• Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show,” will depart CBS in May 2026.
• CBS claims the cancellation is unrelated to Colbert’s performance or content.
• The announcement follows Colbert’s criticism of Paramount’s settlement with Donald Trump in a lawsuit against “60 Minutes.”
• Speculation surrounds the future of other Paramount-owned shows, including Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”

On July 14, Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show” on CBS, called Paramount’s $16 million settlement of a frivolous lawsuit by Donald Trump against “60 Minutes” “a big fat bribe.”

On July 17, CBS announced that it was canceling “The Late Show.”

And another Trump critic is silenced.

Sort of. Colbert still has some time.

“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season,” Paramount and CBS executives said in a statement. 

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“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.”

Maybe so. But he’s also going to be remembered as the late-night host who lost his job under suspicious circumstances.

Colbert announced his cancellation on Thursday’s show

Colbert announced the news during Thursday’s taping, and said he found out about the cancellation Wednesday.

CBS says it is “purely a financial decision” that is “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Maybe so. Late-night shows are increasingly a financial burden on networks amid diminishing audiences, some of whom prefer to consume the shows in bite-sized chunks on TikTok and other social-media platforms. No company ever got into business to lose money, but with mergers like the impending one between Paramount and Skydance, a media company, which was the clear impetus for the settlement with Trump, the bottom line has never been more important.

Colbert took over the show in September 2015, after David Letterman retired in May of that year. Letterman was a frequent critic of CBS, in a comedic but biting way. Certainly, Letterman made plenty of political jokes, but political humor has been Colbert’s bread and butter since his days as host of “The Colbert Report,” in which he adopted the persona of a conservative late-night host. He morphed into something closer to a more traditional host when he moved to CBS, but his opening monologue often includes scathing jokes about Trump.

Canceling Stephen Colbert is another black eye for Paramount

The move comes as speculation abounds about the future of Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central (a show Colbert was once a correspondent for). Comedy Central, like CBS, is owned by Paramount. And like Colbert, Stewart has been brutally critical about Paramount’s settlement.

On Thursday, Stewart said on “The Weekly Show,” his podcast, that he didn’t know if “The Daily Show” would be canceled after the merger.

“They haven’t called me and said, like, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that office, Stewart,’” he said. “But let me tell you something, I’ve been kicked out of s——r establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet. No, I honestly don’t know.”

It’s another black eye for Paramount ― more fallout from a cowardly settlement based on greed. Imagine not backing “60 Minutes,” the gold standard of investigative journalism on TV. It’s part of a scary landscape for legitimate media. ABC News also settled a suit with Trump that most experts think it could have won. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, tries to cozy up with the president. Like Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has. The White House tries to stack briefings with MAGA-friendly personalities posing as reporters.

Sometimes late-night humor is the best way to deal with these kinds of situations. Although after May 2026, not on CBS.

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