{"id":65824,"date":"2025-08-07T19:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65824\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T19:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T19:25:08","slug":"why-did-cbs-cancel-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/65824\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Did CBS Cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere has been much written about CBS<\/a>\u2019 decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> but there\u2019s been little word out of the company itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut after Skydance\u2019s deal to take over Paramount became official<\/a> this morning, George Cheeks, who is Chair of TV Media at the company, put his head above the parapet.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe challenge in late night is that the advertising marketplace is in significant secular decline,\u201d Cheeks said at a press conference after the deal closed. \u201cWe are huge fans of Colbert, we love the show, unfortunately the economics made it a challenge for us to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added that as soon as Taylor Tomlinson nixed the idea of continuing to host After Midnight,<\/a> which was in slot formerly housing The Late Late Show with James Corden, it became clear the network \u201ccouldn\u2019t stay in that daypart\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI know [Skydance<\/a>] is going to invest, but they\u2019re going to invest cautiously and wisely, so for me, managing this business is really important for me to double down [in] primetime and sports,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\tCheeks, who came up in late-night at NBC, said it was \u201ctoo early to speculate\u201d as to what will replace The Late Show, deflecting a question about moving Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, a syndicated show that has taken After Midnight\u2019s slot, into 11:30pm.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe didn\u2019t disclose exactly how much The Late Show was losing \u2013 insiders were pushing numbers around $40M a year, but he did admit that it was \u201csignificant\u201d and in the \u201ctens of millions of dollars\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt the end of the day, it just wasn\u2019t sustainable to continue,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany questioned the timing of the decision, coming just days after Colbert had accused the company of taking a \u201cbig fat bribe\u201d with regards to it settling a lawsuit with President Trump over 60 Minutes\u2019\u2019 interview with Kamala Harris.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Cheeks reiterated that it was down to the timing of contracts for crew, including writers and producers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were at a period from a production standpoint where every year seasonally, this is [when] we negotiate new deals for writers and producers. In addition, this is going to be the third season of Colbert\u2019s three-year deal. So, in order to do those deals, we were going to have to change the terms from what they traditionally are, September to August to September to May. It was incumbent upon me and us to make it clear to Stephen and his reps that this is where we were,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There has been much written about CBS\u2019 decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert but there\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[991,88,4208,17836,3094,10675,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-65824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-cbs","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-paramount","11":"tag-paramount-skydance-merger","12":"tag-skydance","13":"tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}