“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” will broadcast its final show in May, CBS said Thursday.
The network, which has issued “The Late Show” with Colbert as its host since 2015, said the franchise is finishing after a “historical career.”
“We believe that Stephen Colbert is irreplaceable and we will remove the ‘The Late Show’ franchise at that time,” CBS executives said in a joint statement. “We are proud that Stephen called CBS Home. He and the transmission will be remembered in the pantheon of the greats who adorned night television.
“This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in Late Night,” they added. “It is not related in any way to the performance, content or other issues of the program that occur in Paramount.”
Colbert, who took over “The Late Show” by David Letterman after presenting “The Colbert Report” by Comedy Central for almost a decade, announced the news on his program on Thursday. He pointed out that he learned of the cancellation the night before.
“It’s not just the end of our program,” he said. “I’m not being replaced. All this is disappearing.”
“The people of CBS have been a great couple,” he added.
Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said Thursday that he had finished recording a segment with Colbert, a vocal critic of the Trump administration, and questioned the explanation of the network to cancel the program.
“If Paramount and CBS finished the late show for political reasons, the public deserves to know,” he said about X. “And deserves better.”
The CBS parent company, Paramount, is in the middle of a fusion of $ 8 billion with Hollywood Studio Skydance. But the agreement has been delayed for months as the conversations with the lawyers for President Donald Trump extended after submitting a lawsuit for an interview, CBS Newsmagazine “60 minutes” was issued with vice president Kamala Harris last year.
Paramount agreed in principle on July 2 to settle the demand paying $ 16 million to the future Trump presidential library. However, Paramount Global said at that time: “This demand is completely separated and not related to the parachute transaction and the FCC approval process.” The president of the Federal Communications Commission of Trump, Brendan Carr, is investigating the agreement.
Colbert recently criticized the agreement for “The Late Show”, calling it “a big and fat bribe.”
“Paramount knows that they could have fought easily, because in their own words, the demand was completely without merit,” he said, referring to how Paramount described the demand before he settled.
Among those who criticized the decision were the Night Host Jimmy Kimmel of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in ABC.
“I love you Stephen,” Kimmel wrote on Instagram, adding: “[Expletive] You and all your Sheldons CBS “, apparently referring to the comedy of CBS” The Big Bang Theory “and your follow -up,” Young Sheldon “.
CBS said this year that the other program would not continue in his night suite, “after midnight”, after presenter Taylor Tomlinson announced that he would leave.
Colbert, an executive producer of the program, expressed his support for Tomlinson and CBS in a statement at that time. “I want to thank CBS for their constant support and its invaluable association in ‘After Midnight’, and all the staff for their surprising dedication,” he said in the statement, according to Variety.
