Conan O’Brien had some fun during a stop by “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Monday.
“Stephen, how’s late night? What’s going on?” the former late night talk show host said, feigning ignorance about Colbert’s looming cancellation and Jimmy Kimmel getting pulled off the air last month.
“I’ve been out of it for a little bit,” he quipped, asking Colbert to “Catch me up on what’s happening!”
“In 28 years of my show, I never read the news,” Conan O’Brien joked to Stephen Colbert.
CBS Photo Archive via Getty Images
Colbert, whose show is set to end in May, retorted back, “I’ll send you the obituary.”
O’Brien kept up his bit, recounting a special memory with all of the other hosts.
“I remember just as I was leaving my late night show, I took you and all the other late night hosts out,” he said. “Do you remember this? I took you to a wonderful Sizzler restaurant, and we all had our trays and I told you guys — remember what I told you? I said, ‘Take care of late night. If you take care of late night, late night will take care of you.’ Remember?”
“I said, ‘Don’t do anything to ruffle any feathers.’ Remember? I said that,” O’Brien explained. “And I said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t speak truth to power.’ I said, ‘Cowardice is the way.’”
“In 28 years of my show, I never read the news,” he continued.
The new version of the late night wars started in July, when CBS unceremoniously announced that it was ending Colbert’s “Late Show” ― for good ― in May 2026.
The network insisted the move was “purely a financial decision” but many suspected it was politically motivated because the announcement came days after Colbert made a joke ripping CBS parent company Paramount’s $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump as it sought permission to merge with Skydance.
O’Brien responded to Colbert’s cancellation at the time with an ominous warning about the future of late night TV.
“Late night television, as we have known it since around 1950, is going to disappear,” the former “Saturday Night Live” writer said during his induction speech at the Television Academy Hall of Fame ceremony in August.
“But those voices are not going anywhere. People like Stephen Colbert are too talented ― and too essential ― to go away. It’s not going to happen,” he added.
Two months later, Jimmy Kimmel was pulled from the air for six days for comments he made related to the suspect in Charlie Kirk’s killing.
When Kimmel’s show returned last week, he called out the scary efforts to curb free speech.
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“Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country,” the late night show host said in his first show back. “And that’s something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air.
“That’s not legal, that’s not American,” he stated. “That is un-American. And it’s so dangerous.”