Stephen Colbert’s Run As Late-Night Host Ends

Late-night host Stephen Colbert is set to air his final episode on Thursday, closing the book on a CBS run that became defined by relentless anti-Trump commentary and increasingly partisan political humor.

CBS’s cancellation of “The Late Show,” which first launched in 1993 under original host David Letterman, marks one of the most significant contractions yet in the late-night television landscape. The format, once built around broad cultural humor and cross-partisan appeal, has moved sharply left during the Trump era.

Now, some industry observers believe Colbert may not be the last late-night figure to lose his platform.

Other hosts are reportedly concerned that they could eventually face a similar fate as networks reassess whether heavily political late-night shows still make business sense, The Hill reported.

“I think of Johnny Carson’s final week. I think of Jay Leno’s first week. I think of David Letterman, his last NBC week and his first CBS week,” Kliph Nesteroff, a standup comic and author of “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy,” told the outlet regarding Colbert’s last gasp.

“I think of all those monumental moments that have entered the canon of late-night history, and this sort of feels like it belongs with those,” he added.

“It feels like it has the magnitude of what late-night had in the 1990s, despite the fact that it’s coming about for a far more political and bizarre reason.”

Colbert’s final episode comes roughly 10 months after CBS shocked the entertainment industry by announcing that it would end its late-night program.

“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late-night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network said then, The Hill noted.

President Donald Trump celebrated the move at the time, writing on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired.”

Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington, told The Hill that Colbert belongs to a generation of late-night comedians “who have become much more aggressive and critical in their mockery of politics.”

“We’ve been on a steady trajectory since the more evenhanded days of Johnny Carson towards a much more aggressive and more partisan vision of late-night humor,” Farnsworth said.

Colbert was hardly alone. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel has regularly used his platform to attack Trump, while NBC’s Seth Meyers frequently targets the President on “Late Night.”

But the leftward drift of broadcast late-night television also created a clear opening for Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, whose show “Gutfeld!” built an audience by doing what much of the legacy late-night industry refused to do: mock Democrats, liberal media figures, and the political left.

“Being critical of President Trump has helped him with the size of his audience,” Farnsworth remarked about Colbert, but “it hasn’t helped him with the new conservative ownership of CBS.”

David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, and his father, Larry Ellison, are both viewed as allies of the President.

“It’s important to remember that these shows are not designed to be fair, they’re designed to draw an audience,” Farnsworth added.

That may explain the current state of late night, but it also highlights how much the format has changed. During the eras of Johnny Carson and even Jay Leno, late-night comedy generally aimed for a broader audience. The goal was not to turn half the country into the punchline every night.

In the Trump era, however, many late-night hosts abandoned that approach. The jokes became less universal, the tone became more bitter, and the audience became more ideologically narrow.

For years, that partisan model may have pleased liberal viewers and earned applause from left-wing media critics. But Colbert’s cancellation suggests the business model may no longer be sustainable.

“Politics itself has become much more intensely critical and partisan over the last 30 years. The voters and the politicians themselves have moved in more polarized directions. The audience changes, the hosts need to change with it,” Farnsworth told The Hill.

Other analysts told the outlet that Colbert will likely be remembered as one of the figures who pushed late-night television deeper into politics.

For conservatives, his exit is more than the end of one show. It is a sign that legacy media’s anti-Trump formula may finally be losing its power.

Late-night television once belonged to the whole country. Under Colbert and others, it became another platform for liberal activism with a laugh track. CBS may call the decision financial, but the larger lesson is political and cultural: alienating half the nation is not a long-term entertainment strategy.