When CBS pulled the plug on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert yesterday, the network claimed the move was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.” While few believe that finances were the only factor, Puck’s Matt Belloni reported that the show was indeed bleeding prodigious amounts of cash.
Late Show has been losing more than $40 million a year, a significant amount of dough even for a show that leads the traditional late-night talk shows in the ratings. Colbert’s 2.47 million viewers are more than either of the Jimmys can manage, but the number isn’t big enough to keep ad dollars from plummeting.
As recently as 2018, late-night talk shows collectively raked in $439 million in ad revenue, reports The New York Times. That number has dropped by half, making the $15 million-ish salaries enjoyed by Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel increasingly challenging to justify.
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More problems for Colbert: His show is more topical in nature (as opposed to the social-friendly, game-show antics of Fallon), meaning few tune in to reruns on Paramount+. And while The Late Show has more viewers by traditional TV metrics, it doesn’t perform on social. The much maligned Jimmy Fallon has more than 32.7 million subscribers to his Tonight Show’s YouTube channel, compared to 20 million for Kimmel and less than 10 million for Colbert.
James Corden was losing cash too, though his show brought in extra revenue through obnoxious brand sponsorships and Carpool Karaoke spin-offs. After he left, CBS decided to get cheap with After Midnight, a panel show featuring an inexpensive host, no band and no big comedy set pieces. Although the network did greenlight a second season of After Midnight, it yoinked the time slot entirely once Taylor Tomlinson decided she’d had enough. Rather than funding a replacement, CBS handed the reins to syndicated fare from Byron Allen.
TBS got out even earlier, opting not to replace Conan O’Brien and Samantha Bee after their shows went off the air.
So even if the other late-night shows shy away from politics, Kimmel, Fallon and Meyers have to be looking over their shoulders. Belloni hypothesizes that none of the networks wanted to be the first to bail on the traditional late-night time slots. Now that CBS has bitten the bullet, however, ABC and NBC might feel more empowered to make similar moves.
Kimmel, for one, has been teasing his retirement for years. Would ABC be more willing to take him up on it now that ad revenues are in the dumpster? “The reality is I’m not going to do this forever,” Kimmel told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “At a certain point, it is going to have to end.”
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