Jack Ruby said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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Not sure why it takes a staff of 200 to churn out bad jokes, but that was one big problem

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Seriously, he basically just read the Op-Ed section of the new york times and added a trump punchline at the end of it.

Also needs to be pointed out...he turned into the exact thing he used to mock. A bitter, angry, and--let's be honest-- slightly unhinged political commentator hiding behind a thin veneer of "comedy".

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I remember thinking, "Bill O'Reilly".

18-49 is the target demo, but CBS has made a shtton of money from advertisers while airing to almost solely 50+ people for decades.

There was a story in AdWeek that said their advertising revenue is down 40+% since 2018. It also said adv revenue is significantly down for all of the late night shows.

That's why it's for sale.

And Skydance is still trying to include it in an $8Billion dollar buy.

These shows could suffer the same fate as soap operas have. They have gone from three per day per major networks to only one or two total.

Cliff.Booth said:

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BadMoonRisin said:

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Aust Ag said:

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The Man Show was great, my wife even enjoyed it. I sooo wanted to like the Kimmel late night, but couldn't. Pretty regular listener of Carollas podcast though.

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I really like Adam Corolla. He and Dr Drew Pinsky on Loveline in the late 90s MTV is nostalgia overload for me, whether its the show or on Westwood One.

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Speaking of, what I miss a lot is Talk Soup. I actually enjoyed each of the hosts in a different way. I was a little too young to fully get a lot of what they were talking about, but it was just fun.

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My wife and I still sometimes make the Today Show joke they always played with Ann Curry's "Good morning, good morning everyone in the news this morning, good morning."

Cliff.Booth said:

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BadMoonRisin said:

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Aust Ag said:

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The Man Show was great, my wife even enjoyed it. I sooo wanted to like the Kimmel late night, but couldn't. Pretty regular listener of Carollas podcast though.

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I really like Adam Corolla. He and Dr Drew Pinsky on Loveline in the late 90s MTV is nostalgia overload for me, whether its the show or on Westwood One.

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Speaking of, what I miss a lot is Talk Soup. I actually enjoyed each of the hosts in a different way. I was a little too young to fully get a lot of what they were talking about, but it was just fun.

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Check it out.

And I also miss The Soup:

Jack Ruby said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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Not sure why it takes a staff of 200 to churn out bad jokes, but that was one big problem

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Seriously, he basically just read the Op-Ed section of the new york times and added a trump punchline at the end of it.

Also needs to be pointed out...he turned into the exact thing he used to mock. A bitter, angry, and--let's be honest-- slightly unhinged political commentator hiding behind a thin veneer of "comedy".

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Agree with all of this, I was a big fan of his smaller role on Daily Report and then enjoyed his character on Colbert Report. Was very funny.

I think he is just not a good interviewer as well, which is maybe an obvious thing that a late night talk show host should be good at..but none of Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert are good at that part of the show.

Conan, letterman and Ferguson were all great at it in addition to have funny skits before the guest portion of the show.

20ag07 said:

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18-49 is the target demo, but CBS has made a shtton of money from advertisers while airing to almost solely 50+ people for decades.

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That to me is why I never understood Colbert being the choice for their late night show when they brought him in to replace Dave. If CBS would have changed their programming to cater more toward the millennial audience, I could see Colbert's viewership being higher. However, creating programming for older americans is what got CBS the number 1 slot in most ratings so Colbert was always the odd one out in that line up of what was on the network. Do you really expect the average NCIS viewer to be excited to stay up for Colbert? The average potential Colbert viewer doesn't watch anything else on CBS except sports so for them to tune in at 1030 is a purposeful choice which was easier when your tv was just a digital guide of channels. Now I'm not going to stop my viewing of whatever show I'm streaming on demand at 1030 because its colbert time.

For those saying Colbert going so political is what hurt his viewership, I do disagree. His ratings were pretty bad when he was just trying to be his quirky self the first year or 2. Once he shifted to a daily trump bash is when the show shot up to number one in the time slot. Now number 1 in that time slot is a fraction of the viewership it used to be so I get that the late night talk show is potentially a dying concept. It probably can survive with a smaller budget. CBS was going to renew After Midnight with Taylor Tomlinson until she decided she didn't want to do late night tv so I assume that show was profitable with a fraction of the ratings Colbert got. So what we have is a federal government putting their thumb on a fragile situation and now its canceled sooner than what would have naturally happened.

LMCane said:

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oragator said:

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Gonna be hard not to see this through a political lens given CBS's recent settlement. They are getting crushed over it right now.
But will be interesting to see where/how he lands. Still young and ton of talent whether you agree with him politically or not.

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LMAO "ton of talent"!

guy literally LOSES 40 MILLION DOLLARS for CBS!!

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Like we're supposed to believe in a network's accounting? They all claim every app is losing billions for writeoffs.

Colbert will end up doing his own show on YouTube.

Quote:

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For those saying Colbert going so political is what hurt his viewership, I do disagree. His ratings were pretty bad when he was just trying to be his quirky self the first year or 2. Once he shifted to a daily trump bash is when the show shot up to number one in the time slot. Now number 1 in that time slot is a fraction of the viewership it used to be so I get that the late night talk show is potentially a dying concept.

