s not all. Young people have many other options today beyond just YouTube: TikTok, Instagram Live, podcasts — these are the places where young people are going for their entertainment today and their news, much of it a hyperlocal blend of algorithmically-curated content mixing posts from friends, celebrities, and people you don’t even know but are entertained or informed by nonetheless.
And, in fact, much of this content looks like traditional late night programming. There are pet tricks and trick shots. There are celebrities doing silly, embarrassing, and charming things. There are people throwing large items off of roofs. In short, all of the quirky things that Letterman, Leno, Carson and other have done over the past 60+ years to make their shows entertaining is available 24/7 on YouTube courtesy of thousands if not millions of digital creators.
The changing entertainment ecosystem poses another challenge for the traditional players: stars no longer need The Late Show bump. Taylor Swift can speak directly to her 100 million followers. Comedians drop clips on TikTok or YouTube that can rack up far more views than they would get on Colbert. Authors, musicians, up-and-coming actors and actresses — they don’t need to sit on David Letterman’s couch anymore; there are plenty of other opportunities and platforms. Not only that, but the best clips from the late night shows often end up on YouTube, Facebook, or X anyway, so viewers can see the best from the previous night without needing to stay up late or watch the whole thing.
One final point on declining viewership: Americans may be feeling political fatigue. While many viewers loved Stephen Colbert’s incisive critiques, others were either put-off by it or tired altogether. In a Pew study from 2023, 62% of Americans said they try to avoid political news as much as possible, which is a dramatic increase from earlier times, and 65% of Americans said they were exhausted by politics. You see this tension sometimes at other media outlets like ESPN, where viewers often arrive in the evening for escapism from the troubles and turmoil of their days. There has often been swift and significant backlash against certain ESPN programs and specific hosts for getting political, even as some of those very same hosts have argued that there are moments in time when you can’t stay silent.
Summing it Up
The firing of Stephen Colbert and the elimination of the Late Show franchise may well have been the right decision financially. After all, advertising dollars follow the audience, and with the audience moving to YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts, that’s where a lot of advertisers are spending their money. Only those with access to CBS’s internal spreadsheets can know for sure.
But apart from the dollars and cents of it all, the optics are undeniably troubling. It feels like a capitulation—whether to political pressure, to short-term investor demands, or to an increasingly milquetoast vision of what network television is allowed to be. For CBS, a network once synonymous with journalistic courage and cultural relevance, the decision has cast a long shadow. While there may, in fact, be a real savings in dropping Colbert and The Late Show, optics matter too — eventually, even to the bottom line.
If you liked today’s topic, you might enjoy my friend Michael Socolow’s Substack, “The Lint Trap of History.” Michael is a media historian and a professor at the University of Maine. He writes about the history of journalism with lots of fun and interesting anecdotes and perspective. His father, Sanford Socolow, worked for CBS News from 1956-1988, including as Executive Producer of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Find his articles or subscribe here.
Ben Sprague lives and works in Bangor, Maine as a Senior V.P./Commercial Lending Officer for Damariscotta-based First National Bank. He previously worked as an investment advisor and graduated from Harvard University in 2006. Ben can be reached at ben.sprague@thefirst.com or bsprague1@gmail.com.
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https://nealshultz1.substack.com/p/is-silencing-satire-the-line-in-the?r=k7ywv