CBS roasts Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ for being a big money loser

Network reveals replacement has turned $40 million loss into $15 million profit

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Published May 30, 2026  •  3 minute read

Stephen Colbert arrives for the 74th Emmy Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles, on Sept. 12, 2022. Photo by ROBYN BECK /AFP via Getty Images

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For the first time, CBS has disclosed that Stephen Colbert’s now-cancelled Late Show was losing the company $40 million a year.

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The broadcaster announced it was turfing the beloved late-night host last summer due to financial reasons with his final episode airing earlier this month.

But the decision came after Colbert mocked their $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over a deceptively edited interview with Kamala Harris as a “big, fat bribe.”

With Paramount in the midst of trying to acquire Skydance Studios — a deal that required the Trump administration’s approval — Colbert’s comments were perceived as potentially harming that acquisition.

But CBS executives said in a statement that ending The Late Show was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night” and was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

According to Nielsen data, published by Forbes, Colbert had been No. 1 in total viewers for nine straight seasons. On YouTube, The Late Show boasts more than 10.8 million subscribers. But declining ad revenue made the economics facing linear TV particularly challenging for all the networks.

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It had been widely reported that The Late Show was costing CBS millions, but that had never been confirmed until Friday, when the network issued a statement praising Colbert’s successor, Byron Allen‘s Comics Unleashed.

“We’re proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue,” CBS said in the statement published by Deadline and The Daily Beast. “With this ‘time buy’ model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing.”

Instead of producing Comics Unleashed, Allen is buying the hour from CBS for a flat fee of $15 million a year. He will get to keep the ad revenue he generates, while CBS saves on production costs for the now-defunct Late Show. Television ratings for Comics Unleashed will be of no concern to CBS.

Kimmel called cancellation ‘nonsensical’

As reports swirled over rumours that CBS was losing $40 million a year to produce The Late Show, Colbert’s fellow late-night hosts ran to his defence.

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“There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate,” Jimmy Kimmel told Variety last summer when he was asked to comment on CBS’s reported loss at the time. “The idea that Stephen Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical.”

Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon said he was “shocked” by the news and called Colbert “a true friend” in a post shared on Instagram.

David Letterman, who hosted The Late Show from 1993 to 2015 before Colbert took over, addressed the production’s end in an interview with The Barbara Gaines Show last month.

“They don’t want to spend any money, so they’re going to make money,” Letterman said, according to Variety.

“They have never been losing money … This is pure cowardice,” Letterman told Gaines last year. “They did not do the correct thing. They did not handle Stephen Colbert — the face of that network — in the way he deserves to have been handled. That’s what I think.”

Trump cheered on cancellation

Following the news that Colbert had been cancelled, President Trump cheered on CBS for ending his program.

Shortly after Colbert’s final episode on May 21, Trump slammed the comedian in a Truth Social post shared at 1:52 a.m., writing that he had “no talent, no ratings, no life.”

Trump then posted an AI-generated video that showed him dumping Colbert in a garbage bin and dancing.

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The White House Instagram page also shared the post with the caption, “Bye-bye.”

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