As Paramount and Skydance continue to appease President Donald Trump’s FCC while they await approval on their multi-billion-dollar acquisition deal, CBS is taking one of Trump’s most prominent and vocal critics off the air — along with the entire The Late Show franchise.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season,” Paramount and CBS told Deadline in an official statement. “We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire The Late Show franchise at that time. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television.”
While the decision-makers claim that the move was made based on purely financial reasons, it coincides with President Trump’s increased attacks on his critics in the media and a $16 million payout made by Paramount to the President to end his lawsuit against 60 Minutes.
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Colbert also announced the end of The Late Show to the live audience of tonight’s taping, telling the stunned crowd, “I’m not being replaced, this is all just going away.”
With one fell swoop, Paramount is erasing the legacies of both Colbert and the show’s original long-time host David Letterman while eliminating a major platform for criticism against the President who holds their $6 billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance in the palm of his hand.
Paramount’s announcement of the Late Show cancellation comes just weeks after media insiders reported that the company and its pending new patrons at Skydance were considering dumping both Colbert and his old Daily Show boss Jon Stewart from their networks in order to get into the good graces of a President who hasn’t been shy about wielding his unchecked power to punish political and business rivals. Colbert and Trump have a long history of trading public barbs, and just days ago, Colbert ripped into his parent company by calling Paramount’s controversial $16 million payout to the President “a big fat bribe.”
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended,” Colbert stated on The Late Show earlier this week. “And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company.” The host then added cheekily, “But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
Back in March, CBS canceled the Late Show’s Colbert-produced follow-up series After Midnight, and as the network prepares to ax the late-night staple founded by Letterman in 1993, CBS is wiping its slate clean of all late-night programming. Ellison will now inherit a legacy media company free from cornerstone shows in the wee hours of the morning and severely reduced in critics of the President.
Following this devastating news, political comedy fans and late-night viewers look anxiously to see what Ellison and Paramount have in store for The Daily Show and its returned host Stewart, who, earlier today, gave his fans words of encouragement during his podcast The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. “I’ve been kicked out of shittier establishments than that,” Stewart said of the Paramount. “We’ll land on our feet.”
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