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Late Show ending May 2026

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michael hagerty said:
In the same way that Letterman was allowed to finish out his run on NBC before going to CBS and wasn't terribly gentle with NBC/GE, I'm betting that as long as Colbert isn't egregious (and yeah, that's a moving target these days and may not be the same if Ellison gets the keys before the end of the run), it stays on. CBS has already collected tens of millions of dollars in advertising commitments for a season of Late Show with Stephen Colbert---new episodes, not repeats.
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What was also known at that time regarding Letterman finishing out his run on NBC was that the lame duck period (Between the time that his departure from NBC for CBS had been announced to when Letterman did his final NBC show.) was practically 6 Months and the advertising commitments NBC had for the remaining Letterman hosted Late Night episodes were set until the end of June of that year (1993). And in one of the Late Night opens that had been done in the final weeks of Letterman's NBC run had a computer generated Kite that had the G.E. Sucks written on it in Japanese.

The lame duck period that Colbert has here is 10 months basically and what he needs to do is to tread real carefully.
 
CTListener said:
One of our country stations up here carries Big D and Bubba in the morning. Their show originates from Dallas, unlike Bobby Bones' Nashville-based show
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Big D & Bubba originate from Nashville as well, WSM-FM is their flagship station.
 
Huff said:
Big D & Bubba originate from Nashville as well, WSM-FM is their flagship station.
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Oh really? Not sure where I got the idea they were from Dallas. Is there another syndicated show from Texas, maybe a nighttime/weekend show. Lots of country radio up here, using lots of syndicated programming, so easy to get confused. We have Kim Ashley on in the mornings on WXXK, then hear her on Sirius XM in the afternoon. She lives in the area, so does all her shows from a home studio. Not sure if she's on any other FMs but her hometown station. Big D and Bubba are on WXLF.
 
gopher101media said:
Even if ABC is supportive in that scenario Disney (ABC's parent company) or the network bean counters can easily prevent Kimmel from renewing citing "Financial reasons"
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And they can just as easily project the additional ad revenue they can expect when CBS takes its competing show off the air next year, and also project how much higher that number could be if/when NBC does likewise.

If Kimmel becomes "last man standing" ABC stands to gain most of the audience from Colbert and Fallon, and there is a strong appeal to advertisers by being the lone late night talk/interview show.
 
K.M. Richards said:
And they can just as easily project the additional ad revenue they can expect when CBS takes its competing show off the air next year, and also project how much higher that number could be if/when NBC does likewise.

If Kimmel becomes "last man standing" ABC stands to gain most of the audience from Colbert and Fallon, and there is a strong appeal to advertisers by being the lone late night talk/interview show.
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Basic math. Ad revenue pool for late night is currently $220 million, divided four ways (Colbert/Kimmel/Fallon/Meyers). The Fallon/Meyers portion is the smallest and unlikely to change, apart from the already-in-progress steady decline.

Colbert's departure frees up a chunk---I'd guess probably 33% or more of what's available. And like the audience, I don't see it going to Fallon.

If Kimmel's show is profitable, it becomes more profitable. If it's not profitable, it loses less without having to cut budget.
 
michael hagerty said:
I really wanted to see. I voted Republican for 40 years, but I could appreciate mainstream late-night comedy. I could tell the difference between a joke the guy I voted for had coming and unnecessary roughness.

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40 years of voting for them is a long time. My parents both alternated, depending on who it was (they supported Mcgovern, but in the '80s supported Reagan, ect.)
 
michael hagerty said:
It makes William F. Buckley threatening to deck Gore Vidal and calling him a queer look like Masterpiece Theatre.
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That very sentence tells you all you need to know about the demographics involved.

(And, yeah, I missed that, um, event. We spent the summer of 1968 on our Missouri farm, in a two-TV-station market. Live network connections, but any ABC programming was on the NBC affiliate and came in on film. So all network news was NBC or CBS. ABC didn't come along until late 1971, on a struggling UHF channel. Fast forward to 2025, and that ABC affiliate is now the number-one station in the market. I still find that hard to believe.)
 
Mark Roberts said:
That very sentence tells you all you need to know about the demographics involved.
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Well, I'm the one who brought it up, so all it tells us is that I'm old. I doubt anyone watching Gutfeld knows either Buckley or Vidal and, if you showed them the clip, they would probably call them both what Buckley called Vidal.
 
michael hagerty said:
Well, I'm the one who brought it up, so all it tells us is that I'm old. I doubt anyone watching Gutfeld knows either Buckley or Vidal and, if you showed them the clip would probably call them both what Buckley called Vidal.
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Quality standards have slipped even for insults. John Kenneth Galbraith related the following in his autobiography (fair use excerpt, pages 503-04).

