The Math Isn’t Mathin’

CBS loses money. Colbert runs out of air.

In a digital world where we’ve been rightly taught to doubt EVERYTHING we see the first time it pops up on the web—while often times ignoring that same sage advice—there was a moment last week when it seemed everyone thought the internet was pulling our collective leg. It happened when this little morsel flickered to life on our collective screens:

“Late Show With Stephen Colbert To End In May 2026”

I didn’t believe it, either, until I found the same story on enough sites I trust, backed with video of the host telling his audience that very thing at the start of that evening’s show. So died my last specks of doubts, embers that had yet to achieve room temperature before something else flickered to life between my ears:

This wasn’t about money—it’s about muzzling Colbert to save a business merger and to appease a President who has the power to spike it.

Just days before, Colbert used his platform to grill his overlords for settling a $16 million dollar lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the network, claiming that CBS edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris in such a way that it caused him electoral harm. Among other things, Colbert suggested that the deal was a bribe paid to Trump whose approval is needed for a merger deal CBS parent company Paramount wants to complete. ABC had also settled when the former President filed a similar complaint against anchor George Stephanopolos, much to the dismay of journalism types and media observers who took the deals as ethical cave-ins. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren went grassy-knoll from the get-go. "Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late night host, slams the deal," Sanders wrote on X. "Days later, he's fired. Do I think this is a coincidence? NO.”

Surely the number one late-night network TV show couldn’t be felled by something so pedestrian and unsexy as…math? That’s what the official news release said, though, so it HAD to be true. CBS says the program no longer works financially despite lofty ratings—sure, it may be tops, but its a much smaller “tops” than the one held by Johnny Carson and Jay Leno back when NBC’s “Tonight” was boffo.

Legend has it at that “Tonight”made $60 million dollars a year in profits during its mid-1970’s Carson peak, the most of any program on the tube. Conversely, “Late Show” ad revenue is down 40% since 2018, with the show losing at least $40 if not $50 million annually. I’m no bean-counter, but yeah, that math ain’t mathin’.

Colbert truthers may want to dismiss the numbers—and will—but one has to remember these parts of the story: first, the fact that CBS isn’t just firing Colbert, it’s blowing up the entire “Late Show” concept, brought into existence in 1993 when David Letterman bolted NBC for CBS after Leno beat him out to be Carson’s replacement. It would seem, then, that the network didn’t have an issue with Colbert but instead decided there aren’t many fish left in these post-prime-time waters and that it was time to pop smoke.

Secondly, smarter folks than I bring up one more number: ten, as in the number of months of gainful employment Colbert will enjoy at The Tiffany Network before the “Late Show” set is struck for the final time. That gives the jilted host five-sixths of a year to say and do whatever he wants. He can use the CBS boardroom as a personal piñata while continuing his nightly satirical assault on the sitting Commander in Chief. After all, what are they going to do—fire him?

As much as I first thought that the CBS move on Colbert was an obvious network bow to the bottom line and perhaps the Oval Office, I’ve come around to thinking that no, this is sadly what it is: another dent in the fender of the 1970’s media business model that is proving itself unworkable/unprofitable today. The very same network that previously sent James Corden out to pasture is nothing if not consistent by doing same with Colbert.

Late night TV is no longer a multi-generational television appointment, something you HAD to watch if you wanted to be in the loop in the coffee room at work the next morning. The only people seemingly watching Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel live these days are folks who remember when that coffee room had a percolator instead of K-cups. The cool kids let social media pan for late night bits of gold, consume them when they pop up on their phones, then move on to see if anyone else got “Coldplayed” out of a job and/or relationship in the last 24 hours. The only folks seemingly watching live are my age, folks who have long-since left the 18-49 year old demo advertisers covet.

Those who still think Colbert is the victim of a network hit job DO have a point when it comes to the timing. CBS should’ve waited until Colbert wiped the blood off the knife he slid into the network management’s guttyworks just a few nights previous. The timing absolutely sucks. Chum for conspiracy waters.

There’s a game I like to play when local restaurants go out of business—one that’s more fun if the joint in question has been around for a long time, an eatery everyone knows, a closing met with shock and downright disbelief and sometimes anger from a dining public that wonders how we’ll go on without the newly darkened location as part of the landscape. Yes, I’ll say, when someone brings the closure up, it IS too bad that it’s gone. Then I ask the question:

When is the last time you ate there?

More often than not, the response is a look to the ground and an acknowledgement that yeah, it’s been a while, months if not years. And now, the chance to reacquaint is gone.

So it goes with Colbert: when is the last time you tuned in? If you didn’t like his nightly screeds against Trump, you’re probably doing back-flips (the President is, at least verbal ones). If you’re under 40, you probably haven’t watched late night TV live, start-to-finish, since you were living at home. Those folks keep up on the good stuff from Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon via TikTok while streaming “The Pitt.” For those who enjoyed Colbert‘s schtick, well, the sad news is that there weren’t enough of you out there to make the thing work. Special wags of the finger to those who considered themselves fans but assumed he’d always be there—“I’ll dip in tomorrow night but right now, I’ve just gotta see what my YouTube algorithm has on deck for me!”—because the Colbert cafe goes dark ten months from now.

Colbert is well recompensed and no doubt will be sorting through all manner of future endeavors during that late night limbo. He gets the best of both worlds: hosting a show birthed in his image with his name on the Ed Sullivan Theater shingle for the better part of another year while all manner of Hollywood big-thinkers serve up all sorts of ways to reinvent him, a process he is all so familiar with. This is the same guy who for years played the part of a right-leaning talk show host on cable, failing to come out of character even when he was before a Congressional committee. It took Colbert a while to find his footing when the “Late Show” job came his way, but find it, he did. It happened on a platform that was once fertile retail ground. That’s no longer the case. Makes you wonder what TV will look like five years from now, when the math that isn’t mathin’ for late-night infiltrates prime time, if it hasn’t already. If there’s something you like that still lives between 7-10 p.m., you’d better start watching. Then again, maybe even THAT won’t be enough to save it.

It’s not 1975 any more. Or 1993.