Topline
The 12-minute monologue "Late Night" host Stephen Colbert delivered after the news of his show's impending end has racked up almost 10 million views on YouTube, making it the most popular video on his channel in six years and underscoring a lack of social media success that could have contributed to the show’s surprise cancellation.
"The Late Show" with Stephen Colbert during Monday's July 21, 2025 show.
On July 21, the opening monologue to Colbert's show—in which he promises “the gloves are off” in his commentary about President Donald Trump and tells the president to “go f— yourself”—saw him address the news CBS would cancel “Late Night” for what they said was “purely financial” reasons.
The video had been watched 9.93 million times as of Friday morning, more than any other on the show's Youtube channel since New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was a guest back in September of 2018.
Videos racking up 10-million-plus views were most common for "Late Night" between 2015 and 2018, but the show’s YouTube popularity largely peaked then, and has dropped year over year.
Until this week, only 10 videos in the last three years had managed to cross the 4 million view mark.
Late night TV has been becoming more expensive and less profitable for years—Colbert's show was reportedly losing $40 million per year despite being the top rated of the 11:30 p.m. ET hour—and his was arguably the least likely to make up for the losses with viral videos when compared to peers like NBC's Jimmy Fallon or ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, who focus on pushing out click-happy clips.
The most-watched clip on Colbert's channel, for instance, has 49 million views when compared to the 507 million on Fallon's and 80 million from Kimmel.
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870,698. That's the average viewership for the 12,180 videos the "Late Night" YouTube channel has posted since it was created in 2015 according to Social Blade, which tracks daily stats for creators. Fallon's "The Tonight Show" videos average 1.4 million viewers and “Jimmy Kimmel Live” averages 1.7 million.
Though his social media viewership may lag behind, Colbert’s is the highest- rated late night show on broadcast television. "Late Show" averaged 2.4 million viewers for the first half of 2025, USA Today reported citing Nielsen, compared to Kimmel's 1.8 million and Fallon's 1.2 million. All three late night hosts have seen their ratings fall each year.
Paramount, CBS’ parent company, has said the reason for the cancellation was "purely financial,” but viewers, industry insiders and Colbert himself have speculated political concerns could be lurking in the background. "How could it purely be a financial decision if ‘The Late Show’ is number one in ratings?” Colbert asked Monday. The host is a staunch critic of Trump, who posted to Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.” The cancellation announcement came shortly after Colbert called out CBS for offering “a big fat bribe” to Trump, talking about a $16 million payment Paramount said it would make to settle a lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview conducted with Kamala Harris during the last election. The settlement was announced at the same time Paramount was seeking approval from the Trump administration for an $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. The FCC greenlit the deal on Thursday, a week after Colbert’s show was canceled, after Skydance said it would end diversity, equity and inclusion considerations in hiring, promotions, development and compensation.