Canceled late-night host Samantha Bee admitted Tuesday that the primary reason behind Stephen Colbert’s late-night show getting canceled is that it’s “hemorrhaging” money and viewers.
Bee, whose TBS late-night program Full Frontal with Samantha Bee was canceled in 2022, shared her thoughts on CBS’s announcement about ending The Late Show with Stephen Colbert during an appearance on the Breaking Bread with Tom Papa podcast.
“You know, these legacy shows, like they are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that in sight,” she told host and comedian Tom Papa.
CBS revealed earlier this month that The Late Show would end next May at the conclusion of its broadcast season, clarifying the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”
A report by Puck News journalist Matt Belloni disclosed that Colbert’s show was losing “more than $40 million a year.”
Many prominent liberals and Democratic figures speculated the cancellation was politically motivated. Both Papa and Bee acknowledged that could be true but stressed the show was also a financial burden that lacked sufficient viewers.
Papa noted, “I mean the show loses $40 million a year.”
“Yep,” Bee agreed.
“So that’s a reality,” Papa added.
“That’s a reality,” Bee confirmed.
Papa further commented, “The parent company is trying to curry favor with the president. So that’s a reality.”
Bee responded, “Yeah, I think both things are true. I think both things are just true and real. Like it definitely was hemorrhaging money.”
She elaborated that legacy late-night shows like Colbert’s are struggling financially because viewership has significantly dropped.
“People are just not tuning in remotely, comparatively to how they used to. Well, people are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they don’t necessarily need a recap of the day’s events. They’re very well-versed in what has happened,” Bee added.
Referencing the popular Netflix thriller Squid Games, Bee joked that viewers might “really rather watch like people just absolutely murder each other in a South Korean game show – just like watching people fall off cliffs to relax at night before nodding off.”
She also mentioned that President Donald Trump’s required sign-off on a merger between CBS’s parent company, Paramount, and Skydance likely influenced the network’s decision, considering Colbert’s outspoken anti-Trump stance.
“It is also true that when the president of the United States has to give his sign-off on a corporate merger, the thing you can’t do is make jokes about him. He’s a thin-skinned idiot. And we know, he’s like a pernicious cancer.”
For that reason, Bee told Papa it was a “no-brainer” that CBS chose to end Colbert’s show.
