CBS to Cancel ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Citing ‘Financial Decision’

They can try and replace him with someone young. Like Shane Gillis might work.



That stat alone is damning, especially coupled with Deadline's article a few days ago that stated, of his 2.4m average nightly viewers, Colbert's 18-49 demographic viewership averages a paltry 219K. This pretty much proves that the only audience for late night TV are the Baby Boomer generation and the elder Gen X'ers who grew up pre-Cable. Pretty soon the average will be in the septuagenarian range.

I doubt replacing him with someone younger will move the needle. After all, that was what they were trying to do when they replaced Letterman with Colbert. There was this belief that the Colbert Report audience - which did skew younger - would jump over to The Late Show.

Clearly that never happened. Now it's too late because they're competing with the modern internet and social media, far moreso than they were even a decade ago.

This stat also puts the prior Variety article about Colbert losing a third of his audience in five years in a new light. Given the age demo, I wonder how many of those were "lost" due to natural causes…
 
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What some of y'all gloating aren't getting is that they're not firing Colbert. They're cancelling the SHOW ... There won't be a "Late Night with" anyone next year. The entire show is going bye bye. No replacement.
Boo hoo. They only have themselves to blame for poisoning the well.
 
Ratings cratered because he's no good. A lot of lefty people or channels have abysmal ratings so it shows they don't support their celeb mouthpieces very well.

A good example is Fox News vs CNN and MSNBC (two lefty channels). I think Fox has more viewers than both of them and the 4th place channel Newsmax combined

In traditional corporate media and also social media for everyone, left wing people are loud and get a lot of spotlight on them. But the real participant numbers aren't as impressive as they show if you just went on Hollywood people or media corporations.

It's just one of those things (US and Canada are very similar… not sure about other countries) that there's always a lot of left representation in media and research polls. But when it comes to viewers and voting it can be wildly different results.
 
I feel like if we still had this sort of thing during prime years Letterman people would still watch



Too bad the media completely nerfed itself in order to fulfill the mandates of DEI, they literally destroyed themselves


Letterman was great.

 
Ratings cratered because he's no good. A lot of lefty people or channels have abysmal ratings so it shows they don't support their celeb mouthpieces very well.
It's because people want to hear real shit, not party approved opinions or carefully edited interviews. That's why Rogan and Theo Von's Podcasts have massive followings, something the establishment was scrambling to get a foot in that space after they lost control of Twitter and mainstream media's credibility went to shit. Now they're losing their biggest late night mouthpiece.
 
It's because people want to hear real shit, not party approved opinions or carefully edited interviews.
Eh, if it was true, Fox News wouldn't have any audience. They even had to admit they're not real news but rather entertainment.

It's not about hearing the actual news anymore, rather hearing what you (the people, not you specifically) want to hear. We're close to have Wikipedia being closed because of it (Musk was calling for it).

And the problem with "raw" news is that people don't always understand what they're being told without the proper context. I mean we can see it here in the Gaming news section.
 
Eh, if it was true, Fox News wouldn't have any audience. They even had to admit they're not real news but rather entertainment.

It's not about hearing the actual news anymore, rather hearing what you (the people, not you specifically) want to hear. We're close to have Wikipedia being closed because of it (Musk was calling for it).

And the problem with "raw" news is that people don't always understand what they're being told without the proper context. I mean we can see it here in the Gaming news section.
Late Night shows used to be about entertainment. Now it's about propaganda. People are tuning them out.
 
I feel like if we still had this sort of thing during prime years Letterman people would still watch



Too bad the media completely nerfed itself in order to fulfill the mandates of DEI, they literally destroyed themselves

That clip is literally just Chris Farley being Chris Farley, though. He would make Seth Meyers' show look interesting if he was still alive.
 
Carson & Letterman were peak late night. Nothing since has come close. Conan sometimes, Fallon occasionally, but nothing worth staying up late to watch for sure.
 
Eh, if it was true, Fox News wouldn't have any audience. They even had to admit they're not real news but rather entertainment.

It's not about hearing the actual news anymore, rather hearing what you (the people, not you specifically) want to hear. We're close to have Wikipedia being closed because of it (Musk was calling for it).

And the problem with "raw" news is that people don't always understand what they're being told without the proper context. I mean we can see it here in the Gaming news section.
Lmao the same Wokipedia which tried to change the definition of a recession because Biden told them to? This isn't even the most egregious example either




Katherine Maher recently gained some notoriety as the current CEO of NPR but she was previously the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation and all these quotes attributed to her are accurate

 
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Eh, if it was true, Fox News wouldn't have any audience. They even had to admit they're not real news but rather entertainment.

It's not about hearing the actual news anymore, rather hearing what you (the people, not you specifically) want to hear. We're close to have Wikipedia being closed because of it (Musk was calling for it).

And the problem with "raw" news is that people don't always understand what they're being told without the proper context. I mean we can see it here in the Gaming news section.
That's not true at all.

I watch a random mix of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, BBC and a local Canadian channel called CP24. I also have 3-4 business channels I flip through for stock and business news.

Fox, CNN and MSNBC can cover the same topic, but simply skew it in their own political way. Fox skews it right, CNN and MSNBC skew the same topic left.

