With Stephen Colbert at the helm, the show has turned into Theme Time Therapy Hour for aging liberals.
In early July 1941 — as Operation Barbarossa was underway and the Nazis had begun their lightning-fast advance into the Soviet Union — a stunned, despairing Stalin betrayed a rare moment of vulnerability to those members of his Politburo he hadn’t yet had shot: “Lenin left us a state and we turned it into sh*t.” In much the same way, my consolations go out to Stephen Colbert, executor and undertaker (in both senses of these terms) of the legacy of comedy legend David Letterman. And I remind him: It could always be worse! You could be Stalin in 1941! Actual Nazis could be rolling tanks toward you!
For those unaware, Colbert announced the news last night during the taping of his show, which I can guarantee that none of you readers watched in real time: Not only is he stepping down as the host of CBS’s Late Show — the place David Letterman created in the early ’90s as the subversive alternative to NBC’s stolid Tonight Show legacy brand and the late-night dominance of Johnny Carson — CBS has decided to retire the show as a brand altogether. There will be no replacement. It is a sad denouement to Colbert’s career, and an even sadder end to an era of late-night television.
Jim Geraghty wrote earlier this morning about Colbert’s cancellation and, as per usual with Jim, covered nearly every beat to this story I might have wanted to highlight. Perhaps the demise of the Late Show was overdetermined. When crowd-pleasing comic Jay Leno got the nod from executives at NBC to replace the retiring Carson, CBS poached David Letterman, then hosting his own quirky NBC talk show in the night-owl slot after Carson, thus setting off a battle for the airwaves.
This was a formative media memory from my childhood, but that was 30 years ago. People will argue that late-night talk shows have been declining in relevance for decades, as our media environment fractures. They’ll argue that the Late Show’s real brand equity — back when talk shows mattered — was David Letterman’s sui generis appeal. Both of these things are true. But The Tonight Show on NBC still isn’t going anywhere, despite having cycled from Leno to Conan O’Brien back to Leno (in a humiliating development) and now to the inoffensive Jimmy Fallon.
No, the real problem with CBS’s Late Show isn’t that it needed Letterman to survive, or even that CBS’s recent lawsuit payout to Donald Trump left Paramount/CBS looking to quickly cut a cool $16 million from their operating budget. The Late Show deserved to die simply because it got swallowed by the media trends surrounding it: Colbert used his star power to turn it into a watered-down variant on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. (Or, more often, and infinitely more damningly, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.) He became irrelevant.
Lately, he just doesn’t seem to be bothering at all. NR contributor Becket Adams hilariously noted how many of Stephen Colbert’s guests since taking the helm — on CBS, on a marquee-brand late-night talk show meant primarily to highlight Hollywood’s latest effluvia — have been better suited for The Maddow Report than late-night broadcast entertainment. “Where will I go now for lighthearted, fun celebrity interviews of, uh, CNN staffers, obscure federal administrators, and failed gubernatorial candidates?” Becket asks.
Stacey Abrams helpfully chimed in to salute Colbert on his way out the door, noting that she had appeared four times on the show — which, as Dominic Pino assesses, is a remarkable “2-to-1 exchange rate between Late Show appearances and number of elections lost to Brian Kemp.” And the just-so story to cap it all off: Who was the young Hollywood celebrity joining Stephen Colbert on the day he announced his cancellation? None other than that buxom starlet Adam Schiff, Democratic senator from California — for the full hour.
What is there to say? This was supposed to be a goofy, winkingly subversive late-night comedy show. With Colbert at the helm it has turned into Theme Time Therapy Hour for aging liberals who just want to watch a little TV in bed before turning out the light. “Political comedy” talk shows have infamously been the death of late-night comedy, the substitution of “clapter” in place of “laughter,” which is much harder to earn in any media era, and particularly one dominated by censorious progressive sensibilities. Their ratings trajectories have long since been clear. Why didn’t Colbert ever just try to be funny instead?
I have a theory. Have any of you watched Colbert lately? I ask because my primary memory of him was actually as a correspondent from the old Jon Stewart–era Daily Show on Comedy Central, where he played a pompous Bill O’Reilly–type parody that he later spun off into his own sister act, The Colbert Report. A lot of people adored his shtick back then; as a conservative, touchy about what I felt was a parody that struck too many false notes, I was not one of them. But I could recognize easily enough, on a level of comedic craft, when he was skillfully delivering a sharp line.
The problem is that Colbert — like Oliver, like Bee, like Trevor Noah, even like Jon Stewart — has always been little better than just that: a deliveryman. Give him a good line, he can sell it in front of a camera. But he can only deliver what others have already prepared for him. He is not a writer himself; he is only as funny as the people he pays to “be funny” for him are. And those people have been flushed out of this particular niche of Hollywood over the past decade — with its perverse incentives for comedy — so thoroughly that half of them have given up on creative work entirely and just decided to become crypto influencers instead.
It’s not just the end for Colbert, or The Late Show, it symbolically feels like the end of an era for a certain utterly played-out version of “political education” disguised as entertainment. But until then, boy are we going to have an enjoyable final year of the show! You see, in its wisdom, CBS has decided to cancel Colbert . . . but leave him on the air for an entire final farewell season. Surely there will be no surly rebellion, no political mischief! Given that Colbert is likely to make a political prat of himself in his extended adieu, I suggest that, for once, he at least try to do it in a funny way: Hire Kate McKinnon, late of SNL, to dress as Hillary Clinton and sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in silence at the beginning of every 2026 episode.
Either that or start telling jokes.