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On Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, former NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller, commenting on the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show, said: "Stephen Colbert is unafraid to speak truth to power. He does it in a very bipartisan way over the years. And comedy and parody is [sic] an important part of a democratic ecosystem. " Yes, so bipartisan that, as NewsBuster Alex Christy has reported, in the first half of 2025, Colbert hosted 14 partisan officials, more than any of the other daily late-night comedy shows. All 14 were Democrats, none were Republicans. When it came to journalists...

“So, for the first time in history, Americans have stopped watching NBC, CBS TV, and ABC,” reported commentator Bill O’Reilly Thursday. “Their viewing level has fallen below 20 percent — unheard of.”“And it’s because they’re boring and they’re far left,” O’Reilly elaborated. “That’s the two reasons.”The latest casualty of this legacy-media collapse is notable, too.CBS is canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, effective after the 2025-’26 season.The move will end what will have been a 33-year run that began with host David Letterman in 1993. Colbert took the show’s helm in 2015, shortly after Letterman’s retirement.The news-making announcement has...

Stephen Colbert was receiving messages of support and affection from his fellow late-night hosts after announcing that CBS was canceling his show, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” next May. Jimmy Fallon said he was “just as shocked as everyone,” and Seth Meyers called him a great host and comedian but an even better person. Jimmy Kimmel directed an expletive at CBS, and Andy Cohen said it was a sad day for the network. As for President Donald Trump — a frequent target of Colbert’s comedy — he said on Truth Social that “I absolutely love” that Colbert was “fired.”...

CBS brass say they pulled the plug on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” because of its punishing losses — pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year — and claim politics had nothing to do with it. The 61-year-old host got canned just days after he took a dig at the Tiffany Network over its $16 million settlement with Donald Trump over a controversial “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris as the network’s parent Paramount negotiates with the Trump administration regulatory approval for its $8 billion sale to independent studio Skydance. “I am offended, and I don’t know...

The news of “The Late Show’s” cancellation by CBS doesn’t just end a franchise that had, to this point, lasted more than 30 years. It looks like the beginning of the end of an entire category of television. With one network now opting out of late-night talk entirely, how long will it be before the genre just goes away? CBS announced the cancellation nearly a full year before it is to take effect, making current host Stephen Colbert a lame duck of sorts; he will continue hosting the show through May 2026, at which point it will simply disappear. Observers...

CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert because it was losing $40 million a year, it was claimed. Puck journalist Matthew Belloni revealed Colbert's astonishing lack of profitability Friday, hours after CNN first broke the news that the show was canceled because it was in the red. Belloni outlined how The Late Show - whose cancelation was announced Thursday - costs $100m a year to produce, with Colbert, 61, getting paid between $15 million and $20 million a year to host.

Paramount, the network’s parent, recently agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle his lawsuit over the editing of an interview on the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Democratic lawmakers are questioning the timing of CBS’s announcement to cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” which came days after Mr. Colbert criticized the network’s parent company for paying President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit.Hours after CBS executives characterized the move as “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” lawmakers began suggesting that the cancellation was linked to Paramount’s recent settlement with Mr. Trump. Senator...

A staple of late night television is going off the air for good. CBS and Stephen Colbert broke the news Thursday that the next season of ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ will be its last. It will not return with a new host, either. “We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire ‘THE LATE SHOW’ franchise at that time,” wrote CBS. “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television.” The Associated Press reports the announcement came three days after Colbert spoke out...

Back in June 2022, I joined the ranks of the many conservatives who looked at late-night network television, with its tired “clap-ter” and heavy-handed cheerleading for Democratic politicians, and asked just how many people actually enjoyed watching it. Never mind the now-regular softball interviews with Democratic elected officials or the exhausted “aren’t Republicans so dumb and evil” monologue jokes, the whole thing felt stale, rote, and joyless. Viewership has plummeted across the board for network television in the streaming era, and you figure the market for the likes of Stephen Colbert offering variations of the same jokes night after night...

