CBS canceling Colbert raises questions about late night

There are two schools of thought around CBS’ decision to end “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

The first says the cancellation is a one-off exit from the storied time slot — that Paramount was trying to push through the red tape to finally merge with Skydance Media, a deal that was approved by the Federal Communications Commission Thursday after more than a year in limbo.

The other says it signals the beginning of the end of late night TV.

The entertainment industry will have a better sense of where the truth lies next year when Disney decides the fate of Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show, “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”

While NBC recently extended the contracts of its two late night hosts, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, into 2028, Kimmel’s contract is set to lapse in 2026.

“Jimmy Kimmel Live” has been a late night staple since 2003, acting not only as a typical talk show on the circuit, but as a valuable marketing hub for Disney’s slate of theatrical and television content. In addition to traditional one-on-one interviews, Kimmel will also frequently host several stars from the same project, often for blockbuster titles from Marvel, Star Wars and the company’s animated franchises.

Clips from these chats are fed onto Kimmel’s YouTube channel, which has more than 20 million subscribers, and across social media, helping to generate buzz for upcoming Disney projects.

For comparison, Fallon’s show account has around 32 million subscribers, while Colbert’s stands at 10 million and Meyers’ at just over 5 million.

Kimmel is also a frequent host of the Academy Awards, which airs on Disney’s ABC, and is currently the host of ABC’s celebrity edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” These ancillary assignments, as well as his annual job closing out Disney’s Upfronts presentation for advertisers, may make Kimmel more important to Disney’s long-term future than Colbert was for Paramount or CBS.

Still, while the next test of media’s commitment to late night is months off, the end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is calling attention to the mounting pressures on traditional TV and raising questions about the whether the time slot can survive the evolving viewing landscape.

The cost of producing late night programs has risen as the media industry has been upended by streaming and shifting consumer habits. The traditional pay TV bundle has lost millions of customers in recent years, and as they’ve disappeared, so too have advertising dollars.

The shifting equation has forced media companies to rebalance.

At a large scale, companies like Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery have opted to split off their cable TV networks into separate…