{"id":334,"date":"2026-05-20T17:38:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=334"},"modified":"2026-05-20T17:38:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:38:39","slug":"stephen-colbert-shook-up-late-night-twice-but-his-push-into-politics-could-have-ultimately-hurt-the-format","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=334","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Shook Up Late-Night Twice, but His Push Into Politics Could Have Ultimately Hurt the Format"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nStephen Colbert in 2016 tried to bring together a nation that was coming apart.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Election Night, Colbert and crew mounted a live special for the Showtime cable network, and as more electoral votes were called for Donald Trump, cementing a victory that set many Americans on edge, groans from the live crowd became more intense. Suddenly, Colbert\u2019s comedy show was no laughing matter.<\/p>\n

Read more Heat of the Moment: How Al Gore and \u2018An Inconvenient Truth\u2019 Changed the Way We Think About Climate Issues<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt feels like an asteroid has smacked into our democracy,\u201d one guest said. \u201cGet your abortions now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOutside of the Civil War, World War II and including 9\/11 this may be the most cataclysmic event our country has seen,\u201d said another.<\/p>\n

\n\tRealizing that late-night sketches would no longer be appreciated, Colbert and team winged it \u2014 no rundowns, no scripts. \u00a0In doing so, Colbert told this reporter during an interview in 2017, he realized he had hit on a new \u201cLate Show\u201d foundation. \u201cThe last 10 minutes of that election show were honest. They were honest, and that was a turning point for us,\u201d he said at the time. \u201cAfter that, we knew I could never do this show without at least attempting to keep my emotional skegs in the water.\u201d \u00a0At the end of the Election Night program, the comic delivered an unrehearsed monologue, asking viewers, \u201cHow did our politics get so poisonous?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe may be asking a similar question a decade later.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Thursday, CBS will air its last broadcast of \u201cThe Late Show,\u201d doing something that has many viewers and media observers scratching their heads. The Paramount Skydance network is killing a series that leads in the ratings; generates digital chatter on most days; and gives people a reason to stick with CBS stations well after primetime and the late local news come to an end. By nearly all industry metrics, Colbert has fulfilled the job duties he was given \u2014 and then some.<\/p>\n