As in 1960, I made the rounds of the state caucuses. Each morning I waited outside {Eugene} McCarthy's room in his suite until Abigail McCarthy came out to tell me whether or where Gene was going to go. And, as before, I would hear the gasp of disappointment when I came in and the assembled delegates saw that it would not be the candidate but Galbraith. I slightly softened the blow by taking Gore Vidal with me. Early each convention morning Vidal was achieving much political celebrity by flagrantly libelous exchanges on television with William F. Buckley, Jr. {...} Then, unfailingly, would come the question:
"Mr. Vidal, where is your friend Mr. Buckley?"
"Mr. Buckley?" he would reply with a surprised look. "Oh, Buckley. He's over at the Wallace headquarters stitching hoods."
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As far as I know, that never made it to air.
 
K.M. Richards said:
And they can just as easily project the additional ad revenue they can expect when CBS takes its competing show off the air next year, and also project how much higher that number could be if/when NBC does likewise.

If Kimmel becomes "last man standing" ABC stands to gain most of the audience from Colbert and Fallon, and there is a strong appeal to advertisers by being the lone late night talk/interview show.
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Even then the advertising revenues for Late Night television in general will still continue on it's downward spiral as the cord cutting will continue.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Quality standards have slipped even for insults. John Kenneth Galbraith related the following in his autobiography (fair use excerpt, pages 503-04).



As far as I know, that never made it to air.
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Los Angeles Magazine has not been archived to the degree that it should, but in the 1970s it reported that Mr. Vidal had made a mortal enemy out of KNBC, Channel 4 anchorman Paul Moyer.

KNBC had a breezy two-hour Sunday afternoon live-on-location show called "Sunday", and Moyer hosted it.

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Someone thought booking Gore Vidal for a show live from the beach at Malibu was lightweight Sunday afternoon fare.

Moyer, always eager to prove he was a real journalist, decided to press Vidal on his famous face-off with William F. Buckley, by that point six years in the past.

Vidal tried to re-direct with a clever line, twice. But Moyer wasn't having it and asked a third time, to which Vidal replied.

"Paul, I understand you've had a vasectomy. Why don't you show us the scar here on live TV?"

The show went to break, the legend among TV people is that Moyer repeated some portion of what Buckley said to Vidal in his own way, and at the end of the commercial, Gore was not in the chair.
 
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gopher101media said:
Even then the advertising revenues for Late Night television in general will still continue on it's downward spiral as the cord cutting will continue.
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As it has already, across the board and across all media. That's no basis for singling out late night.

Nice try at deflecting my point, though.
 
K.M. Richards said:
As it has already, across the board and across all media. That's no basis for singling out late night.

Nice try at deflecting my point, though.
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Another point would be is either ABC or it's parent company Disney is going to have any willingness to take any chance with allowing Kimmel to continue.

And Late Night television is not being singled out here.
 
Here is a question - If you were in ABC's shoes given the expected circumstances would you take any chance and allow Kimmel's show to continue or allow his contract to run out and he ends up with no choice except to leave?
 
gopher101media said:
Here is a question - If you were in ABC's shoes given the expected circumstances would you take any chance and allow Kimmel's show to continue or allow his contract to run out and he ends up with no choice except to leave?
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Finally, a direct question.

If I had the authority to decide about late night at ABC, knowing that CBS will no longer be competing in that daypart at the point where Kimmel's contract is up for renewal, also seeing that NBC is worried (hence the changes in the Meyers show)...

I would take the chance on Kimmel, provided his terms for renewing or extending his contract were reasonable in light of what the projected revenue would be with CBS out of that daypart.

At the very least, I would want to sit down with him, have the conversation about the changes at CBS and potentially NBC, and ask him what he thought about continuing. Given the obvious difference in revenue expected in the 2026-27 season, I would likely ask him if he would consider an extension at his current salary plus a percentage of the ad revenue.

So I would take a carefully-reasoned chance. I wouldn't make a decision before I put all the cards on the table with Kimmel, and I would give him enough time to think about it before giving me an answer.
 
Another take from New York Times critic Jason Zinoman, and another gift link. The tl;dr: Colbert will be just fine; the networks, maybe not so much.

First notable quote:

Now Colbert, one of the most prominent critics of President Trump, seems to many like a comedic martyr. For the next 10 months, his show will have a spotlight in a way it never has before. He will not only have a chance to continue to make fun of the president, but he also will be setting himself up for his next act.
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Zinoman also argues that, while Colbert successfully managed the transition from a satirist to a talk-show host, the talk show didn't fully showcase Colbert's formidable talents.

Zinoman's take on the role of politics in the cancellation is that both politics and economics played a role; moreover, to him, the decision indicates a lack of understanding of the genre, or even a lack of commitment to it:

Even if you think politics played no role, canceling this franchise now seems like the move of someone who doesn’t understand or care about late-night comedy. — just as the “60 Minutes” settlement seems like the decision of someone far too cavalier about the importance of an independent press. These moves don’t just threaten to chill speech. They hasten the demise of network TV.
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