Late Night Last Week: Stephen Colbert & Corporate Power

Late Night Last Week: Stephen Colbert & the Consolidation of Corporate Power

Most weeks, we publish a “Late Night Last Week” column, covering the most notable developments on late night television. This week, we focus on just one: the firing of Stephen Colbert and the coming death of the Late Show franchise.

On July 14, Stephen Colbert returned from vacation with a mustache and a few choice words for Paramount, the company that owns his network, CBS.

Colbert addressed the company’s decision to settle with Donald Trump, who alleged in a lawsuit that 60 Minutes had deceptively edited an interview with Kamala Harris. The settlement came amidst the reportedly near-final merger of Paramount with Skydance Media, a deal worth billions. Skeptics say the settlement came out of fear the Trump Administration may block the merger in a moment of political retaliation.

“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles,” Colbert said. “It’s: big fat bribe.”

By Thursday, Colbert shared the news with his audience that not only was the company canceling his show next year, but the entire Late Show franchise. Colbert himself was characteristically gracious on the July 17 broadcast. The in-studio audience booed the announcement.

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The response to the news was overwhelming: the MAGA base celebrating, the MSNBC crowd incredulous, late night hosts coming to Colbert’s defense. “Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS,” Jimmy Kimmel posted on Instagram from vacation. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next,” Trump wrote over the weekend.

Whether the end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was, in fact, a byproduct of political pressure (as it seemed to be even in the days before the official announcement) will be the subject of much speculation and, hopefully, some good old-fashioned reportage. Surely, Colbert will see ratings swell this evening. If there is a story to tell, Colbert himself will likely tell it—let’s just hope it is sooner rather than later.

In 2006, Colbert proved himself to be an unequalled comedic truthteller, taking the violent lies of the George W. Bush years right to the president’s face at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. But this time is different. Bush could not unilaterally pull The Colbert Report off Comedy Central. Now, it seems like if Colbert goes too hard at Paramount, it could all come crashing down. One imagines this is how Colbert himself would like to go out, but other considerations, like the hundreds of people who work for him, may understandably get in the way.

Just as Colbert was settling into the Late Show in 2015, Trump himself was ascendant in American politics. With Trump’s first term, Colbert found a late night voice beyond his alter ego. He became an ardent critic of the president, a host closer to, say, a funny newsman than David Letterman. Ironically, both Cobert and Letterman, the only two men to helm the Late Show franchise as second acts, will be more remembered for the groundbreaking shows they hosted first.

It was this pivot that made Colbert a beloved figure by liberals and anti-MAGA conservatives. At the time of his cancellation, Colbert topped the late night ratings. But while defenders of Colbert are quick to cite that fact, many ignore the economic realities. The program reportedly lost about $40 million per year. In 2018, network late night shows raked in a reported $439 million in ad revenue. Last year, that number was cut nearly in half, to $220 million.

The optics of this cancellation are terrible. And it may be true that the show was struggling financially and cancelled for political reasons. The threat to speech across the country is very real.

But one of the more frustrating aspects to the whole ordeal has been the response of liberals, who seem shocked that a corporation would prioritize profits over principles they probably do not share in the first place. While it may in some ways feel worse now, the consolidation of corporate power has always been—and will remain—a major problem, with horrible ramifications of free speech. The corporations will not save you.

No one understands this better than Jon Stewart. When his deal with Apple ended in 2023, paving the way (thankfully) for his return to The Daily Show, Stewart made clear a reality that so many choose to ignore. “When you work for a corporate entity, that’s part of the deal, even at Comedy Central,” Stewart said in 2024. “The deal is I get to do what I want until it’s going to hurt their beer sales or whatever it is they want to sell. And that’s the deal we all make.”

The rumor mill has it that Stewart himself could be on the chopping block by the end of this year. The difference, though, may come down, once again, to money, which might, ironically, make Stewart safe. Whereas Colbert was reportedly losing millions, The Daily Show hit a ten-year ratings high. Stewart, of course, is a huge reason why. But the show has not allowed itself to become a vehicle for one man. Instead, the host’s chair is passed around, an innovation that has made the show feel fresh while simultaneously generating a bench of talent superior to even that of Saturday Night Live. Plus, it’s a lot harder to fire someone with cultural relevancy.

There will be plenty of time to unpack the admittedly lackluster legacy of Colbert’s show, especially since the plan (for now) is that he will continue into May 2026. And it must be said that no autopsy of the show’s decade-long run justifies any firings for political reasons. Yet the Colbert firing may prove to be the first domino in a chain reaction we have all seen coming: the death of network late night television.

It would be disingenuous now to move away from the long-standing position of this column: the network shows, including Colbert’s, ain’t innovating. Ratings and money and political takes aside, they are not where the best late night comedy is today. If CBS gets out of the game fully, that may increase ABC and NBC’s share of the pie, but that pie is still going to get a lot smaller.

Colbert, who truly seems like a lovely person, and who is without question one of this century’s greatest satirists, did not, through his show, obtain the cultural relevancy of his former Daily Show compatriots, including John Oliver, whose program Last Week Tonight remains the genre’s crown jewel. Last week, Oliver was in Erie, Pennsylvania, celebrating the launch of a minor league baseball team his show helped rebrand, the Moon Mammoths. (It was one of the year’s best bits.)

Yet of the three primetime network late night hosts, Colbert is by far and away the most talented. He is also the most primed to meet this political moment. Here’s hoping that he picks up that vibranium shield, takes on a new role, brings his crew with him, and gets to work.

Will DiGravio is a Brooklyn-based critic, researcher, and late night comedy columnist, who first contributed to Paste in 2022. He is an assistant editor at Cineaste, a GALECA member, and since 2019 has hosted The Video Essay Podcast. You can follow and/or unfollow him on Twitter and learn more about him via his website.

Late Night Last Week: Stephen Colbert & the Consolidation of Corporate Power