CBS bosses schemed to cancel Colbert while unfunny comic was on vacation – here’s why

Democrats are howling that the cancellation of Trump-hating CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert’s show was motivated by politics, but the truth is that the unfunny comic has been costing the network tens of millions of dollars.

The news broke on Thursday that CBS was pulling the plug on “The Late Show” franchise and its 61-year-old host who reportedly is paid between $15 million and $20 million a year to spew anti-Trump hate and DNC talking points mixed in with celebrity interviews and fawning chats with Democrat politicians, ending the gig after Colbert replaced the legendary David Letterman who retired in 2015.

Stephen Colbert was so unfunny he killed The Late Show.

Great job. pic.twitter.com/omReA20cDC

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 17, 2025

The loss of one of the party’s high-profile propagandists drew the usual conspiracy theories from left-wing moonbats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) but CBS was making a sound business decision by cutting its losses.

According to reporter Matt Belloni of the online outlet Puck News, Colbert’s show “has been losing more than $40 million a year” with a budget of “more than $100 million per season,” while CBS’ daytime and primetime programming are “still profitable.”

“‘Late Show,’ with its topical humor and celebrity interviews pegged to specific projects, has struggled on Paramount+. And of the three network late-night shows, ‘Late Show’ has by far the smallest digital footprint on YouTube and other platforms,” Belloni reported. “So from a business perspective, the cancellation makes sense.”

Adding insult to injury, it is being reported that Colbert’s CBS bosses were scheming to cut ties with their humorless liability while he was on vacation, according to a report from the Daily Mail.

When the host returned from vacation this week, he launched into a tirade about CBS parent Paramount’s recent $16 million agreement to settle a lawsuit with Trump over the deceptively edited “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that aired before the 2024 election, cleaning up her ditzy answers to make her look good.

Colbert trashed the settlement as “big fat bribe,” days before he was informed that the network will be ringing down the curtain in May 2026.

Belloni reported that while sources at CBS and Skydance Media which is set to acquire Paramount in a reported $8 billion merger insist that the decision was based “based on economics, not politics,” other sources are skeptical of the official explanation.

“Still, two other people with deep ties to CBS and Late Show suspect otherwise,” Belloni wrote, according to Fox News. “After all, when a network decides that a show is too expensive, executives typically go to the key talent and ask them to take pay cuts, fire people, or otherwise slash costs. That didn’t happen here—though with Colbert said to be making between $15 million and $20 million per year, a pay cut wouldn’t have solved the problem on its own.”

The journalist said that the question of political motivation could arise if Paramount also cancels Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” which is carried by CBS’ sister cable TV network Comedy Central but wrote, “for now, I cautiously (and skeptically) believe that this was mostly an economic decision.”

Belloni also suggested that the Colbert cancellation could be “the dam bursting” on late night “comedy” shows which in the current era have strayed far from the days of Letterman, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno into pure partisan political propaganda disguised as entertainment.

“I’ve sensed that the networks have all been reluctant to be the first to pull the trigger on a cancellation in the historic time slot. CBS has now fired the opening shot, and it’s reasonable to suspect that NBC and ABC will follow,” he wrote.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!”