CBS cancels Stephen Colbert's late show, an anti-Trump bastion of American television.

BarcelonaThe American network CBS has canceled the late show Stephen Colbert. According to a statement, the show will end in 2026 for "financial reasons" and no replacement will be sought. The cancellation announcement comes shortly after Colbert criticized Paramount Global (CBS's parent company) for reach an agreement with Donald Trump to avoid going to trial, after he asked them because of an interview on the program60 minutesin Kamala Harris.

In his opening monologue on Monday, Colbert said he was "offended" by the $16 million deal Paramount reached with the President of the United States. "I don't know if there's anything that can repair my trust in this company, but $16 million would certainly help," joked the host, adding that the technical name for the deal was "big kickback."

In their statement about the cancellation, Paramount and CBS insisted that they made the decision "given the challenging landscape of late-night programming" and noted that it "had nothing to do with the content" of the show. late showColbert himself announced the end of the show to viewers this Thursday night. "Not only is our show ending, it's the end of all CBS late-night shows. They're not replacing us," said the host, who expressed his gratitude to the network, his staff, and the audience. "It's a fantastic job. I'm looking forward to continuing to do it with this whole team of idiots in the coming months," he added.

Space is one of the late shows more veteran and just on Tuesday he was nominated for two Emmy Awards from the American Television Academy (which has already awarded him in previous editions: he has accumulated ten statuettes). As for audiences, according to the latest Nielsen report, Late show with Stephen Colbert It is the leader in its time slot and is the only nighttime show that has gained viewers this year. With the end of the show, the late shows from CBS: the network canceled in April 2023 Late late show with James Corden and last March eliminated After Midnight of Taylor Tomlinson, the only one late show headed by a woman. made his debut as a presenter of the late show in 2015, taking over from David Letterman. Previously, the host gained fame as a collaborator of Jon Stewart, playing a parody of a conservative pundit. He maintained the character for many years, even off-air and even making a speech in the US Congress in 2010.

Despite Colbert's strong ratings, the format of the late show is in crisis on American television. In the 1990s The Tonight Show Hosted by Jay Leno on NBC, Fallon had no trouble attracting five million viewers each night. His successor, Jimmy Fallon, barely reaches 1.3 million viewers. The culprit behind the exodus is clearly the internet. However, these shows manage to distribute the most exciting moments of each episode and the most interesting or surprising parts of their interviews very well across social media, but the millions of views they garner don't necessarily translate into money, as was the case with older viewers of linear television, which is now in its death throes.

The suspicion of censorship

Now, as much as the media landscape has changed enormously, the end-of-cycle explanation for the late shows It doesn't convince everyone. Especially since the $16 million CBS deal with Trump demonstrates the ease with which the American president can bend the major television networks to his feet, using the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as leverage. This is an audiovisual regulatory body that, among other functions, approves acquisitions and mergers to avoid situations of lack of competition. In theory, it's an independent agency, but Trump has appointed Brendan Carr as its top official, who is executing with an iron fist many moves that align with the Republican's desire to shape the media landscape to his convenience.

The most blatant example is the one affecting CBS, which Colbert mocked in his monologue. The out-of-court settlement over Kamala Harris's re-edited video can only be explained by the need of those responsible for Paramount, the parent company of CBS, to ensure that the FCC approves a merger of this media conglomerate with SkyDance, in a deal valued at more than $8 billion.

That's why, despite attempts to disassociate the cancellation of the program from its content, many voices see the dark hand of Trump and his entourage. Starting with Jimmy Kimmel, one of Colbert's rivals with his own. late show on Disney's ABC network, who wrote the following message on his Instagram profile: "I love you, Stephen. Fuck CBS and all its Sheldons," in probable reference to the multiple spin-offs from the series Big Bang Theory that fill the network's schedule, in a safer option than Colbert's combative style at the head of a late show with current criticism.