A slew of famous faces shared their outrage at the show’s cancellation. Actor Adam Scott wrote on Instagram: “Love you Stephen. This is absolute bulls**t, and I for one am looking forward to the next 10 months of shows.” Actress Rachel Zegler added: “I am extremely sad. i adore you, stephen,” and broadcaster Katie Couric penned: “I am so upset about this. I need more information. We love you ” Director Judd Apatow posted: “My admiration and appreciation for you is bottomless. Excited to see what other brilliance you put into the world.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the public "deserves to know" whether CBS’s decision to cancel "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on Thursday was politically motivated. "Just finished taping with Stephen Colbert who announced his show was cancelled. If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better," Schiff wrote.

CBS announced the cancellation of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert - just days after the host blasted the network's $16 million settlement with President Trump as a 'big fat bribe.' Colbert's show, which began in 2015, will now come to an end in May 2026, executives with the network and Paramount, its new parent company, announced on Thursday. 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season,' they said in a statement. 'We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire the Late Show franchise at that time,'...

In a shocking move, CBS is ending “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” next year, potentially exiting the late-night television business altogether. The cancellation will take effect in May 2026, the normal end of the broadcast TV season, the network said Thursday evening.

CBS' "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" will be ending in 2026, the network announced Thursday. "'THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT' will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season," CBS said in a statement. "We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire 'THE LATE SHOW' franchise at that time. We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television." CBS said it was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night," adding, "It is...

"CBS has announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026, bringing the show’s historic run—and the Late Show franchise itself—to a close."Colbert addressed the show’s cancellation himself while taping tonight’s show."

CBS News Capitol Hill correspondent Scott MacFarlane told podcaster Chuck Todd on Wednesday about how traumatized he was by Trump rallygoers blaming the media for the assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in 2024. MacFarlane said he had personal trauma from the crowd’s immediate rage in response. "For those of us there, it was such a horror because you saw an emerging America," MacFarlane told Todd on his podcast. "And it wasn't the shooting, Chuck. This was – I got diagnosed with PTSD within 48 hours. I got put on trauma leave, not because, I think, of the shooting, but...

Saturday, November 2, 2002 ©2002 Associated Press URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/11/02/international1651EST0195.DTL (11-02) 13:51 PST JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- A California doctor who committed suicide after being accused in a murder plot gave deadly germs to apartheid South Africa's secret chemical and biological weapons program, CBS' "60 Minutes" reported Sunday. Larry C. Ford met with scientists from South Africa's Project Coast in the 1980s to discuss chemical and biological warfare, Wouter Basson, who headed the project, told the program. He also passed a bag filled with cholera, typhoid, botulism, anthrax and bubonic plague to a South African military doctor during a meeting...

Longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft and "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart bashed Paramount Global and CBS’ eight-figure settlement with President Donald Trump as giving into a "shakedown" on Monday. Kroft appeared on Paramount-owned Comedy Central to discuss the settlement with Stewart, who didn’t pull punches when discussing his own employer. Kroft, who retired from the show in 2019 after a 30-year run, said his former colleagues are devastated that CBS and its parent company settled Trump’s "election interference" lawsuit. "I think there is a lot of fear over there… fear of losing their job, fear of what’s happening to...

The veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who interviewed Kamala Harris for the segment that triggered the just-settled lawsuit filed by President Trump against CBS News and its parent company reportedly grew emotional during a staff meeting held after the deal was announced. Bill Whitaker, 73, appeared “teary-eyed” and “quite somber” during a tense Zoom meeting Wednesday morning as he addressed his “60 Minutes” colleagues in the wake of Paramount Global’s $16 million settlement with Trump, according to Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter. Paramount Global, CBS’s corporate parent, agreed on Wednesday to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes”...

Trump’s lawsuit alleged CBS edited Harris’s response to the Israel question "to make her look better" and that the action amounted to "election interference." The lawsuit said CBS deceptively aired the edited, more polished version on "60 Minutes" and a different, rambling one on "Face the Nation." Trump's lawsuit framed this as not just political bias, but as a form of commercial deception under Texas’s Deceptive Trade Practices‑Consumer Protection Act, arguing that CBS's editing gave Harris an unfair advantage. "With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the...