📺 TV: CBS Cancels Colbert

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• On 7th June, I wrote about French football club Paris Saint-Germain’s long awaited ascension towards Europe’s club footballing zenith as winners of the UEFA Champions League this year. Unfortunately, last week they fell in the final of the FIFA Club World Cup (to determine the best football club in the world) to English football club Chelsea.

  Read the original Signpost breakdown here.

🪦 The late Late Show

There is a lot to unpack here, and as with anything, there’s a strong political angle.

Stephen Colbert has long been known as an open critic of U.S. president Donald Trump. Since Trump came to power in 2016, shortly after Colbert took over The Late Show, the two have sparred openly. Which, to be fair in an American context, is nothing unique.

However, while Colbert has been consistently the most watched late-night talk show in the U.S. for years, the overall size of the TV audience for the entire genre has shrunk considerably over time. Most people are now watching clips on YouTube, rather than on TV. Coupled with other tech and media distractions in the 21st century, the truth is that the genre is a sunset industry. Which is also well known.

Fast forward to 2024, and The Late Show’s parent company Paramount Global announced a merger with Skydance Media. The storied Paramount film studio has been haemorrhaging money for years, and to compete with the likes of YouTube and Netflix, and following the lead of Disney and 21st Century Fox and Warner Bros. and Discovery, they decided that a merger was the only way to survive. Again, nothing unique here.

The issue arose when Skydance Media, owned by David Ellison (son of tech tycoon and Trump-friend Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison), required the Trump administration’s approval for the merger earlier this year. Trump, meanwhile had sued Paramount Global accusing them of journalistic malpractice based on how they edited an interview on the storied American news programme 60 Minutes with Kamala Harris in the lead up to the 2024 American general elections. Paramount, ultimately, decided to settle the lawsuit for $16 million.

On Monday, Colbert called the pay out ‘a bribe’. On Thursday, The Late Show was done.

This week’s Signpost looks at how the news about the New York-based late-night talk show was reported in two New York-based news media with New York in their names —the right-leaning New York Post, and the left-leaning New York Magazine.

📉 NEW YORK POST: CBS cancels ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ citing ‘financial decision’ [link]

📢 What New York Post is saying
The New York Post is fairly serious in the reporting of this news. It only hints at what other forces may be at play here towards the end of the article.

1. 📸 Visuals

There are seven visuals used for this article, and all of them include Colbert displaying various emotions. In the first image, he sits behind his The Late Show desk wearing a dark grey suit, a dark blue tie with light blue stripes, and his trademark black rimmed glasses. A fitness tracker of some kind is visible on his right hand, as he sits leaning forward on his desk with his arms crossed. His expression is serious. His coffee mug and a few pieces of paper and a pen lay on the dark brown desk in front of him, while behind him is the set of the The Late Show.

Following this is a picture of him with the British royal Prince Harry, about to clink their glasses as they toast on the set of the show. Prince Harry is sitting in the guest chair, dressed in a dark grey suit, while Colbert is in a blue suit behind his desk. They both look relaxed and are having fun.

There are further images of Colbert sitting behind his desk, including one from early in his stint in 2015, and another of him interviewing Democratic presidential nominee from the 2024 U.S. general elections Kamala Harris.

Surprisingly, there are two photos of him standing, and both feature facial hair. The first one is him in a dark blue suit and black shirt with no tie, in a full white beard with his arms outstretched as if in a giant hug. It looks like he’s at an event with a dark screen and a plant behind him.

The second is from the set of his show, where he is speaking into the camera with a moustache on his face. He is gesticulating with his arms in front of him, and his expression is one of cynicism. His band can be seen in the background.

My assessment is that this photo is from earlier in the week from the show where he called Paramount Global’s payout to Trump a bribe.

2. ✍🏽 Words

The headline is quite straightforward, announcing the cancellation as a “financial decision”. The article begins by calling the show ‘beloved’, and announces its end for what CBS calls “purely a financial decision”. A brief quote from the official company statement follows, announcing that this isn’t a firing, rather they are ending the show entirely. The statement continues to reiterate that the decision “is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters” that are happening in the company.