Watching all of these channels above, Fox is definitely the most entertaining. That's not because of the fake topics they cover which can be all the same hot story that night. But because for whatever reason Fox makes their shows more fun and lively than whining anti-Trump CNN/MSNBC, or boring suit and tie business channel coverage like Bloomberg where there's almost zero jokes or fun all day. CP24 is more like a traditional 6pm or 11pm news recap channel so they skew boring and plain too. And BBC is very boring too.

The most lively business channel is by far CNBC because they got this old guy called Jim Cramer (he's been there for 25 years I think as most of the cast is still the same). He does tons of stock analysis and he's got good points. But he's the loudest, most annoying, and also most fun guy to listen to. He'd get all hyper and press red buttons and tear up rubber bulls and bears toys to keep the show 100% entertaining. But that doesn't mean his analysis or knowledge is fake and he's making up stuff for 25 years.

As for raw news, I agree. A lot of people will never know the whole concept or details. But that's unfortunately a time limitation of news channels. They got to keep rotating news topics every 5 min, where anyone can read or listen to a podcast from whatever person they follow on YT where they commit to a full hour coverage with no TV ads from their cheap basement set up.

You never know. Maybe if news channels focused on less topics, but made them more in depth (like a Twitch guy streaming each game for 2 hours before the next game) perhaps more people would enjoy mainstream news more. But mainstream news is set up to always be rotating so that must mean thats the best way of working. But thats definitely not true for social media news. Some guys can talk about the same shit all day.

If TV companies want more successful late night talk shows, then make some conservative ones. Its seems theyre all (or almost all) left leaning. So instead of spreading themselves thin, make some more old school Rush Limbaugh or modern day Gutfeld shows. Arent a lot of older conservatives old school watching TV and not doing internet stuff? So make some right wing leaning shows and maybe they'll get a bunch of viewer pts from Gutfeld.

Think of it like any big strip plazas. It's not good business if every fast food shop is a pizza place. Spread it out. If the guy has a boner for selling food in that area, forget aout opening another pizza shop and instead put up something nobody else has up like a sushi or chicken restaurant. But for whatever reason, most talk shows skew to "I can only open a pizza shop with anti-Trump posters on the wall". Well, that's fine. But your customer base will be watered down.
 
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JFC I had no idea it was this bad

How did CBS let this go on for so many years, it should have been cancelled a decade ago


Taken out of context, I see how you would think that.

I like the the show. Yes I'm left leaning but I enjoy when Colbert has taken the piss out of Biden, Clintons, etc. but no one is going to show any of that.
 
He always made fun of how old he is fo eg

I mean you all act like the purple forum where they criticized Dave Chappelle as non-funny and pathetic and wanted him to be cancelled, same story here.
The Chappelle thing is a false equivalency. Don't try to "the anti woke are just as bad as the woke!" this thing. Colbert got himself cancelled for losing the network millions every year.
 
Don't try to "the anti woke are just as bad as the woke!" this thing.
I am not. And "woke" is not gramatically correct though.

Colbert got sacked like the 60minutes guy was sacked. And now he's threatening Ruppert Murdoch, we'll see what will happen to the WSJ (or even Fox News).

I've seen this in other countries as well, and there is always a lot of "reasons" behind these.

But eh, it's like Xbox news, you don't want to see the obvious stuff, rather than believing PR, you can, be my guest. I'm not saying my opinion on this is the truth (I have no clue), I'm just not buying it.
 
But eh, it's like Xbox news, you don't want to see the obvious stuff, rather than believing PR, you can, be my guest. I'm not saying my opinion on this is the truth (I have no clue), I'm just not buying it.

The "obvious stuff" is that:
  • The show is losing 40m per year.
  • The 18-49 demo never materialized as Moonves hoped when he hired Colbert and Corden.
  • The average age of his audience is almost 70.
  • Colbert's daily viewer numbers are worse than Letterman's last three years.
  • Advertisers have been leaving in droves since 2019.
All of these facts were released in largely left leaning entertainment media like Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter. You think those outlets are doing "PR" for CBS (or, even more laughably, the Trump administration)?

There is no political agenda here, no "chilling free speech", just cold hard capitalism. But as the adage goes, let no crisis go to waste, and the usual anti-Trump tribe is ignoring reality to push their own narrative. (Just as the pro-Trump tribe is ignoring financials and blaming "woke".)
 
There is no political agenda here, no "chilling free speech", just cold hard capitalism.

I don't know what 20m$ of free advertisment for Trump is then
 
Reddit having a normal one.

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link
 
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The "obvious stuff" is that:
  • The show is losing 40m per year.
  • The 18-49 demo never materialized as Moonves hoped when he hired Colbert and Corden.
  • The average age of his audience is almost 70.
  • Colbert's daily viewer numbers are worse than Letterman's last three years.
  • Advertisers have been leaving in droves since 2019.

One thing though: Nielsen doesn't measure the average age but the MEDIAN age. If the MEDIAN age of Colbert's audience is 70, it means that 50% of his viewers are 70+ and 50% are younger than 70. Every time you read "average age" of the viewership of a certain show, the writer got it wrong.

Median-vs-Average-1024x683.png


 
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