The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Cancelled in May 2026, Due to Massive Annual Losses of ~$40M

Claim 1: CBS Ended The Late Show in May 2026 and Called It a Financial Decision

Verdict: True.

• On July 17, 2025, CBS said The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would end in May 2026. The Associated Press published the company statement that day. The statement gave no dollar figure.
• Colbert told the audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater that night that next year would be the last season, that he was not being replaced, and that the show was going away. He told the crowd he shared their reaction.
• The last show aired Thursday, May 21, 2026. CBS News dates the finale to that day.
• On August 7, 2025, after the Skydance deal closed, George Cheeks, chair of CBS TV Media, talked about the decision at a press conference. Deadline reported the remarks. He said the late-night ad market was in "significant secular decline," and that "the economics made it a challenge for us to keep going." Once Taylor Tomlinson ended After Midnight, he said, the network "couldn't stay in that daypart."
• Cheeks called the losses "significant" and in the "tens of millions of dollars," and said "it just wasn't sustainable to continue." He did not confirm a figure of $40 million. He tied the May end date to writer and producer deals and to the last year of Colbert's contract. He said the season would run September to May. The usual term had been September to August. He said the company had to tell Colbert and his representatives where things stood before those deals were signed.
• CBS said the decision was financial. The statement said it was separate from the show's performance, its content, and other things happening at Paramount. Cheeks repeated the financial explanation in August and tied the May end date to the contract calendar.

CBS statement, July 17, 2025, as published by the Associated Press:

“is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”

Stephen Colbert to the audience, July 17, 2025:

“next year will be our last season. … It’s the end of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

“Yeah, I share your feelings.”

In plain language:

Yes. CBS ended The Late Show in May 2026 and said the decision was financial.

Claim 2: CBS Later Said the Hour Was Losing About $40 Million a Year

Verdict: True.

The figure is CBS’s later statement. It is not a line in the securities filing.

• The July 17, 2025 statement had no dollar amount. In the days after, unnamed sources supplied the range. On July 25, 2025, the New York Post reported that sources with knowledge of the matter believed the show "was on the trajectory of losing more than the $40 million to $50 million it lost last year." A person close to Skydance told the Post it was "on the way to lose more than $50 million."
• On the July 21, 2025 show, Colbert called that range a "gracious anonymous leak." He said $40 million is a big number, that he could see the show losing $24 million, and asked where Paramount would have spent the other $16 million. That is a monologue. It is not an audit.

• The same Post story said a Paramount spokesman declined to comment except to point out that Colbert was not then losing more than $50 million a year. That sentence sets a ceiling of $50 million. The spokesman left the actual number unstated.
• Cheeks, on August 7, 2025, stayed at "tens of millions." He did not adopt $40 million that day.
• On May 28, 2026, Deadline published a CBS statement about Byron Allen's Comics Unleashed taking the hour. CBS said the hour "was losing roughly $40 million annually" and that the time-buy model turned it into "$15 million in profit," which CBS called "a $55 million swing." Deadline wrote that the network also disclosed Allen is paying $15 million a year to lease the 11:30 p.m. hour and sell the ads himself. The roughly $40 million sentence is in that Deadline article as CBS's statement. It is not in the Paramount Skydance TV Media segment exhibit filed with the SEC.
• That exhibit is the TV Media segment table for the year ended December 31, 2025. TV Media revenue is one line: 7,082 for August 7 to December 31, 2025, 9,977 for January 1 to August 6, 2025, 18,779 for 2024, and 20,085 for 2023. The same table's 2024 total revenue is 29,213. The exhibit does not name The Late Show or Stephen Colbert.
• Ad trackers describe the ad market. They are not a profit-and-loss statement for the show. Variety, on May 20, 2026, citing Guideline, said spending on late-night shows fell to $209 million in 2025, from $519.7 million in 2017, a drop of nearly 60%. The Late Show accounted for 27% of late-night ad spending in 2025 and 29% of that spending so far in 2026. Sean Wright of Guideline said perhaps 15% of the ad dollars attached to Colbert would move to rival late-night shows, and the rest would leave the format. That 15% is his estimate.
• The Measure, on May 22, 2026, citing iSpot, put estimated national linear ad spend on the show at about $75.7 million in 2022 and about $63.8 million in 2025. By the show's final week in 2026, that year's spend had reached $32.8 million.
• Jimmy Kimmel disputed the size in an August 18, 2025 interview with Variety, months before CBS's May 2026 statement. He was answering the reports of a $40 million loss. He called the idea "beyond nonsensical," said the people spreading it were looking only at advertising and had forgotten affiliate fees, and said there was not "a snowball's chance in hell that that's anywhere near accurate."
• Letterman, quoted by Deadline in the May 2026 article from remarks to the New York Times, said the sellers of the network had promised to take care of the show and that they were lying. He called them "lying weasels." That is his view of the motive. It is not a financial statement.

CBS statement, May 28, 2026, as published by Deadline:

“We’re proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost prohibitive to continue. With this ‘time buy’ model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit, a $55 million swing.”

In plain language:

Yes. In May 2026 CBS said the hour had been losing about $40 million a year. That number is the company’s statement. It does not appear in the public segment filing.

Greg Gutfeld’s Fox News show is a comparison from the same political TV market. A large audience on a much smaller operation makes CBS’s account of unsustainable late-night economics easier to picture. The clip supplies no books for either show, and it is not confirmation of the $40 million loss.

Clip of Greg Gutfeld on Fox News.

2026-10-26 - Edit: This fact check has been edited because its content did not meet our modern fact-check standards. The overall claim is the same and is still true, but the entire fact check has been rewritten.