Stephen Colbert has announced that CBS is cancelling The Late Show after a 33-year run next May.
Colbert shared the news with his audience Thursday at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater, saying he learned Wednesday night that after a decade on air, “next year will be our last season.”
“The network will be ending The Late Show in May,” Colbert said as the crowd erupted in boos. “Yeah, I share your feelings. It’s not just the end of our show but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS.”
The 61-year-old comic said he is not being replaced as host and said the entire show “is just going away.”
“I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I’m so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theatre to call home,” Colbert said. “And of course I’m grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us every night in here, out there, all around the world, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.”
Colbert said he is also grateful to share the stage with The Late Show’s band and said he’s “extraordinarily, deeply grateful to the 200 people who work here.”
“We get to do this show for each other every day, all day. And I’ve had the pleasure and responsibility of sharing what we do every day with you in front of this camera for the last 10 years,” he added.
“And let me tell you, it is a fantastic job. I wish somebody else was getting it and it’s a job that I’m looking forward to doing with this usual gang of idiots for another 10 months. It’s going to be fun.”
George Cheeks, Amy Reisenbach and David Stapf, three top Paramount and CBS executives, praised Colbert’s show as “a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist” in a statement that said the cancellation “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.”
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“Our admiration, affection, and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult,” the statement continued. “With much gratitude, we look forward to honoring Stephen and celebrating the show over the next 10 months alongside its millions of fans and viewers.”
Many celebrities took to the comment section to celebrate the show and the host after Colbert announced the news of the show’s cancellation.
“The greatest to ever do it,” Jon Batiste, the former bandleader for The Late Show, wrote.
“My admiration and appreciation for you is bottomless. Excited to see what other brilliance you put into the world,” director Judd Apatow wrote.
“I am so upset about this. I need more information. We love you,” journalist Katie Couric added.
“I am extremely sad. I adore you, Stephen,” actor Rachel Zegler wrote.
Colbert took over The Late Show in 2015 after becoming a big name in comedy and news satire working with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and hosting The Colbert Report.
The most recent ratings from Nielsen show Colbert gaining viewers so far this year and winning his timeslot among broadcasters, with about 2.417 million viewers across 41 new episodes. On Tuesday, Colbert’s Late Show landed its sixth nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show. It won a Peabody Award in 2021.
David Letterman began hosting The Late Show in 1993. When Colbert took over, he welcomed musicians, movie stars and politicians to his couch.
On Monday, Colbert condemned Paramount Global’s settlement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes story as a “big fat bribe” during his first show back from a vacation.
Colbert’s “bribe” reference was to the pending sale of Paramount to Skydance Media, which needs Trump administration approval. Critics of the deal that ended Trump’s lawsuit over the newsmagazine’s editing of its interview last fall with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggested it was primarily to clear a hurdle to that sale.
Colbert followed The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s attack of the deal one week earlier. Stewart works for Comedy Central, also owned by Paramount, making the two comics the most visible internal critics of the US$16 million settlement that was announced on July 1.
A handful of media reports in the past two weeks have speculated that Skydance boss David Ellison might try to curry favor with Trump by eliminating the comics’ jobs if the sale is approved. A representative for Ellison did not immediately return a message for comment from The Associated Press on Tuesday.
— with files from The Associated Press
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