Stephen Colbert told his audience at a July 17 taping that CBS is ending his show next year, despite receiving the highest ratings for its time slot.
The cancellation “is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” Paramount and CBS executives said in a statement. “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
CBS announced the cancellation on July 17 in a press release that featured a clip of Colbert’s update on Instagram
During the show taping, Colbert began telling the audience that he was going to mention something he had heard the previous night.
“Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending the Late Show in May … it’s the end of the Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away,” he said.
“It is a fantastic job,” Colbert said on Thursday.
He thanked his show’s audience, executives at CBS, and the 200 people who work on the program.
In a statement, Paramount Co-CEO and CBS CEO George Cheeks, CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach, and CBS Studios President David Stapf expressed their “admiration, affection, and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team,” adding that this made the “agonizing decision even more difficult.”
Based on the most recent Nielsen ratings, Colbert’s show is dominating its current timeslot with roughly 2.4 million viewers throughout 41 new episodes. The late-night show was also the only one so far this year to gain viewers, according to the ratings.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was also nominated this week for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show for the sixth time, and it received a Peabody Award in 2021.
Colbert was a correspondent on “The Daily Show” from 1997 to 2005, when he launched his satirical political commentary show on Comedy Central, “The Colbert Report.”
In 2015, he ended that show to take over hosting duties for “The Late Show” from David Letterman.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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