In a surprise move, CBS is sunsetting The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert’s show debuted following the retirement of David Letterman, who hosted Late Night on the network from 1993 to 2015.

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Much has been made of the cancellation, and naturally, CBS is taking a lot of arrows from those claiming the move is somehow connected to President Donald Trump. Paramount recently settled a lawsuit with the president for $16 million, and last month, the Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

Trump, of course, celebrated the decision, writing on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, HBO’s John Oliver, and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers were in Colbert’s audience as a show of “unified support” because the easiest thing to do these days is to blame Trump for whatever ails someone. Of course, Colbert’s show debuted right around the time Trump was steamrolling the GOP competition for the presidential nomination in 2015. It seems odd that it took Trump 10 years to put whatever pressure it was on CBS to yank Colbert off the air.

Still, the “unified support” from other late-night hosts is indicative of where the genre is in the 21st century. Long gone are the days of Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Letterman, and Conan O’Brien, whose sole purpose was to provide entertainment to an audience. Monologues were written to make the audience and viewers laugh. It was a great place to see new and classic bands and musicians. It provided an outlet for up-and-coming comedians.

Late-night show hosts now have an attitude of self-importance, congratulating themselves for their work. Following the announcement of the sunset of Colbert’s show, Stewart said, “The shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and control … a not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those f***ing shows. That’s what made you that money. Shows that say something, shows that take a stand, shows that are unafraid.”

“Believe me, this is not a ‘We speak truth to power,’” Stewart said. “We don’t. We speak opinions to television cameras, but we try. We f***ing try every night.”

The financials don’t match Stewart’s claims. Colbert’s show was losing anywhere from $40 to $50 million per year against a budget of nearly $100 million, according to CBS. Colbert’s ratings peaked in 2017-18 with an average audience of 3.1 million viewers. That figure dropped to 2.1 million in 2021-22. Colbert’s latest ratings are his worst yet, with an average of 1.9 million viewers in 2024-25, with the bulk of that audience made up of those older than 65. Trump’s return to power has given Colbert a bit of a lift.

Leno recently blasted the introduction of not just politics, but partisan politics, into late-night television. Leno, who hosted The Tonight Show for 22 years, said, “I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, the pressures of life, wherever it might be. And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but what happens is people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”

The venerable host then asked, “Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole?”

Leno told jokes at the expense of politicians, and their party affiliation didn’t matter. He once cracked, “Newt Gingrich said today that Bill Clinton has dishonored the presidency. Then he got in a limo with his third wife and drove off to give a speech about family values.” Another one at the expense of a Democrat: “President Clinton is denying he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. He said he did not have sex with that woman. I believe him — mainly because he’s been lying for so long, he’s actually gotten good at it.”

The difference between Leno and Colbert is that the former’s jokes were not ideological. They were observational. He saw a current event, and he and his writers turned it into a joke. The idea was to entertain the audience and make them laugh. It had nothing to do with creating a situation for people to merely applaud because the host tickled the right political view.

During the O.J. Simpson saga, Leno’s show had a bit called “The Dancing Itos,” which was a reference to Judge Lance Ito, who presided over the former football star’s murder trial. Ito faced accusations of playing to the camera because the trial was televised, and Leno found an opening to make comedy out of something serious. Colbert, on the other hand, created an elaborate dance routine devoted to promoting the COVID-19 vaccine, complete with him strutting around onstage with dancers dressed as hypodermic needles.

Kimmel, on the eve of Trump winning the election in 2024, began crying on air as he bemoaned how it was a “terrible night” for an extensive list, including children, women, science, healthcare, journalism, the environment, and more.

Meyers recently said on the Armchair Expert podcast that he wants his show to be “cathartic to do and cathartic to watch.”

It isn’t surprising that critics have said that late-night television has turned primarily into late-night therapy sessions for liberals, and the connection to Trump is more likely correlation than causation. After all, Trump was not a factor in Trevor Noah bolting The Daily Show. Samantha Bee’s show on TBS was canceled in 2022, and James Corden’s The Late Late Show also went dark. His show was supposedly losing $20 million a year. Last fall, NBC announced The Tonight Show would go to a four-night-per-week schedule with Friday shows being repeats. The Daily Show is also broadcast four nights per week, down from five.

Greg Gutfeld of Fox News has managed to fill a void for conservatives looking for late-night television that caters to their politics and has the Fox brand at his disposal to do so. The result is higher ratings than Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel.

It would be easy to say the phrase “Go woke, go broke” would apply here, and for many on the Right, it was entirely partisan politics that began to spell the demise of late-night television. While that could certainly be a contributing factor, the nature of television, technology, and culture has also fanned the flames, which could ultimately spell the end of late-night TV as we know it.

Late-night television had its heyday from the 1970s to the early 2000s, when hosts had some of their highest ratings. Of course, there were limited options at the time. Most people had cable television by the late ’90s. However, satellite television was still relatively new. YouTube did not launch until 2005. Netflix didn’t begin to offer its streaming service until 2007. Social media was limited to MySpace before the launch of Twitter and Facebook, and the first smartphone did not appear until the debut of the iPhone in 2007.

In 2025, the menu for choosing what to watch and when is almost limitless. With multiple streaming services, YouTube, podcasts, and other ways to access content, there is less of an audience for late-night television. Even fans of Colbert or Kimmel can find their opening monologues online if they want to ingest the red meat and skip the guests and the remainder of the show. Networks and media companies are investing heavily in their streaming products as audiences are increasingly rejecting scheduled linear programming in favor of on-demand content and more personalized experiences.

The smorgasbord of choices also allows those who let their politics influence their viewing to make it easier to watch what they want, rather than what gets served up. If someone who hates Kimmel but likes a band appearing on his show, they can watch Gutfeld for the politics and search for the band’s performance on YouTube the next day.

THE USE OF FORCE RESOLUTION WILL BE WITH YOU, ALWAYS

It all presents a challenge in the next several years, particularly after Trump leaves office. For all of the talk about Trump as a “threat” to whatever ideal one wants to pull out of a hat, there is no denying the impact he has on media ratings and revenue. In 2018, Ted Koppel, formerly of Nightline, told CNN’s Brian Stelter to his face, “CNN’s ratings would be in the toilet without Donald Trump.”

Perhaps network executives see the writing on the wall. Trump provides a boost, and if late-night shows are losing money with him in office, it could only mean a continual slide once he leaves office for good.

Andrea Ruth is a regular contributor to the Washington Examiner.