After much media consternation and criticism over the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, CBS chief has spoken up about the company’s decision to end the television institution after 32 years.
Speaking at a press conference following the takeover of Paramount by the media conglomerate Skydance, George Cheeks, the chair of TV media at the company, attributed the cancellation to financial headwinds faced by the format.
“The challenge in late night is that the advertising marketplace is in significant secular decline,” he said. “We are huge fans of Colbert, we love the show. Unfortunately the economics made it a challenge for us to keep going.”
Cheeks added that as soon as Taylor Tomlinson, the 31-year-old former host of After Midnight, declined to return for another season in the slot formerly occupied by the Late Late Show with James Corden, he knew the network “couldn’t stay in that daypart”.
“I know [Skydance] is going to invest, but they’re going to invest cautiously and wisely,” he said, indicating a focus on primetime and sports.
Many had criticized the decision to cancel Colbert during a crucial window in the merger of Paramount and Skydance, which depended on approval from the Trump administration to proceed. The cancellation came just two days after Colbert publicly criticized his parent company’s settlement with Trump over a “frivolous” lawsuit regarding a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. During one of his monologues, Colbert referred to the $16m paid by Paramount to Trump a “big fat bribe” to approve the $8.4bn merger.
Colbert’s announcement that his show would end next year was met with an outpouring of support from celebrities, as well as speculation that the decision was another effort by Paramount to appease Trump as well as the Skydance head, Larry Ellison, who has close ties with the president.
But Cheeks said the decision was financial, following reports that the Late Show, which premiered in August 1993 with David Letterman as host, was losing upwards of $40m a year. The late-night genre as a whole has faced significant financial challenges in recent years, with ad revenue plummeting 50% from just seven years ago. Cheeks declined to confirm how much the Late Show was losing, even as the ratings leader in the field for close to a decade, but said it was “significant” and in the “tens of millions of dollars”.
“At the end of the day, it just wasn’t sustainable to continue,” he said.
Cheeks, who came up in late night at NBC, also said that the timing for the decision came down to contract renewals for crew, including writers and producers. “We were at a period from a production standpoint where every year seasonally, this is [when] we negotiate new deals for writers and producers,” he said. “In addition, this is going to be the third season of Colbert’s three-year deal. So, in order to do those deals, we were going to have to change the terms from what we traditionally are, September to August, to September to May.
“It was it incumbent upon me and us to make it clear to Stephen and his reps that this is where we were,” he added, noting that it was “too early to speculate” on what might replace the program in the 11.35pm ET time slot.
Colbert will continue to host the show four nights a week until April 2026.
