🇺🇸 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert' To End In 2026

What happened?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jersey and Amanda Jamna. Stephen Colbert started his show with this.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Before we start the show, I want to let you
know something that I found out just last night. Next
year will be our last season. The network will be
ending the Late Show in May.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
He said he heard out of it. Yep, he said
he'd only heard that the night before. So this has
come out of nowhere if you're Stephen Colbert and his supporters.
But here's the story behind it. CBS is a network
that airs his show, and they've said it's purely for
financial reasons. This show will wind up next year. We're
not replacing him as hosts the show. The Late Show

(00:37):
is over, which is just a complete shock. He has
been a big commentator and opponent of Donald Trump. There's
no surprise thing like David let him in before him well,
and this is the trope of late night talk shows.
Everyone slags the president, particularly when there's so much to
slag at the moment. He has been quite vocal in
the fact that the parent company for CBS, Paramount, agreed

(01:00):
this month to set a lawsuit far by Trump over
an interview during the presidential race with Carmela Harris that
was on sixty minutes, they agreed, even though the lawyers
said they don't have a leg to stand on that
Trump doesn't have a leg to stand on. Paramount agreed
to pay sixteen million dollars of a defamation case. Colbert
said on air he was offended by this, and he

(01:22):
said that this is a technical name for this, a
big fat bribe. So that's happened in the last few days,
the last week or so. The background to this big
story here is that Paramount, as I said, the parent
company is trying to organize a merger with Skydance Media,
which for which they need approval from the US Federal

(01:44):
Communications Commission. And Colbert has joked about that too, saying
they need permission from the government, but he has slagged
off the government, and then two days later, bang, his
show is axed. The network itself has said there's nothing
political here, but everyone is saying, how sus is this?
He rates more than the other late night hosts, and

(02:05):
all the late night hosts. Trump has come out and said,
I love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even
less than his ratings. I hear that Jimmy Kimmel is next.
He's got even less talent than Colbert, It's not Donald
Trump's business what he thinks of these late night performers.
It's really not. It is their job to be satirists,
and look what's happened. Goodness, interesting time for America.