Intro for July 24, 2025

Dear Gossips,   

The fallout from the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert continues, this time, in the form of some cold hard reporting. From the jump, executives at CBS have insisted this decision was “purely financial”, even though it looks at least in part political. But here are some actual financial numbers to throw around, and honestly, the picture isn’t pretty. 

This comes from Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler newsletter, from reporter Lesley Goldberg, in an article titled “On Vacation, Colbert Didn’t Know ‘Late Show’ Was Dead. His Manager Did”. Goldberg breaks down the timeline, that Stephen Colbert’s manager, James Dixon, got the call from CBS on June 27, days before CBS paid out $16 million to settle the 60 Minutes lawsuit with Trump, and that Dixon didn’t tell Colbert right away. In fact, Dixon waited until his client was back from vacation and had already taped the July 16 show before informing Colbert his show was caput. Way harsh, Tai? Maybe, maybe not. Dixon has been Colbert’s rep a long time, one must assume they have a relationship of the sort that maybe Dixon knew that was the best way to tell him. Maybe someday, Colbert will tell his side of the story, and we’ll know more about that part of it.

Goldberg also has some numbers about the financials for The Late Show, and it’s not great. The show costs $100 million per year to produce, but last year losses amounted to $40 million, as ad rates for late-night TV have cratered over the last decade. You’ve heard us mention the tough go of digital publishing with tanking ad rates, well, the same thing is happening to linear TV (CBS’s breakout scripted series, Tracker—about a guy NOT named Tracker—has cut three regular roles for alleged cost-saving reasons, and that show is considered a hit). A lot of that revenue is shifting to digital—Youtube just reported a 13% jump in ad revenue in its second quarter—and Colbert glaringly lags in digital presence. He doesn’t have the Youtube subscriber base of his direct competitors, Jimmies Fallon and Kimmel, and he doesn’t produce the kind of online exclusives or viral content the other late-night hosts do. 

A marquee show floundering to the tune of $40 million IS a fireable offense—for the people in charge. If you can’t get the balance sheet on a marquee show worked out, that’s a YOU problem. As I have said for the last week, other late-night shows have made cost-cutting concessions, but Colbert wasn’t given a chance to defend his corner and present ideas for savings. So basically, the balance sheet is a mess, but you’re not interested in ways to fix it. Gotcha.

Also, while execs at CBS were mulling over this idea, they notably did not lean on “it will be Colbert’s swan song” while selling the show to advertisers at the spring upfronts. Once committed to this path, they could have wrung every last dollar out of The Late Show by letting advertisers know they’re buying into the final season of the show, but they didn’t. One reason given for the secrecy was keeping Skydance CEO David Ellison and Cindy Holland, who is currently serving as a consultant to Ellison but is positioned to take over Paramount+ after the merger, from weighing in and potentially demanding Colbert be taken off air immediately. So the spin is that announcing the end of The Late Show now was meant to ensure Colbert has a ten-month window to his exit.

Look, it all sounds very sensible. The show is expensive, the show is losing money, late-night TV is dying overall, Colbert’s contract ends next year anyway, now is the time to get out. Sure! And if Paramount WASN’T involved in a stalled $8 billion merger, if CBS HADN’T just paid out $16 million to a vindictive president, if Trump’s FCC WASN’T sitting on final approval for said merger, then maybe that would all play! But it will NEVER play because those other things are true, too. 

The optics are indefensible. They’re so bad, it doesn’t matter how clear-cut the financial reasons are, you’re never going to beat the allegations that cancelling Colbert wasn’t at least partly politically motivated. The truth is, we probably won’t ever know for sure how much of the decision was for this or that reason. But it was probably a little of column A, a little of column B. A late-night show going off the air in the current climate is not shocking—I’ve already said I expect to see all these shows die off in the coming years, as contracts end. But cancelling Colbert now, in between a placating lawsuit settlement and an extension for a stalled merger, is only ever going to look like a conciliatory gesture to a petty president—who openly celebrated the decision as a win for him. 

In an editorial of his own, The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield said it best: “But we have to […] have things we stand for that are bigger than ‘the numbers don’t add up.’ Bigger even than that. And when those moments come, history will remember how you answer.” No one is going to remember CBS/Paramount’s decision as financial, just as no one talks about NBC removing Conan O’Brien from The Tonight Show as about the ratings. Fair or not, CBS/Paramount will always be remembered for caving to Trump. History knocked, and they failed to answer.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah