In 2016, Stephen Colbert tried to unite a fractured nation.
On election night, Colbert and his staff aired a live special on the cable network Showtime, and the groans from the live audience grew louder as more electors were called out for Donald Trump, cementing a victory that had alarmed many Americans. Suddenly, Colbert’s comedy show was no longer a laughing matter.
“It feels like an asteroid hit our democracy,” said one guest. “Please abort now.”
“Aside from the Civil War, World War II and 9/11, this may be the most catastrophic disaster our country has ever experienced,” another official said.
Realizing that late-night sketches were no longer appreciated, Colbert and his team went at it without a brief or a script. In doing so, Colbert told reporters in a 2017 interview, he realized he had found the foundation for a new “Late Show.” “The last 10 minutes of that election show were honest. They were honest. That was a turning point for us,” he said at the time. “Then I realized I couldn’t do this show without at least trying to keep my emotions in check.” At the end of his election night show, the comic delivered an unrehearsed monologue asking viewers, “How have our politics become so toxic?”
Ten years from now, he may be asking similar questions.
On Thursday, CBS will air the final episode of “The Late Show,” which will leave many viewers and members of the media scratching their heads. The Paramount Skydance Network is losing out on series that were leading in ratings. Digital chatter occurs most days. This gives people a reason to stick with CBS stations even after prime time and slower local news have ended. By almost every industry metric, Mr. Colbert has done his job, and some.
Late-night TV has certainly become more financially vulnerable since the coronavirus pandemic, although CBS has announced it is ending the show for financial reasons. But the consensus is that Colbert’s politics, and perhaps most of his late-night politics, don’t mesh with those of Paramount CEO David Ellison, or perhaps even with the politics of some of his potential audience. CBS is getting out of the late-night business, handing over its late-night schedule to entrepreneur Byron Allen, who will air two hours of less flashy entertainment programming, including Comedy Roundtable at 11:30 p.m.
With Mr. Colbert gone, late-night television will lose yet another financial foundation. CBS’ “The Late Show” accounted for 27% of all late-night TV spending in 2025 and 29% of all spending so far in 2026, according to data from the Guidelines, which tracks ad spending. In a different era, advertisers would shift their money to shows with better ratings, said Sean Wright, chief insights and analysis officer at Guidelines. Now, she says, marketers are likely to believe they can capture younger viewers who prefer late-night programming on streaming services and social media. Wright said that perhaps 15% of Colbert’s ad spend will be shifted to rival late-night shows like NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” However, the rest are likely to fall completely out of format.
“My guess is that Mr. Colbert’s resignation will also kind of eliminate the midnight appropriations,” he says. That will only accelerate the exodus from Madison Avenue’s daytime section. According to the guidelines, spending on late-night TV programming will fall from $519.7 million in 2017 to $209 million in 2025, a nearly 60% drop.
How can this happen? Colbert forged many new relationships with viewers. His “Late Show” became the most-watched late-night show on television. This was something CBS had not been able to accomplish since David Letterman first moved from NBC (Jay Leno brought the division title back to NBC in July 1995). Nevertheless, as President Trump focused more on the headlines, and others who would have tuned in to the late-night show for most of President Trump’s “Late Show” tenure, they began to feel that Colbert wasn’t for “them.” During his tenure at CBS, Colbert spearheaded a shift to a more partisan brand of comedy, whether he intended it or not.
Whereas Johnny Carson was a monolith shaped by the dominant television media structure to be all things to all people, today’s late-night show hosts are nothing more than a divisive one. They should be targeted only to a certain number of people. All of their audiences are tiny compared to Carson’s.
Nick Marks, a professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University who studies the cultural impact of comedy shows, said that in an era where almost any kind of niche, taste or attitude can find a bespoke media profile, success lies in “partisanship.” “It’s divisive, and you’re paying your confidants, who are a hardcore, devoted audience, not trying to prop up a big tent.” Since Colbert started challenging Trump, and the ratings have gone up in doing so, others have started to emulate him, including Meyers, Kimmel, and Samantha Bee.
In fact, many late-night hosts appear to have a similar attitude. Not so long ago, different personas viewed other personas as bitter rivals. Letterman and Leno didn’t get along, and Kimmel also expressed disdain for his NBC rival. Modern hosts support each other. For a while, especially during President Trump’s first term and the coronavirus pandemic, executive producers from various shows consulted with each other through a chain of phone calls and text messages. When a host like Larry Wilmore lost his spot on Comedy Central, other shows sent him a parting gift. Last week, Colbert brought Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and John Oliver together for one of his final few episodes.
