Is Stephen Colbert's 'Late Show' cancellation an omen of something worse?

The abrupt cancellation of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" has left critics crying foul. The show never shied away from acerbic political barbs, leading some to wonder if the surprise announcement by CBS was motivated by more than just the network's stated financial concerns.

CBS parent company Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit from President Donald Trump in what Stephen Colbert called a "big fat bribe" on air just days before his show was canceled. Paramount is currently petitioning the Trump administration's FCC for approval of a planned merger with production company Skydance Media.

With a year to go before "The Late Show" takes its final curtain call, is Colbert's cancellation part of the ordinary ebb and flow of network television? Or is his show a canary in the coal mine amid increased political repression by the Trump administration?

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

A mainstay of the talk show genre, "The Late Show" has been helmed by Colbert since 2015 following the departure of longtime host David Letterman. Colbert's firing makes it "hard to ignore" a "larger, troubling pattern" that could have "potential implications for far more than late-night TV," given its proximity to Paramount's settlement announcement, said The Washington Post. However, "it's not, from the business side, that big a surprise," given how much of late-night television has been "languishing" of late. The cancellation "underscores just how rapidly the late-night genre has fallen," The New York Times said. Network executives "could not figure how to make the finances work" for the broadcast in a media landscape "increasingly dominated by streaming."

While there is "little to doubt" about CBS' broad financial concerns, the "details of what led to the decision" to fire Colbert and cancel "The Late Show" are likely to "expose an extraordinary level of eagerness" by those in the upper echelons at Paramount to "grovel at the feet of this president," said Mother Jones. "Paramount's future aside," Colbert's cancellation "signals a dark new chapter" in Trump's "authoritarian slide." Democratic lawmakers have also raised the prospect that Colbert's cancellation may have been politically motivated, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

Warnings of "government censorship and authoritarianism" are a "flaming bag of nonsense," countered David Marcus at Fox News. Colbert's cancellation is, instead, merely the inevitable result of his "utterly pointless and irrelevant" faux conservative character having run its cultural course.

There are "two layers" to what happened to Colbert, Rolling Stone said: One is the "broader challenge" of airing a late-night talk show on network television in this era of media. The other "reflects an entirely different reason" why it's so difficult to create "this kind of show at this fraught moment in history." Given that Colbert has been such a public critic of the Trump administration, "it requires precious little imagination" to see the cancellation as a "quid pro quo" to entice Trump's FCC to approve the Skydance merger. If the "financial freefall" of late-night television is real, said The Nation, then "so is the precise political timing of the Colbert decision." While stuck with "only tea leaves to read for now," the "Skydance media behemoth" set to emerge from the Paramount merger under the leadership of "longtime Trump supporter and Elon Musk Twitter investor" Larry Ellison looks like it will take a "decidedly far-right tilt."

What next?

If Colbert really was let go by CBS for political reasons, then "surely a rival network would scoop him up," said Fox's Marcus. "That's how value in entertainment works." Colbert is now "free to go scorched earth" against a president he "detests," said Mother Jones, noting that "every other network stands to gain enormously right now." It's also "doubtful" Colbert will simply "disappear," said The Nation. He commands an "audience of millions" and "can still remain a loud critic of Trump if he wants."

For the remainder of his time on air, Colbert "obviously" won't hold back in discussing Trump, late-night TV journalist Jed Rosenzweig said to CNN, even though his comments thus far have "seemed very carefully chosen" so as not to anger the CBS brass. Ultimately, Colbert will be "fine, of course — but he also has 200 staffers to think about."