The article outlines how Colbert announced the news on his own show on Wednesday, where ‘the audience booed’, echoing Colbert’s own feelings when he said “I share your feelings”. Further quotes are included from Colbert’s announcement of the news, where he thanked everybody he worked with, mentioning that the job he has “is a fantastic job” and that he wished “someone else was getting it”. A quick history of the show follows, including the shows origins in 1993 following the late-night talk show wars of the 90s. The reader is then given a scorecard of Colbert’s work: ‘nearly 1,700 episodes over the span of almost 10 seasons’.

Right at the end, the article admits that ‘there were already rumblings’ about the show’s axing, following a ‘recently settled’ lawsuit with Trump, done to ‘keep the peace and save the Skydance-Paramount merger’, following the recently cancelled ‘“After Midnight” with comedian Taylor Tomlinson’ after just two years.

❓ What it means
Clearly, this isn’t big news.

Or at least that’s what New York Post would like us to believe.

For a tabloid, the article is surprisingly mature and sombre. In fact, the article sticks pretty closely to the official statements by both the company and the show. There is very little, if any, analysis of what this means for the industry, for the company, for the show, and for Colbert himself. The article is written to portray this news as simply another show being cancelled out of a myriad of shows that have been cancelled throughout history.

But why would New York Post want to downplay this news, especially one about a show that is deeply and historically tied to the identity of the city of New York?

⚠️ Why it matters
New York Post is traditionally Republican leaning, and therefore serves a more conservative and right-leaning audience. This story is double-edged. On the one hand, a loud and famous critic of Trump has had his megaphone removed. On the other hand, the perception of the megaphone being removed to appease Trump is troubling for Trump. The story not being discussed is that in order to keep Trump happy to allow the merger of the parent company, they first settled a lawsuit worth several million, and then removed Colbert.

This means that Colbert and his team are now martyrs. Everybody else? Petty and greedy.

At least, that’s how the story can be perceived in society if there is more analysis done. To reframe the news as something commonplace and usual, New York Post chose to go with this article instead.

And just in case we forget who Colbert’s audience is, the article includes a photo of him interviewing Harris. The losing side in this announcement is merely hinted at, but it’s made crystal clear.

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🏁 NEW YORK MAGAZINE: CBS Will End The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in 2026 [link]

📢 What New York Magazine is saying
New York Magazine spends more time analysing the reasoning given behind the ending of the show, especially considering that the show has been the most consistently successful late-night talk show for years.

1. 📸 Visuals

There are two visuals for this article. The first one, which I believe is a screenshot from Colbert announcing the show’s end, has him sitting behind his desk wearing a dark grey suit and a dark blue patterned tie. His hands are held together on his desk, as he leans forward, looking straight into the camera. He is mid-sentence. On his left wrist is a watch, while on his right wrist is a fitness tracker, possibly an Apple Watch. Behind him is the rest of his set.

On the table on his left is a mug with the official show branding facing the camera. The mug sits on top of a stack of blue papers.

The second visual is a direct embed of the video of Colbert’s announcement of the news via official Instagram accounts. The thumbnail shows the same Colbert, this time with both his lips and both his hands pressed firmly together.

2. ✍🏽 Words

The headline notes that the show will ‘end’ in ‘2026’, before calling the news ‘deeply disturbing’ in the first line of the article. The article then confirms that the cancellation is not just of Colbert, but ‘the entire franchise that began in 1993 with David Letterman’. Colbert’s announcement of the news was followed by his ‘clearly stunned audience’ sending out ‘several choruses of boos and nos’.

The press release issued by the company was worded in the way it was to, according to the article, ‘try to head off speculation’ that the cancellation of the show was ‘in any way prompted’ by the Paramount Global-Skydance merger, or to get ‘said merger approved by Donald Trump’s FCC’. Instead, the press release frames the decision as ‘all about money’.

