David Letterman has not officially gone on record reacting to CBS‘ shocking decision to cancel “The Late Show,” which Letterman started in 1993 and hosted for 22 years before passing the baton to Stephen Colbert, but his thoughts on the matter are quite clear thanks to a 20-minute supercut his team posted on the official Letterman YouTube channel. The clip package includes a handful of times Letterman spoke out against CBS or made jokes at the network’s expense during his 22-year stint hosting “The Late Show.”
If the clips weren’t enough of an indication of how Letterman and his team feel about the cancellation of “The Late Show,” perhaps the caption to the supercut does: “You can’t spell CBS without BS.”
Among the clips included in the supercut is a segment from 2007, when Letterman jabbed CBS for only mentioning “The Late Show” in a single line of its half-page network advertisement in USA Today. Then there was the time when Letterman mocked CBS for advertising its People’s Choice Award nominees online by mistakenly including a photo of late night rival Jay Leno (who hosted “The Tonight Show” on NBC) instead of Letterman.
“He’s not on CBS! I am on CBS!” Letterman shouted to huge laughter from the audience. “What is the matter with these people? Put Oprah on it. She is the winner. That I would understand.”
Colbert announced July 17 that CBS was canceling not just his iteration of “The Late Show” but also the entire franchise come May 2026. While the decision was reportedly a “financial” one, it immediately sparked questions from industry figures about the politics involved given Colbert regularly attacks Donald Trump on air and CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, is trying to get a merger approved with Skydance.
“Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS,” ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel wrote on Instagram about CBS’ decision.
“The fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number one-rated network late-night franchise that’s been on the air for over three decades is part of what’s making everybody wonder, was this purely financial?” late night host Jon Stewart said. “Or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger was killing a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president, so insecure, suffering terribly from a case of chronic penis insufficiency.”
Watch the full supercut from the Letterman team in the video below.
