The Stephen Colbert cancellation has died down enough that it's safe to take a step back and — without dancing on The Late Show's grave — find the real reason why CBS axed it.
Well, maybe a little dancing.
Not that our friends on the Left are ready to let go of L'Affaire Colbert. For them, CBS giving The Late Show the boot is their Alamo, their Warsaw Uprising, their Battle of Kosovo — a doomed attempt at resistance that helped forge their identity.
Leave them be. Once someone has succumbed to the myth of a Donald Trump cultural purge, there's no helping them.
But let's you and me look at the facts.
While it's fun to point fingers at today's cringeworthy late-night hosts, as Sasha Stone did this week on her Substack, there's so much more to late night's troubles. "In the middle of trying to stop the war in Ukraine, the war in Russia, manage the economy, and fend off yet another Me Too swarm from the likes of Dan Goldman and Nancy Pelosi," Stone wrote, the idea that "Trump would be up at night worrying about Colbert’s latest unfunny joke."
"As if."
Indeed. The only thing less amusing than a Colbert monologue is the overbearing sense of self-importance he shares with his fellow overpaid and under-watched late-night hosts.
But as lame as the current crop of hosts is, the deeper truth is that celebrity guest-driven late-night appointment TV is almost as dated as mood rings, pet rocks, or double-knit polyester leisure suits.
Not that the surviving lefty TV hosts in any timeslot are doing their curb appeal any favors with reactions to Colbert like this one from Jon Stewart:
Jon Stewart’s rebuttal to CBS canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is every bit as cringey and terrible as you would expect it to be. pic.twitter.com/vyuAjHgjIR
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) July 22, 2025
I'm sorry you had to see that.
But there's a sad fact, followed by a head-scratching irony, that explains why late-night TV is on life support — and why Colbert's Late Show won't be the last to have its plug pulled.
The sad fact is that, just like so many blockbuster movies, late-night TV grew formulaic and predictable. What was still fresh — and in David Letterman's case, entirely unpredictable — in the '60s through the '90s now feels tired. Even big-name guests rarely stray from their P.R.-approved personal anecdotes.
The irony is that the guest with the $300 million movie to promote, who played it so safe with Jimmy Fallon, shows up on X a few hours later to tell half the country to go to hell.
Who needs to stay up late for A-list artifice when we can watch celebrities expose their real selves 24/7 on social media? We can catch the clip from their new movie there, too.
I was shocked last week to learn that CBS spent $100 million a year and required 200 staffers to put on The Late Show four nights a week, 40 weeks a year. What ridiculous effort and expense they went to for what amounts to a guy behind a desk chatting with a guest on a sofa.
But that wasn't the fatal blow. CBS could have cut the staff to the bone and hired a cheaper host — if they believed there was still life left in the late-night format. Fox’s Greg Gutfeld is the lone exception — but he abandoned the format years ago. No desk, no monologue, no scripted celebrity guests. Just a budget setup, a panel of sharp weirdos — and ratings that make the networks wince.
Sure, Colbert is canceled, Jimmy Kimmel is cringe, Fallon is lame, and Seth Myers is... who, again? But those are just the hosts, and hosts come and go.
It's the format that's dead, and viewers like you and me killed it through neglect.
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