Stephen Colbert’s run as a political rent boy for Democratic politicians has, mercifully for America, come to an end. Because American leftists are clinically insane, fans of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert like to blame President Trump for the host’s walking papers. Some of them throw in a dash of garment-rending about CBS and corporate evil, but usually circle back to a Trump tantrum. As I have said on many occasions, President Trump isn’t just living rent-free in their heads, he’s building condos there.
What those on the left aren’t talking about is the program’s bloated production costs and the fact that Colbert made a conscious decision to tell half of the country to go you-know-what ourselves. Well, nobody on the left had been discussing the latter. Earlier this week, Variety — Hollywood’s news organization of record — had a dimly lit lightbulb moment:
Has #StephenColbert’s push into politics hurt the late-night format?
Late-night was never supposed to play to a particular type of audience: #JohnnyCarson made fun of politicians, but mostly their public goofs, not their policies. #JayLeno rarely became political. And… pic.twitter.com/QwJ7AJR7mm
— Variety (@Variety) May 20, 2026
Golly gosh heck, Variety, do ya think?!?!?
There are a lot of factors at play here, like the overall changing nature of television viewing. The late-night shows are no longer appointment viewing or powerhouse ad revenue generators. Two years before the network announced it was cancelling The Late Show, CBS had already started backing away from late-night programming when it chose not to carry on with The Late Late Show after James Corden left.
Nobody blamed Joe Biden for that.
The answer to the question that Variety posed is, of course, a resounding “YES.” Politics has polluted the broadcast networks’ late-night shows, which are supposed to have broad appeal. Gutfeld! doesn’t have to play by the broad appeal rules because Fox News caters to a decidedly partisan audience.
The Variety piece focuses on Colbert’s “push into politics” as if he were the first late-night host to lean hard into his beliefs. In reality, it was Colbert’s predecessor David Letterman who kicked off the trend.
Throughout most of Letterman’s tenure on television, his trademark was doing goofy things that just weren’t seen on talk shows at any time of day. Even when he was being a little bit acerbic, he kept it weird enough so that he didn’t seem cranky or bitter. He took his anger for being passed over by NBC to replace Johnny Carson and came up with things like “Stupid Human Tricks” and his Velcro suit. In and out of the entertainment industry, most of the people I knew were more likely to watch Letterman than Jay Leno, even though Leno was the overall ratings king for most of the time that they went head-to-head.
Near the end of his run on The Late Show, Letterman wandered more and more into partisan grumpy old man stuff. Nobody on our side of the aisle ever thought he was conservative, but he also wasn’t making it a point to offend us. That changed in the last couple of years before he left late-night television. He began giving the implied finger to half of his potential audience. Conservatives on social media were a combination of disappointed and angry because so many of us had been fans of his work up until then.
I can’t help but believe that Letterman’s embrace of leftist partisan vitriol emboldened Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel when they made the choice to be emotional political advocates rather than humorous talk show hosts. Kimmel’s weepy breakdown after President Trump was elected again in 2024 remains perhaps the most pathetic spectacle in the history of late-night TV.
Related: Here’s an Idea — Just Let Jimmy Kimmel Continue to Cancel Himself
Still, it’s the shifting sands of the late-night genre that have more to do with the end of The Late Show than anything else. The Variety article admits that late-night “has become more economically fragile since the coronavirus pandemic.” I wouldn’t give the pandemic that much credit. The way we consume video entertainment has been rapidly changing for years. Many young people only look at televisions if they’re playing console video games.
Even streaming habits are being frequently overhauled. At the beginning of the week, my friend and RedState colleague Brandon Morse wrote that YouTube is the king of streaming, and it’s not even a close competition.
And it’s not just the economics of late-night that are fragile. The very idea of the genre is a dinosaur for the YouTube streaming generation. At the moment, I think that only The Tonight Show is safe for a while. The legendary Johnny Carson was not only an impossible act to follow, but he also built a franchise that is a cultural institution that can’t be easily screwed up by lesser hosts. Jimmy Fallon has been languishing in third place in the 11:35 p.m. time slot, but he’s already outlasted Colbert and will probably be around long after Kimmel has gone to buy more tissues.
Fallon also isn’t as political as Colbert or Kimmel. He really wasn’t political at all for a long time but got bullied into it by the woke scolds and Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferers.
It would be wonderful if a late-night host came along who understands new media and isn’t interested in starting by excluding a major portion of the viewing public. It would also be wonderful if I could drink beer and eat tacos every day without getting a huge gut. I am going to have to content myself with enjoying beer and tacos in (relative) moderation, and watching old clips of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
On YouTube, of course.
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