Late-Night Television Never Recovered From TDS | Bobby Burack

The decline of late-night television is hardly up for dispute. Last week, CBS announced that "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" would air its final episode in May 2026. Colbert has ranked first in the late-night time slot of 11:30 p.m. ET for nine consecutive seasons. Yet the show was losing a reported $40 million a year. 

In 2024, the four late-night shows on CBS, NBC, and ABC combined for just $220 million in ad revenue. In 2018, they generated $439 million. That's a 50% drop in just seven years.

But the question is, why? How did such a relic of American culture since the early 1960s fall so steeply in under 10 years?

Put simply, collapse isn’t driven by a single cause. 

For starters, more than 30 million households have cut the cord since 2014. Fewer people are even flipping on network TV, let alone staying up for it. 

Second, fans used to have to wait for Jay Leno or David Letterman to hear from their favorite musicians, actors, authors, and athletes. These days, our esteemed celebrity class can be found daily, at all hours, detailing their every move on social media.

That said, late-night also caught a potent case of Trump derangement syndrome (TDS).

Late-night titans like Leno, Letterman, Johnny Carson, and Conan O'Brien likely nodded along to liberal groupthink in private settings. They were rich guys who spent most of their days in Hollywood and Manhattan. However, their shows were not inherently political. At most, politics played a small role in their openings as they recapped the news of the day.

This remained the case until 2015, when Donald Trump descended an escalator at Trump Tower in New York City and announced his run for the presidency. Like American culture, late-night television has never been the same.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and guest Dr. Anthony Fauci during a broadcast in 2022. (Photo by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)

It's hardly a coincidence that Colbert ascended as the top-rated host early in Trump's first presidency. Having contributed to the "Daily Show" and hosted the "Colbert Report," Colbert had political chops his competitors didn't. 

In comparison, Jimmy Fallon is a light-hearted goof who, to this day, looks uncomfortable embracing political dogma. Jimmy Kimmel's disdain for Trump is real, but unappealing to his fans who've followed him since his days on "The Man Show." The Jimmy Kimmel of old would have relentlessly mocked the Jimmy Kimmel of today.

Further, the networks should've realized early that the late-night shift toward partisan commentary was bad for business. Notably, Fallon's "Tonight" show has averaged just 1.19 million this year. However, like too many businesses in the Trump era, they chose agenda over profits. So, it continued.

To empathize, the industry didn't only shift leftward; it shifted well leftward of the median voter. According to the media watchdog organization NewBusters:

• 94% of the late-night guests over the past year were considered either "liberal" or "Democrat."
• 99% of the late-night guests in the first half of 2025 were considered either "liberal" or "Democrat."
• 82% of late-night jokes targeted conservatives in 2024.
• From September to the 2024 election, 98% of political jokes targeted Donald Trump.

Perhaps not even MSNBC could pull off such a feat.

As Fox Sports Radio host Colin Cowherd put it, Carson produced a show for the entire country. Since 2015, Colbert and the Jimmys have produced shows for coastal elites and the most ardent Trump detractors. While the latter group might be noisier, they are much smaller in scale.

Colbert and Co. essentially committed career suicide because of their hatred for the president. So much so, they lost the plot.

At its core, the job of a late-night host is simple: to make people laugh. Yet comedy has often felt secondary since Trump entered the political arena. No one embodied that shift more than Colbert, who abandoned punchlines for propaganda — like literally dancing on stage in a cringe-worthy "Vax Scene" musical and rolling up his sleeves on-air for Dr. Fauci.

Imagine thinking that bit would be funny or anything more than bureaucratic propaganda. Imagine letting your feelings toward a president irreparably damage the monocultural presence that was late-night television for so long.

Because there is no coming back from this. We've seen this story before. No industry has recovered from the decision to ignore the interests of everyday Americans in favor of a role in the witch-hunt against Donald Trump. Not the award shows, film studios, left-wing cable news channels, or even the NBA.

In terms of popularity, they are each shells of themselves. 

Interestingly, Colbert’s fans are right to blame Trump for his show’s cancellation — but not in the way they think. Trump didn’t order CBS to cancel Colbert in exchange for approval of a proposed merger between parent company Paramount Global and Skydance. Instead, it was Colbert’s relentless, almost compulsive fixation on Trump that alienated the audience to the point of no return.

Of all the reasons late-night is failing, TDS is the most significant.