Colbert's Firing Signals End of Late-Night TV

Bloomberg Entertainment and Media Reporter, and author of 'Screentime,' Lucas Shaw discusses the death of late night television, the Paramount-Skydance deal, and the migration of filming from LA to abroad.

David Ellison is confident his deal for Paramount will close in the next few weeks. That’s what he told his fellow media moguls at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley earlier this month, and what he’s told friends and associates in the entertainment business.

The last major hurdle is approval by the Federal Communications Commission. Ellison met with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Tuesday to sell him on the “significant public interest benefits” of merging Skydance and Paramount.  Carr has expressed concerns about diversity and inclusion policies at several companies, including Paramount, while President Trump has accused Paramount’s CBS of biased journalism.

So when CBS announced it was canceling the late-night show hosted by Stephen Colbert, a vocal Trump critic, prominent entertainers, journalists and a prominent Hollywood union were quick to suspect Paramount’s motives. Colbert had just accused his employer of bribing the president.

CBS anticipated this reaction and said in its initial announcement that the decision to cancel Colbert’s show was purely financial and had nothing to do with politics. Why else would the company allow Colbert to remain on the air for another 10 months, lampooning Trump, Ellison and Paramount Chair Shari Redstone?

A lot of partners and rivals are still skeptical. CBS recently settled a lawsuit brought by Trump that most legal experts considered without merit. If the decision were just about finances, couldn’t the network have cut costs to keep the show on the air? The Late Show has a staff of 200 people and a host making $20 million a year.

A dying breed

CBS is telling the truth when it says that the show is a financial albatross. Late-night talk shows are dying and have been for a long time.

The Late Show attracted more than 8 million viewers to its first episode with Colbert as host in 2015. It averaged more than 3 million viewers during the 2016-2017 season. It’s lost about a third of its audience since then.

The show, which costs more than $100 million a year to produce, suffered a steep drop in advertising sales during 2021 and 2022 and has never recovered. Though Colbert’s show is the most-watched of the three major late-night shows, it attracts less advertising, according to iSpot TV. Brands have spent about $32 million with Colbert so far this year, compared with more than $50 million for each of the Jimmys (Kimmel and Fallon).

Colbert’s show is on pace to lose more than $40 million this year and an additional $50 million next year. All of the late-night shows now attract most of their viewers via clips on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok – an audience that pays them pennies on the dollar.

Netflix, which has replaced so much of traditional TV, has never cracked the topical talk show. People don’t watch them weeks or months after they air, which means these shows have almost no value in an on-demand world.

Nor is there a long list of people who want to host these shows. Major comedians can now make more money – and reach more people – by touring and filming stand-up specials.

So, while Colbert is the first to go, he won’t be the last. Kimmel is going to be the last host of ABC’s late-night show and the same goes for Seth Meyers and NBC’s Late Night. The big question is whether NBC will try to find a successor for Fallon at the The Tonight Show, which has been on the air for more than 70 years.

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