Stephen Colbert's Late Show Ends After 11-Year Run with Star-Studded Final Episodes
Stephen Colbert's 11-year run on The Late Show ends May 21 with star-studded final episodes, ending a franchise amid debate over whether cancellation was financial or politically motivated.
Objective Facts
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which first aired on September 8, 2015, is ending after 11 seasons. Colbert's final episode will air Thursday, May 21 at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and stream on Paramount+. In recent weeks, Colbert celebrated with guests including Barack Obama, David Letterman, and the 'Strike Force Five' hosts—Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver. CBS decided last year to cancel the program, citing financial losses, though David Letterman said in an interview with The New York Times that he does not believe CBS's financial explanation, describing the cancellation as 'a botched holdup' and stating: 'They're lying. They're lying weasels.' The cancellation announcement came shortly after Colbert publicly criticized Paramount for the $16 million Trump settlement, during a period when Paramount was seeking FCC approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
Left-Leaning Perspective
Jon Stewart, Colbert's longtime friend and former boss at The Daily Show, sharply criticized Paramount for capitulating to Trump, telling Daily Show viewers: 'If you're trying to figure out why Stephen's show is ending, I don't think the answer can be found in some smoking gun email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives...I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America's institutions at this very moment, institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our pubic hair-doodling commander in chief.' David Letterman told The New York Times that he does not believe CBS's financial explanation, describing it as 'a botched holdup' and stating: 'I'm just going to go on record as saying: They're lying. They're lying weasels.' Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff both openly questioned whether the decision was politically motivated. Colbert himself pointed out that CBS's verdict came two days after he called Paramount Global's $16 million settlement of Trump's lawsuit a 'big fat bribe' on air, though he stated he does not dispute their financial rationale while acknowledging 'I do make jokes about it. But I also completely understand why people would say (A) that doesn't make sense to me and (B) that seems fishy to me, because the network did it to themselves.' FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez stated: 'This is yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration's broader campaign to censor and control speech...CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing.' Left-leaning coverage emphasizes that the cancellation came in July 2025, just days after Colbert called Paramount's $16 million Trump settlement a 'big fat bribe' on-air, with the timing causing many to speculate it was done to appease Trump and his administration.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Conservative commentator Matt Margolis argued that 'CBS made the only rational decision available: they chose financial reality over sentiment,' and contended that 'the real inquiry should focus on how an entertainer making $15 million per year could preside over such spectacular financial failure while maintaining the delusion that he was somehow winning.' CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil pushed back at what he called liberal outrage, citing a report from Puck showing the show was costing the network $40 million a year on a $100 million budget, and arguing: 'I don't have an MBA, but he's not right that the merger, the $8 billion, is based on reruns of a comedy show. People are buying the movies and the sitcoms and the sports.' Conservatives see the cancellation as evidence that Colbert wasn't funny anymore and that his show had become too inflected with politics. Conservative outlets framed the story around what they called 'the spectacular failure of a host who allowed his Trump obsession to blind him to the economic carnage happening under his watch, and failed to correct course to save his own career,' rather than political censorship. Critics like Nate Silver noted that 'headlines in liberal publications boldly assert that the firing must have been driven by politics and then only acknowledge several paragraphs later that they're speculating,' while acknowledging 'it's surely not ridiculous to assert that the networks and other major media brands are trying to get on Trump's good side.' Trump himself walked back suggestions of direct involvement, posting on Truth Social: 'Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, Late Night. That is not true! The reason he was fired was a pure lack of TALENT, and the fact that this deficiency was costing CBS $50 Million Dollars a year in losses.'
Deep Dive
The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert presents a genuine analytical puzzle: CBS simultaneously made a decision that appears defensible on financial grounds and suspicious on political grounds. The network was indeed struggling with late-night economics. Despite being the highest-rated legacy late-night show, Colbert's program only averaged 2.4 million viewers a night, with declining ad revenue and a shift to streaming upending broadcast network's traditional business model. Reports indicated the show was costing $40 million a year on a $100 million budget. These are real figures that explain financial pressure. Yet the timing and context matter enormously. CBS's parent company, Paramount, was in the midst of closing a multibillion-dollar merger with David Ellison's Skydance that required the Trump administration's approval, and the choice to cancel the No. 1 show in late night came just two weeks after Paramount had agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle a controversial lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview. Trump celebrated the cancellation on Truth Social, writing that he 'absolutely loved' that Colbert was 'fired.' What each side gets right: The left correctly identifies that the timing raised legitimate questions and that networks do face regulatory pressure from this administration. The right correctly notes that financial pressures are real and that Colbert's show was indeed losing significant money. What they miss: The left sometimes overstates the certainty of political motivation without concrete evidence of pressure. The right sometimes dismisses the legitimate concern that corporate fear of government regulatory power can influence decisions independent of direct threats. The most honest assessment is that CBS likely considered multiple factors: genuine financial losses, political risk from maintaining a prominent Trump critic during merger negotiations, and the broader decline of broadcast television. Whether one of these factors was dominant versus a combination remains unknowable without internal company documents. Colbert's own framing—acknowledging that 'Broadcast can be in trouble' and 'They cannot monetize because of things like YouTube, because of the competition of streaming' while questioning what 'changed' in less than two years—captures this ambiguity without resolving it.