The political and cultural gravity of cancelling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

Last night, comedian Stephen Colbert told his TV audience that his eponymous late night show will end its run in May 2026.

The show's network, CBS, cites financial concerns as the reason to cancel The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. However, media analysts and politicians speculate that Colbert's criticism of President Donald Trump may have more to do with this decision than money. 

This past Monday, Colbert had criticized CBS parent company Paramount Global for settling a $16 million lawsuit with Trump. Colbert called the settlement a "big fat bribe," as Paramount needs the Trump administration's approval to facilitate a merger between Paramount and Skydance Media.

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with film and TV critics Dylan Green, Rad Simonpillai and Alison Willmore to discuss what the cancellation of The Late Show means for the TV and political landscape. 

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on the new film Eddington and the viral "Coldplay couple," listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: The thing that really struck me about this story, Alison, is that the idea that Colbert himself gets named as one of the things that is making Skydance nervous. Because there's a lot of reporting that suggests that Skydance is like, "Hey, Stephen Colbert is quite critical of Trump politics in general." And that could be a reason to maybe, at a certain point, Trump having some kind of frustration and blocking the merger. He does have that power. He has interfered before or attempted to block a merger before. What are you seeing in terms of your reaction to this story?

Alison: What's disturbing to me — there are many things that are disturbing about this — but I think in particular, the way in which CBS and Paramount are just one of many large media and tech companies who have essentially paid out to the Trump administration in different ways. ABC also did, I think it was a $15 million settlement over the George Stephanopoulos thing. Meta has paid out. Amazon figured out a way to pay millions and millions of dollars for a Melania documentary that we have yet to see. All of these things, it's hard not to read them for — whatever justification that each one gives — as a means of, yes, doing something that looks a lot like a "big fat bribe" to placate the Trump administration.

These are the largest media companies we have and they're immediately bending the knee to the administration. It just gives you that sense that there is no space for even the pretense of a critical voice in any of these large media corporations. In part because Trump has proven so prone to be punitive, but also because none of them seem to want to stand up in any way. They're all immediately saying, "This is the way the wind is blowing, at least for the next few years, and we're going to follow it." That's depressing. It's not a great sign.

Elamin: Your reactions to this entire story, Rad, what do you see?

Rad: It's hard to take the financial reasons as the excuse, even though there's a lot of legitimacy to that, because late night in general has been suffering and people don't tune in for cable, and we've seen other shows fall for this very reason. But when you say financial reason, I mean, that $16 million settlement is a financial reason. The fact that you have this voice on your platform that is critical of that, that is calling it a "bribe" to the Trump administration to make sure that this sale goes through, this merger with Skydance. That's obviously the thing that everyone is honing in on. 

If you're thinking about how desperately Paramount wants a sale with Skydance to go through. You think about: what would Skydance want out of a media company? Skydance, their CEO, David Ellison, I mean, this guy's a Trump supporter. This guy's courting [conservative journalist] Bari Weiss to either take over her Free Press organization [her news outlet] or to have her become an editorial overseer in terms of CBS. The idea of Bari Weiss and Stephen Colbert existing at the same media platform, that does not cohere.

Elamin: Colbert is far and away the number one show in that slot. He's way ahead of Jimmy Kimmel, who's number two in that slot. And he's the only late night show that's been growing its audience, according to Nielsen ratings. Dylan, does this surprise you, reading all of this?  

Dylan: Not really.

Him and Jon Stewart were pioneers of that particular type of satirical newscasting. And then Colbert transitions into something that he's not playing the character no more. But he has that experience and he has that built-in audience and he's got a lot of power, in that sense. So it shook me to see that they were like, "We're not just replacing something, the whole show is leaving." They're very much sending a statement …. But considering his [Colbert's] reputation, it makes perfect sense to me that they're using him as an opportunity to just be like, "Y'all are next." 

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jean Kim.