Bee went on to say that people would \u201creally rather watch people just absolutely murder each other in a South Korean game show\u201d before \u201cnodding off\u201d at night. <\/p>\n
![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/6K2QZGZL4NHUBF6DR7Y4SZYYD4.jpg\")
Guest Samantha Bee with Stephen Colbert in January 2020. CBS Photo Archive <\/p>\n
Bee can relate, after all. Her own late night show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, was canceled<\/a> before its eighth season in 2022 as the show\u2019s network TBS was merged into Warner Bros. Discovery. CBS\u2019 statement that ending Late Show was a \u201cpurely financial decision\u201d echoed TBS\u2019 at the time, which called ending Full Frontal a \u201cdifficult, business-based decision\u201d amid the merger. <\/p>\n Despite outcry over the timing of CBS\u2019 announcement that Late Show would end in May 2026\u2014just days after Colbert called out the network\u2019s parent company for its \u201cbig, fat bribe\u201d settlement to Trump and just days before the company was set to seal its $8 billion merger with Skydance with his administration\u2019s approval\u2014reports emerged<\/a> that the program was apparently losing CBS $40 million a year.<\/p>\n Still, the timing of the decision prompted Democratic lawmakers <\/a>like Elizabeth Warren<\/a>, Bernie Sanders, and Adam Schiff to call for an investigation into whether the decision was made in order to draw favor from Trump ahead of the FCC\u2019s approval of the merger. Trump gloated on social media when Late Show was canceled, and later said he \u201chopes\u201d he plays a part in getting more of his late-night critics off the air<\/a>.<\/p>\n And yet, Bee said the writing\u2019s been on the wall for the end to the traditional late-night format for a while. The fact that Trump is happy just made the choice a win-win for Paramount, she said. \u201cBoth things are true… Probably the most agonizing decisions they were having were about, \u2018How do we float this? Like, \u2018How do we not get a lot of blowback?\u2019 I\u2019m sure they knew it was happening a long time ago.\u201d <\/p>\n But even though the end of Late Show seemed inevitable, Bee still called the news \u201cawful.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend,\u201d Bee, who worked with Colbert as a correspondent on The Daily Show, said. \u201cI think he\u2019s amazing\u2026 I think probably Stephen\u2019s in hell right now because when you have a staff of 200 people\u2026 you can\u2019t take all those people with you to your next adventure. And that\u2019s just a lot of people who have built lives around a steady paycheck. It\u2019s really, really awful.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Stephen](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/QIHRS2OWOZEJRK42LXWCX6QRX4.jpg\")
Colbert, a vocal critic of Trump, expressed his own suspicions that his show’s cancellation was a move on Paramount’s part to appease Trump. Scott Kowalchyk\/CBS via Getty Images <\/p>\n