Here the article pushes back on this assertion. First, while it admits that ‘there is no doubt that network TV in general, and late night in particular’ are bleeding slow deaths, ‘Late Show also happens to dominate its time slot’. As proof, the article mentions that in the second quarter of 2025, ‘Colbert averaged 2.4 million total viewers’, far ahead of peers and similar shows. This is despite Colbert ruling ‘over a much-diminished landscape’ as previously his show regularly received ‘nearly 4 million viewers per night’ back in 2018. The challenge, the article describes, is that while ‘scripted shows’ can always go to streaming or repeats, ‘late-night shows pretty much live or die’ with their live audience numbers.

Once again the article questions why this was the first late-night talk show to be cancelled, especially since other shows are doing much worse. Even the studio, CBS, ‘is doing incredibly well relative to its network rivals’, making more ‘scripted dramas and comedies’ than others. This is why, the article believes, ‘there will be lots of speculation in coming days’ about what was the real reason behind this decision, including whether this was a way to keep Colbert quiet so that Trump will green-light the merger.

Finally, the article looks at the tea leaves. The show’s future was under scrutiny ‘just last week’, with the studio also reporting that Colbert and his colleague ‘Jon Stewart were in danger [of having their respective shows cancelled] because of the merger’. The article ends by claiming that irrespective of the truth of the decision, ‘today will be remembered as an incredibly sad day in the history of network TV’.

❓ What it means
New York Magazine asks a lot more questions. Why? Why now? And why this way? And while the article does not say the reasons provided by the company are outright false, it does provide enough valid breadcrumbs to push the narrative of the story towards a major corporate conspiracy against speaking truth-to-power. While the article does its best to not minimise the reality of commerce in the decision, it raises the question to whether the commerce is related to the money The Late Show was making, or the commerce that is to be had once the Paramount-Skydance merger climaxes.

Having said all that, the article does lament the end of the show, regardless of the reasons. There’s no foaming-at-the-mouth-radical shouting here. There’s grief.

⚠️ Why it matters
Saying the quiet part out loud is important in media, but how you say it also matters. New York Magazine uses a more intellectual, less-bombastic approach to explain their thinking. There’s enough in the article for liberal coastal elites to lament the good ol’ days, as even, according to the article, Jon Stewart is also likely to be fired. Which means the end of The Daily Show.

‘Scorched earth policy’ comes to mind.

WHAT’S GOING ON? 

👀 Do people still watch TV?

Both New York-based-and-named publications refused to ask the bigger question — can late-night talk shows actually grow? The industry has definitely evolved, and in mature markets like the U.S. most people are getting their information online, either on YouTube, or Netflix, or other similar services. In this environment, cancelling a long-standing TV show may be easier to justify, even if it’s done for nefarious purposes.

While American late-night talk shows have set the global template for how chat shows around the world are made (including an opening comedy monologue, fun interviews with guests, and a musical performance), today all these elements can be consumed separately, meaning one doesn’t have to stay up late at night and slog through a bunch of uninteresting content simply to catch one segment. The audience is truly in control.

American popular humour has also changed, and the overwhelming influence that The Daily Show and it’s alumni have had on this is undisputed. Humour has become increasingly political, polarising, and lecture-driven, which describes any kind of public discourse, not just humour.

(Let me just come out and say that I fully believe that cancelling the show was a political move. It’s how business is done literally everywhere.)

Does this news mean that this is the end of The Daily Show’s comedic template of the last 25 years? Does Colbert disappear into the sunset? Or does he, like so many other people who have left linear TV, reemerge online with his own show and complete editorial and commercial control?

The truth, as always, is somewhere in between.
Read widely. Question thoroughly. Decide accordingly.

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Was this forwarded to you? Signpost is a free weekly newsletter analysing what the media says, what it means, and why it matters. It’s free to subscribe. Alternatively, you can add me on LinkedIn.