When Stephen Colbert's The Late Show got the axe last year, the left went absolutely ballistic. They screamed about corporate censorship, blamed Donald Trump, and crowned Colbert a martyr who'd been silenced for speaking truth to power. Colbert himself fed right into that narrative with a profanity-laced rant on his first show after the cancellation announcement, promising that "for the next 10 months, the gloves are off."
Colbert even floated the conspiracy theory that CBS pulled the plug because of his rant against Paramount for settling Trump's lawsuit. He couldn't understand how The Late Show could be a financial disaster when it topped the ratings in its time slot. But here's the thing: the cancellation had absolutely nothing to do with Trump. CBS was hemorrhaging about $40 million a year on the show despite its ratings performance. The network was shelling out more than $100 million annually on production costs, including Colbert's own $15 million to $20 million salary.
I don't care what his ratings were; if you're losing money, that's a problem.
Despite all the righteous indignation and the narrative that Colbert was some kind of anti-Trump resistance hero, you'd think his liberal fans would be flocking to watch him in solidarity to prevent the show from going off the air in May. You'd think they'd want to prove CBS wrong and show that the show deserves to be saved. But the truth is, they can't even be bothered to tune in. Nielsen data shows Colbert's CBS program just posted its lowest January ratings ever in the key 25 to 54 advertising demographic. The show averaged roughly 285,000 viewers in that crucial demo this January. Advertisers base their rates on that 25-54 performance, which helps explain why the show has been costing CBS about $40 million every year.
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As Colbert's scheduled May 21 end date approaches, you would think leftist viewers would be rallying around the show, but they’re continuing to drift away. Throughout 2025, Colbert averaged 2.5 million total viewers, but that figure has now dropped to 2.2 million. Colbert still pulled more total viewers than ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, who drew about 2.1 million, and NBC's Jimmy Fallon, who managed only about 1.25 million. But here's the kicker: Fox News' Greg Gutfeld currently outperforms all three broadcast late-night hosts, pulling in about 3.2 million viewers despite airing only on cable. Colbert's show airs on a broadcast network that’s available for free over the air to most households, unlike Gutfeld's cable-only platform.
The only logical conclusion here is that the same anti-Trump viewers who cried foul over Colbert’s cancellation and Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary suspension never really believed the narrative they were selling. It was just a convenient lie. In reality, they cared more about presenting Trump as some anti-free speech dictator than they did about Colbert or Kimmel.
As conservatives have been saying all along, Colbert’s cancellation was never about Trump. The audience simply is not there, and that reality vindicates the network’s business decision.