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It gave him a short-term bump with a small audience that wanted an echo-chamber every night, but being #1 among that group was no major accomplishment. They were all struggling. The political preaching ensured they'd never grow the audience anywhere close to what it was. A slow death so to speak.

It was more than one factor for sure though. But I would equally argue it wasn't Trump who killed them like they're claiming now either.

COVID hurt the late night shows a lot, because they were forced to go away from the studio audience format and in-person interviews. It was awkward and I think people tuned out. Streaming really picked up steam in that time period as well, and the market shifted away from network TV in general.

Gigem314 said:

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Quote:

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For those saying Colbert going so political is what hurt his viewership, I do disagree. His ratings were pretty bad when he was just trying to be his quirky self the first year or 2. Once he shifted to a daily trump bash is when the show shot up to number one in the time slot. Now number 1 in that time slot is a fraction of the viewership it used to be so I get that the late night talk show is potentially a dying concept.

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It gave him a short-term bump with a small audience that wanted an echo-chamber every night, but being #1 among that group was no major accomplishment. They were all struggling. The political preaching ensured they'd never grow the audience anywhere close to what it was. A slow death so to speak.

It was more than one factor for sure though. But I would equally argue it wasn't Trump who killed them like they're claiming now either.

COVID hurt the late night shows a lot, because they were forced to go away from the studio audience format and in-person interviews. It was awkward and I think people tuned out. Streaming really picked up steam in that time period as well, and the market shifted away from network TV in general.

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But Fallon on the Tonight Show has practically zero politics and their audience isn't growing either. You can blame Fallon for that or just simply that changing viewing habits (which were going to happen without COVID) were going to lead to declining ratings as far as overall audience. Colbert chose to go political as it did provide an audience of people that agreed with him to tune in to see what he would say next. That show COULD continue at a lower operating cost if CBS wanted it to. I'm just shocked that CBS is willing to cede that timeslot to the local affiliates unless they have some other national show planned after local news. Maybe they are going to go after Greg Gutfield (or someone similar to him, i just know his name from my boomer parents and their circle talking about it) and put on a "right winged" late night program but not call it Late Night.

Yep. All of that.

"The economics don't make a ton of sense that it is making that much money, takes that much to produce, is leading it's time slot in viewers, and winning awards. That all doesn't equal cancellation to me, but what do I know?"

apparently not much.

seeing as how Colbert LOST CBS FORTY MILLION DOLLARS.

The ad data firm Guideline estimates that CBS's late-night shows together drew $220 million in ad revenue in 2024 just half the $439 million they drew in 2018.

RedBird's Jeff Shell, the former head of NBCUniversal who will run the network once the deal is done, has been crunching the numbers and finding that CBS is a "melting ice cube" with its losses and cost overruns, a source said.

https://nypost.com/2025/07/18/media/cbs-ending-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert-is-more-than-just-a-financial-loss/

For all claiming politics are the reason Colbert ratings are down, the ONLY thing that beats it at that time slot is the right winged version of the same show on Fox News.

https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/late-night-tv-ratings-q2-2025/

As the second quarter of 2025 wrapped, late-night's pecking order held mostly steady--with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert topping the 11:35 PM hour in total viewers, and Late Night with Seth Meyers leading at 12:37 AM across both key ratings metrics. CBS's Late Show was the only show among the nine tracked by LateNighter to draw more total viewers in Q2 than it had in the first quarter of 2025--although just barely, with the show growing its audience by 1% quarter over quarter. All told, the Stephen Colbert-hosted show averaged 2.42 million viewers across 41 first-run episodes, comfortably outpacing ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1.77 million) and NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (1.19 million). In the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demo, however, Kimmel surged ahead with 220,000 viewershis strongest performance in a year--edging out Colbert (219,000) and leaving Fallon (at 157,000) in a distant third.
https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/late-night-tv-ratings-q2-2025/


If the 'late night' show with the highest ratings is losing money, then the business model needs some work.

rgvag11 said:

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As the second quarter of 2025 wrapped, late-night's pecking order held mostly steady--with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert topping the 11:35 PM hour in total viewers, and Late Night with Seth Meyers leading at 12:37 AM across both key ratings metrics. CBS's Late Show was the only show among the nine tracked by LateNighter to draw more total viewers in Q2 than it had in the first quarter of 2025--although just barely, with the show growing its audience by 1% quarter over quarter. All told, the Stephen Colbert-hosted show averaged 2.42 million viewers across 41 first-run episodes, comfortably outpacing ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1.77 million) and NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (1.19 million). In the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demo, however, Kimmel surged ahead with 220,000 viewershis strongest performance in a year--edging out Colbert (219,000) and leaving Fallon (at 157,000) in a distant third.
https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/late-night-tv-ratings-q2-2025/


If the 'late night' show with the highest ratings is losing money, then the business model needs some work.

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Yup. When financial issues at Conan's TBS show hit, they cut the band and changed the format of the show for the final year or two with a smaller staff. You would have thought they would try to make tweaks and changes before outright pulling the plug. And they didnt even pull the plug so the speak. The show is still set to air for 9 more months.

I don't watch late night tv with any regularity so this has no direct impact other than its wild to see a network give up on a long running show and its hard to ignore whats going on with the shows' parent company stuck in limbo while trump admin holds up the merger. Part of me hopes the South Park deal falls apart and we see Matt and Trey really let loose on how they feel about this.