Colbert Cancellation: It's Just Business

Stephen Colbert (Kowalchyk/CBS/WSJ)

CBS has cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," which will air until May, 2026.

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was profitable as recently as a few years ago.

Now, it loses about $40 million a year, according to a person familiar with its budget. On Thursday, CBS pulled the plug on the show and an entire franchise launched in 1993, making it the biggest casualty yet among late-night talk shows contending with cord-cutting, changing tastes among younger viewers and declining ad revenue.

The budget for the show, filmed in New York City’s Ed Sullivan Theater, includes a live band, a staff the host said numbered 200 people, and an annual salary of $20 million for Colbert, according to a person familiar with the show’s operations.

That hefty cost of production, a withering business model and a parent company under pressure struck fatal blows. The TV mainstay will go dark next May.

Liberal observers, for example the Writers Guild of America, are claiming CBS' motives are political, i.e. “to curry favor with the Trump Administration.” They could well be partially right, although IMHO if the "Late Show" were making, not losing, $40 million a year CBS would have carried it indefinitely.

Even if CBS believed Stephen Colbert was a political but profitable hot potato, it would have been able to find a buyer for the show and extract value from the franchise. Not understanding this basic principle of how business works demonstrates the financial illiteracy of the chattering well-educated classes.