\nCBS has said it\u2019s ending the program due to financial considerations, and it\u2019s certainly true that late-night TV has become more economically fragile since the coronavirus pandemic. But the consensus is that Colbert\u2019s politics \u2014 and perhaps most of late-night\u2019s \u2014 don\u2019t mesh with those of Paramount\u2019s CEO, David Ellison, and maybe even not with those of a chunk of the potential audience. CBS is getting out of the wee-hours business, ceding its late schedule to entrepreneur Byron Allen, who will run two hours of less glitzy entertainment programming, including an 11:30 p.m. comedy roundtable.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Colbert goes, so too will another piece of financial bedrock for late-night TV. CBS\u2019 \u201cThe Late Show\u201d accounted for 27% of all spending on late-night TV shows in 2025, according to data from Guideline, a tracker of ad spending, and 29% of all spending so far in 2026. In a different era, advertisers would move dollars into whichever show had better ratings, says Sean Wright, Guideline\u2019s chief insights and analytics officer. Now, he says, marketers likely believe they can get to the younger viewers who like late-night programming on streaming services and social media. Perhaps 15% of the ad dollars attached to Colbert will move into rivals\u2019 late-night programming, like NBC\u2019s \u201cTonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,\u201d says Wright. But the rest is likely to move out of the format entirely.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy guess is that with the departure of Colbert, there will also be a kind of the sunsetting of budgets dedicated to late night,\u201d he says. That can only accelerate Madison Avenue\u2019s exodus from the daypart. Spending on late night television shows fell to $209 million in 2025, according to Guideline, down from $519.7 million in 2017 \u2014 a drop of nearly 60%.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow could this happen?\u00a0 Colbert struck many new relationships with viewers \u2014 so\u00a0many that his \u201cLate Show\u201d became the most watched late-night show on TV, something CBS hadn\u2019t achieved since David Letterman first moved over from NBC (Jay Leno brought the category title back to NBC in July of 1995). And yet, as he focused more on the headlines \u2014 and for much of his \u201cLate Show\u201d tenure, President Trump \u2014 others who might have tuned in to late night began to feel Colbert was not for \u201cthem.\u201d During his time at CBS, Colbert spearheaded a move to a more partisan brand of comedy, whether he intended to or not.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Johnny Carson was a monolith, shaped by a dominant TV media structure to be all things to all people, the current crop of late-night hosts are merely splinters. They need to be all things to only a certain amount of people. All of their audiences are paltry compared to Carson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this era, when nearly any type of niche, hobby or attitude can find a bespoke media property, success is found \u201cin partisanship,\u201d said Nick Marx, a professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University who examines the cultural implications of comedy programs. \u201cIt\u2019s in division and paying to a hardcore, dedicated audience of confidants, not in trying to prop up the big tent.\u201d Since Colbert began taking on Trump \u2014 and getting bigger ratings from doing so \u2014 others have emulated him, including Meyers, Kimmel, and Samantha Bee.<\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, more of the late-night hosts appear to hold similar attitudes. Not too long ago, the different personae considered the others fierce rivals. Letterman and Leno did not get along, and Kimmel also expressed disdain for his NBC competitor. The current generation of hosts cheer one another on. For a time, the executive producers of the various programs consulted one another via a phone-text chain, particularly during Trump\u2019s first term and the coronavirus pandemic. When a host like Larry Wilmore lost his perch at Comedy Central, the other shows sent farewell gifts. \u00a0Last week, Colbert convened Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and John Oliver for a visit on one of his last few episodes.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the years, some of these hosts have said and done things on air that would have spurred intense backlash if they were uttered by a right-leaning personality. In 2017, Colbert raised hackles when he said President Trump was a \u201cc\u2014 holster\u201d for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Bee lost sponsors for her program, \u201cFull Frontal\u201d on Warner\u2019s TBS, in 2018 when she referred to Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump, as a \u201cfeckless c\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a reason Fox News was able to create a show it bills as being part of the late-night coterie. \u201cGutfeld,\u201d which airs at 10 p.m. on the east coast, does not vie against NBC\u2019s \u201cTonight,\u2019 CBS\u2019 \u201cLate Show\u201d or ABC\u2019s \u201cJimmy Kimmel Live\u201d in the same hour, but its host, Greg Gutfeld, features trappings on his program similar to Colbert, Fallon or Kimmel.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have him without them,\u201d says Dannagal Young, a professor of communication at the University of Delaware who studies political satire and the media preferences of liberals and conservatives. \u201cHis entire format is built on resentment of being left out by the left.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe sense that late-night plays to a particular type of audience wasn\u2019t supposed to be part of the mix. Johnny Carson made fun of politicians, but mostly their public goofs, not their policies. Leno rarely became political. And Letterman, often irascible, feuded with politicians but not over what they did in Washington. \u00a0John McCain became a Letterman target because the former U.S. Senator canceled a 2008 appearance on \u201cLate Show\u201d in favor of talking to Katie Couric. When Letterman squabbled with former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, it was because of a demeaning remark he made about Palin\u2019s teenage daughter.<\/p>\n

