Since the beginning, CBS has been adamant that its decision to cancel Stephen Colbert’s Late Show had nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with money—and not just the cash it tossed to the Trump administration, in a move Colbert denounced days before his cancellation was announced, to smooth over Paramount’s then-upcoming acquisition by David Ellison’s Skydance. It’s a position of stated pure economic self-interest that’s now continued past the lifespan of Late Show itself, as the network issued a statement tonight saying that it’s essentially made itself a sweet $55 million by dumping Colbert’s show.
That includes (per Deadline), removing from its balance sheets the $40 million a year it was losing running Late Show, a long-rumored number that CBS has now stated in an on-the-record fashion. (Whether people believe it, or, like Colbert’s predecessor Dave Letterman did in a recent New York Times interview, declare the network “lying weasels,” is, of course, left up to the individual.) On the other side of the spreadsheet, meanwhile, is the amount the network is getting paid for leasing out Colbert’s old timeslot to recent Buzzfeed buyer Byron Allen, for his Comics Unleashed: A hefty $15 million.
Notably, that money arrives free of any issues like “ratings” or “performance,” since Allen’s “time buy” model means getting money out of advertisers for the hour is his problem, not CBS’s—which collects its flat fee regardless of how Allen’s show does. (Which is probably good, given that Comics Unleashed instantly more than halved Colbert’s average viewership numbers when it took over the slot, bringing in about a million viewers, as opposed to Colbert’s 2.7 million average watchers during his final 2026 run.) But who needs viewers, or the prestige of taking part in the late night tradition, or even just putting out TV that people actually enjoy, when you can have $55 million, instead, right? (Okay, we started that sentence kind of sarcastically, but we would like $55 million. Damn, these purely financial decisions are pretty rough!)
