CBS is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May, shuttering a decades-old TV institution in a changing media landscape and removing from air one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics.
CBS said “Late Show” was canceled for financial reasons, not for content. But the timing — three days after Colbert criticized the settlement between Trump and Paramount Global, parent company of CBS, over a “60 Minutes” story — led two U.S. senators to publicly question the motives.
Colbert told his audience at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater that he had learned Wednesday night that, after a decade on air, “next year will be our last season. ... It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
The audience responded with boos and groans.
“Yeah, I share your feelings,” the 61-year-old comic said.
Three top Paramount and CBS executives praised Colbert’s show as “a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist” in a statement that said the cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”