\n\tLate-night shows in 2026 are a wholly different creation. \u201cThese shows were built to be vaudeville in the box in your living room,\u201d says Young. \u201cThey were a place to watch jugglers and clowns and funny people doing impressions. They were not made for this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nColbert wasn\u2019t looking to alienate crowds. He was simply following what had already made him successful. This is, after all, an improv comedian and writer who got his big break working for Jon Stewart at Comedy Central\u2019s \u201cDaily Show\u201d at a time when Stewart was presiding over a cable program that asked its young viewers to look harder at media and politics. Colbert did the unthinkable when he launched \u201cColbert Report\u201d on Comedy Central in 200, playing a fictional character for nearly a decade who was meant to satirize conservative TV pundits.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo entrenched was the character in viewers\u2019 minds that Colbert spent several sketches after he moved to CBS trying to separate himself from the creation he once played. Indeed, his former employer, Viacom, made outreach asking whether such use of intellectual property was fair. It didn\u2019t help, of course, that the character shared Colbert\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cColbert never shook his \u2018Colbert Report\u2019 persona. That show was groundbreaking,\u201d says Marx. \u201cAnd he really brought some of that savvy audience with him from Comedy Central.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tComedy Central\u2019s fortunes rose and ebbed over how many younger male viewers it could reach. CBS\u2019 hinged on the network\u2019s ability to draw the biggest, broadest crowds. The challenge: The biggest crowd CBS could get was a cohort composed largely of people who wanted to see Colbert zing the powers-that-be. And maybe some hate-watchers, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven as CBS won the ratings, the group of people watching late-night became less heterogenous. And as other hosts adopted a similar stance, more of midnight-TV viewership developed in the same way.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen the coronavirus pandemic forced the various late-night shows to halt traditional production, the programs faced an identity crisis of sorts. No live crowds to laugh at jokes. No bands playing on stage. And no celebrity guests in person. This was the same stuff people could get on podcasts and YouTube vignettes.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd because the programs largely catered to a similar crowd \u2014 Fallon\u2019s \u201cTonight,\u201d perhaps, is the exception \u2014 the broad support that had been in place for them when Letterman and Leno owned the audiences had eroded. These days, most of the hosts are seen as battling President Trump in a war for First Amendment rights. \u201cWhat they are fighting for is freedom of expression and the opposition to Brendan Carr at the FCC and a recognition that in the Constitution, satire has special protections,\u201d says Young.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s noble. It\u2019s important. But is it funny and entertaining? \u00a0And will it soothe viewers before they turn in for the evening, as early-era late-night stalwarts like Steve Allen and Jack Paar tried to do?<\/p>\n

\n\tLate night will continue, but more of its humor and personality is likely to surface in new frontiers. Younger generations like podcasts and even longform video, says Marx, but they also are big partakers in \u201cclip culture\u201d and microcontent, while also dipping into social-media phenomenon like \u201cHot Ones,\u201d the digital series in which celebrities answer questions while snacking on increasingly spicy chicken wings.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe regular appearance of major celebrities on such programs is a death knell for the traditional late-night programs, which once were the place to see celebrities in more relaxed fashion. And even Stephen Colbert, who is known to get elbow deep into everything from set design to product placement, can\u2019t stop such dynamics.<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert shook up late night twice: once by playing a fictional character and once by taking the show Letterman built and adapting it to a new era in which news, not absurdist humor, was the main focus. All the comic\u2019s work may not have been able to keep \u201cLate Show\u201d around for another generation, but chances are his years of labor will help him \u2014 if he wants \u2014 to capture the interest of a new set of fans in an entirely different medium. And Colbert could find himself, once again, trying to get some part of the nation to convene.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018The Boys\u2019 Finale: Creator Explains Those Major Deaths, How Canceled \u2018Gen V\u2019 Season 3 Would\u2019ve Continued the Story and \u2018Embryonic\u2019 Spinoff Ideas<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Colbert Shook Up Late-Night Twice, But a Push Into Politics Leaves Shows in Precarious Place<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[382,383,384,244],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv","tag-cbs","tag-late-night","tag-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-stephen-colbert"],"yoast_head":"\nStephen Colbert Shook Up Late-Night Twice, but His Push Into Politics Could Have Ultimately Hurt the Format - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=334\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stephen Colbert Shook Up Late-Night Twice, but His Push Into Politics Could Have Ultimately Hurt the Format - 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