Over the years, some of these hosts have said or done things on air that would draw intense backlash if said by someone on the right. In 2017, Colbert raised hackles when he said President Trump was a “colster” of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In 2018, Bea lost her sponsorship of the Warner TBS show “Full Frontal” after calling President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump a “slut.”
There’s a reason why Fox News was able to produce a program that they promoted as part of their late-night doujin show. “Gutfeld,” which airs at 10 p.m. on the East Coast, doesn’t compete with NBC’s “Tonight,” CBS’ “Late Show” or ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in the same time slot, but host Greg Gutfeld incorporates similar trappings into his show as Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel.
“He wouldn’t exist without them,” says Danagal Young, a communications professor at the University of Delaware who studies political satire and the media preferences of liberals and conservatives. “His entire style is built around resentment at being left behind by the left.”
The feeling that late-night theater was geared toward a specific type of audience should never have been part of the mix. Johnny Carson made fun of politicians, mostly for their public antics rather than their policies. Leno rarely became political. And while Letterman was often hot-tempered and feuded with politicians, not over what they did in Washington. John McCain became a target of Letterman after the former senator canceled an appearance on “The Late Show” in 2008 in favor of a conversation with Katie Couric. When Mr. Letterman got into an argument with former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, it was over a derogatory remark about Palin’s teenage daughter.
Late night programming in 2026 will be a very different production. “These shows are made to be vaudeville in a box in your living room,” Young says. “They were places to watch jugglers and clowns and funny people do impressions. They weren’t created for that.”
Colbert wasn’t trying to alienate the crowd. He was simply following what made him successful. This is, after all, an improv comedian and writer who got his big break working for Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” back in the day when Jon Stewart hosted a cable show that challenged young viewers to pay more attention to media and politics. Colbert did the unthinkable when he launched “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central in 2009, playing a fictional character meant to satirize conservative TV critics for nearly a decade.
The character was so ingrained in viewers’ minds that Colbert spent several sketches after moving to CBS trying to separate himself from his previous roles. In fact, his former employer, Viacom, asked whether such use of intellectual property was fair. Of course, it didn’t help that the character had the same name as Colbert.
“Colbert never wavered from his ‘Colbert Report’ persona. That show was groundbreaking,” Marx says. “And he really brought in some smart viewers from Comedy Central.”
Comedy Central’s fortunes have waxed and waned depending on how well it has been able to attract young male viewers. CBS depended on the network’s ability to draw the largest and widest audience. The challenge: The biggest audience CBS was able to capture was a group made up primarily of people who wanted to see Colbert take on the powerful. And maybe there are hate watchers too.
Even though CBS gained ratings, the group of late-night viewers became less diverse. And as other hosts adopted similar stances, late-night TV viewership similarly increased.
When the coronavirus pandemic forced various late-night shows to halt traditional production, the show faced something of an identity crisis. There’s no live audience to tell jokes and laugh. There is no band playing on stage. And there will be no celebrity guests. This was the same thing people get from podcasts and YouTube videos.
And because the shows were primarily aimed at similar audiences (with the possible exception of Fallon’s “Tonight”), the widespread support they had during the era when Letterman and Leno dominated audiences was eroding. These days, most of the organizers appear to be fighting President Trump in a war over First Amendment rights. “What they’re fighting for is freedom of expression and opposition to Brendan Carr at the FCC, and the recognition that satire has special protections in the Constitution,” Young said.
It’s noble. That’s important. But is it interesting and fun? And will it calm viewers down before the evening rolls around, as early late-night TV stalwarts like Steve Allen and Jack Paar tried to do?
The late-night show is here to stay, but its humor and personality may surface even more on new frontiers. Younger generations like podcasts and even long-form videos, Marx said, but they’re also heavily participating in “clip culture” and microcontent, as well as social media phenomena like “Hot Ones,” a digital series in which celebrities answer questions while nibbling spicy chicken wings.
The regular appearance of big-name celebrities on such programs signals the end of traditional late-night programming, which was once a more relaxed celebrity viewing experience. And even Stephen Colbert, known for his deep involvement in everything from set design to product placement, can’t stop those dynamics.
Colbert was shaken late into the night twice. The first time he played a fictional character, and the second time he adapted the show created by Letterman to a new era where news, rather than absurdist humor, was the main focus. All of this comic’s work may not have kept “Late Show” alive into the next generation, but his years of hard work could help him capture the interest of new fans in a completely different medium if he so chooses. And Colbert may try to get some of the people to convene again.
