The Free Market Just Fired Stephen Colbert
As viewers abandon broadcast for streaming and podcasts, the old guard's model is broken. Colbert isn't an outlier; he's the first domino to fall in a new media economy.
The curtains are closing on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." CBS has announced the show's end in 2026, citing financial reasons. The free market works; if you don’t bring in the dough, you gotta’ go!
As you can see, Colbert’s high point was back in 2017-2018, with a 3.85 rating, but since 2021, the ratings have fallen to sub-3s, with no recovery in sight, despite an estimated 200 people working on the show and Colbert earning $15 million paychecks. Eventually, you’ve got to pull the plug on this kind of failure. Which leads to the question: how long have Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel been in this position, given that their ratings are worse than Colbert’s, reporting sub-2 million viewers each?
Are people doing more Netflix & Chill, listening to podcasts, and using other streaming services to find their entertainment through different media? Is it that broadcast television is dying a slow death, or are these three guys not as funny as they were back in the day? Who knows, but it is clearly the end of an era.
While CBS cites “financial challenges", this is just the shift of market demand heading elsewhere, which is why CBS is investing in more streaming services, going where the viewers are while cutting their losses on bloated legacy media that is no longer financially viable. The end of Colbert’s Late Show is not a loss for America, but a gain for a free and truly open media—the free market has spoken.
