Stephen Colbert's last stand

The Hindu

3 days ago

A couple of weeks ago, viewers of CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert were surprised by the host returning from vacation with a wispy black-and-white moustache. Like many, I initially thought it might be a prop, until the host said otherwise. 'That's right, it's me underneath this salt-and-pepper cookie-pusher,' Colbert quipped. 'For tonight, my upper lip is home to what many in the beauty industry are calling 'technically a moustache''.
Later in the same episode, Colbert criticised CBS's parent company Paramount for settling a lawsuit with President Donald Trump for $16 million, calling it 'a big fat bribe'. Trump had alleged that CBS 'deceptively edited' an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a claim that Paramount said was 'entirely without merit' in their reply. Yet they coughed up $16 million anyway. Colbert finished the segment about Paramount by joking that even if the network decides to discontinue The Late Show to placate Trump, he could 'always sneak into the building with this moustache'.
Three nights later, Colbert announced on the show that the cancellation fears were real; Paramount had decided to discontinue the show in May 2026 for 'financial reasons'. He's not being replaced by a different host — the entire Late Show franchise (David Letterman was at the helm from 1993-2015) will simply cease to exist.
Colbert's former colleague and fellow satirist Jon Stewart pointed out another crucial piece of the puzzle. 'The fact that CBS wouldn't save its own number-one-rated network late-night franchise,' Stewart said, 'that's been on the air for over three decades, is part of what's making everybody wonder was this purely financial? Or maybe the path of least resistance for your 8-billion-dollar merger?' Stewart was referring to Paramount's impending $8 billion merger with the firm Skydance — a deal that Trump had previously indicated he would block as payback for his perceived grievance about the Harris interview.
What happens to satire?
As one of the most-loved and followed talk show hosts and political satirists in the world, Colbert surely deserved a better farewell — to go out on his own terms rather than becoming a political football between Paramount and Donald Trump. But the Late Show's cancellation does place another question mark over the future of the late-night talk show format.
In the ongoing streaming epoch, where 'appointment viewing' is becoming increasingly dominated by live sports, the late-night talk show is one of the last surviving templates from TV's original golden era (the 1950s and 60s). Some news, a few topical jokes, some interviews with coiffed-up celebrities, and a live performance or two — this basic outline has served successive generations of American TV hosts, starting with Ed Sullivan (who began in the late 1940s and was on the air until the early 70s).
At the end of a long day at the office, you can often enter a state of 'decision paralysis' while fiddling with the TV remote — do you watch trashy fun things or more sophisticated, cerebral fare? The late-night show drew inspiration from its cousin, the 'variety show', and took this indecision out of the equation. There's something for everyone in this format, the celeb-obsessed gossip-column reader as well as the serious-minded consumer of 'hard news' and political satire. However, in the streaming era, the competitive advantage offered by this format has depleted significantly. Today, no matter how specific or whimsical your ask is, chances are you will find a streamer willing to fulfil it.
The end of an era
In the last two to three years, we have been witnessing several manifestations of this programming impasse. In 2023, it was reported that James Corden's The Late Late Show was losing CBS $20 million annually prior to its cancellation. Before that, in 2022, Trevor Noah left The Daily Show after seven years at the helm. Of the survivors in this circuit, Jimmy Fallon has been reduced to a kind of parody of himself, resorting to increasingly over-the-top gags.
Jimmy Kimmel is second in the ratings behind Colbert, but his jokes have definitely been wearing thin in recent years. Post-Colbert, Seth Meyers' show is perhaps now the go-to venue for smart political comedy and off-kilter humour.
How are the late-night shows meeting the challenges of this new era? One thing that they all seem to be doing is inviting more Gen-Z guests, especially people who are popular on the Internet.
In India, for instance, Kapil Sharma's Netflix show (the closest equivalent, format-wise) had a group of young podcasters and influencers as guests recently. Of course, this move doesn't always work smoothly; Colbert himself had a supremely awkward interview with the 22-year-old actor Jenna Ortega (from Wednesday and the Scream horror-movie franchise) earlier this year where it was quite obvious neither of them knew or cared much about the other.
The other option, of course, is to go 'gloves off', as Colbert declared last week on his show. Chances are that until May 2026, we are in for a far more aggressive, scathing, no-quarter-given version of Stephen Colbert — not bad for a last hurrah.
The writer and journalist is working on his first book of non-fiction.