Apparently, CBS has concluded The Late Show doesn’t make financial sense anymore — with or without host Stephen Colbert.

Back in June 2022, I joined the ranks of the many conservatives who looked at late-night network television, with its tired “clap-ter” and heavy-handed cheerleading for Democratic politicians and asked just how many people actually enjoyed watching it. Never mind the now-regular softball interviews with Democratic elected officials or the exhausted “aren’t Republicans so dumb and evil” monologue jokes, the whole thing felt stale, rote, and joyless. Viewership has plummeted across the board for network television in the streaming era, and you figure the market for the likes of Stephen Colbert offering variations of the same jokes night after night had to be pretty small.

Apparently, the people who run the CBS television network have been asking the same question for a while, and this week, they concluded not enough people enjoy watching The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to justify keeping it on.

“The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026 at the conclusion of its current broadcast season, CBS announced Thursday in a statement. It called the cancellation “purely a financial decision.”

“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said, describing it as an “agonizing decision.” Colbert took over as host, executive producer and writer of the show in 2015.

Keep in mind, this isn’t just Colbert leaving as host; The Late Show, which started in August 1993 with David Letterman, is ending entirely. The network has not yet stated what programming will replace it.

California senator Adam Schiff and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren immediately jumped on social media and speculated that The Late Show was being canceled for political reasons.

Now, you and I know, that if The Late Show were a big money-maker, there’s no way that the CBS brass would cancel it, even if the network executives vehemently opposed Colbert’s politics and the targets of his jokes. Television network executives really like money.

It’s tempting to point the finger at Colbert himself for making the show financially unworkable; press reports have put Colbert’s salary at $15 million per year. Whether or not that figure is accurate, we know it is in the millions of dollars. Colbert tapes between 160 to 180 episodes per year, with no shows taped on Fridays and twelve weeks of vacation. (Keep in mind, there are only about 260 weekdays each year.) Assuming Colbert makes $10 million per year and that he tapes 170 shows per year, his salary costs the show $58,823.52 per episode.

In 2021, Variety reported, “the average cost of a 30-second ad in Colbert’s “Late Show” in the first ten months of the year was $21,511, according to Standard Media Index, a tracker of ad spending.” So, it would take about three television commercials to cover Colbert’s salary if he’s making $10 million per year. An hour of network television has about 20 minutes of commercials.

And if Colbert’s salary was really the problem, CBS could let him go and hire some other host at a lower salary.

Colbert said last night that his show employes about 200 employees – undoubtedly jobs paid at standard New York City union wages. And remember Colbert’s show is taped at the Ed Sullivan theater on Broadway, which CBS owns, but the network still has to pay electricity, heating, cooling, water bills, etc.

Talk shows used to be a relatively inexpensive form of programming — get a set and an audience, hire a host and some joke writers, and even glamorous big-name Hollywood celebrities will be happy to show up if they get to plug their movie coming out on Friday. (Kids, believe it or not, it used to be a big deal when, say, Mel Gibson would appear on Jay Leno’s couch to promote Lethal Weapon 3.)

Someone out there is likely arguing, “CBS should hire Greg Gutfeld!” Indeed, Gutfeld gets about 3 million viewers per night on average, compared to Colbert’s 1.9 million. Alienating, ridiculing, and repelling the entire right-of-center audience, night after night, has not done The Late Show any favors.

But there are signs that the problem is more than just boring left-wing politics infusing the previously relatively-apolitical form of entertainment. The old audience for late night just isn’t watching anymore, and younger Americans are turning elsewhere for their entertainment. (Joe Rogan has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube. That doesn’t mean that every subscriber is listening to or watching every episode, but it does give a sense of the expanse of Rogan’s potential audience for each show.)

If CBS has concluded The Late Show doesn’t make financial sense with any host, you have to wonder what the long-term outlook is for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, or Jimmy Kimmel Live.