WaPo’s Take On the End of Late Night

I wanted to share a couple of quotes from the group discussion among Washington Post columnists and editors with you. I think the first, from Chris Suellentrop, hits the nail right on the head:

For me, losing Stephen Colbert and the “Late Show” is a lot like losing the independent bookstore in your neighborhood that you never went to but were happy that it was there. By which I mean, I didn’t really watch the show. I loved “The Colbert Report” on Comedy Central, and I’ll watch (or listen to) whatever he does next. But I am not sure the departure of this CBS show in 2026 changes my media diet in any way.

As it turns out none of those in the discussion have made a regular practice of watching late night television since Jay Leno left The Tonight Show. I think that tells the whole story.

Here’s the other quote I wanted to share with you from Alyssa Rosenberg:

The question is: Can still you make enough money to put on an old-fashioned, heavily staffed late-night show? And the answer seems to be no. In 2009, David Letterman’s late-night show brought in $271 million in ad revenue, more than any other show in that format. Last year, all the network late-night shows combined brought in $220 million in ad revenue. So yes, I think this was a business decision, but one that was probably also convenient for a company trying to close an acquisition deal that needs approval from the FCC.

That’s an enormous decrease and note that her claim is incorrect. She didn’t provide a citation for the ad revenue claim so I can’t tell whether it includes Fox’s ad revenue as well. In my researches I did discover one thing: the viewership for ABC, NBC, and CBS late night appears to be shrinking fast than that for Fox which appears to be growing.

Said another way cancelling The Late Show was a business decision. Continuing to subsidize a partisan, money-losing program would have been a political decision against business interest. The editors and columnists regret the choice because they sympathize with the positions being staked out but not enough that they’d pay to keep it going.