Opinion: The Collapse of Colbert — Late-Night’s $15 Million Punchline

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show since 2015, has been in the news. CBS informed him that they would be cancelling the long-running program in 2026, and the entertainment and business news – as well as the opinion pages, to an extent – have been full of commentary about how it must be a political firing, a sad response to a more conservative electorate, or even, an obsequious move to appease President Trump.

The lack of self-awareness, along with the lack of economic consciousness, is fascinating to watch.

Colbert, we have learned, was hired at a $6 million salary and given full program control. Under Colbert’s leadership, this talk show has been losing approximately $40 million per year, at least $15 million of which has been Colbert’s personal salary since 2019.

Networks tolerate operating losses at the beginning of the run of a new show in which they have confidence, but only for a while; they expect it to make money soon, or they pull the plug.

Similarly, they will tolerate operating losses on an old show for a little while if they have reason to believe it’s a temporary slump, but they will make changes, cuts, style adjustments, in order to turn it around – and if the retooling doesn’t work, they pull the plug.

As they must.

As they have to.

Because television isn’t a charity.

There was a time when the evening talk show was an almost guaranteed moneymaker for every national network. These shows were relatively cheap to produce; the viewer demographic was desirable to advertisers, and local affiliates loved being able to count on this cheerful, non-controversial programming after their late evening news. In the days of Carson and Letterman, then Leno and O’Brien and Ferguson and so many more, these programs were a dependable goldmine.

Not any more.

Things change in any culture, and changes have certainly affected late night television too. The ballooning of available channels, the large-scale switch to watching shows on-demand on cable or streaming services – the differences of recent years are considerable.

But what has not changed – what never needed to change – was the simplicity of the format. A single host, perhaps with a sidekick, perhaps with a small band. An eager audience of tourists guaranteed to fill the seats and laugh whenever the “APPLAUSE” sign lights up, so there’s “real” laughter instead of a laugh track. And a ready multitude of actors, writers, comedians, politicians, and other celebrities and wannabe celebrities to show up for free or for union scale, just to plug their acts, their books, their gimmicks or their shows.

A lot depends on two things: a likeable host who focuses on building as broad an audience as possible, and keeping a rational eye on the production budget.

That’s where they’ve fallen down over the years. Too many talk show hosts nowadays talk partisan politics, automatically turning off half the potential audience, maybe more. Too many hosts mistake the support from their side of the aisle for genuine entertainment, so they don’t realize when they’re losing focus. And too many of them have demanded incredibly expensive salaries and staffs, destroying the very foundation of this business model.

How much must Colbert’s show have cost, to lose $40 to $50 million per year for the past several years? It was one of the ratings leaders in its time slot; with responsible management it would have been profitable.

How could a show require so huge a staff (it’s been reported that the show has employed as many as a hundred writers at a time)? How could they pay Colbert alone $15 to $20 million per year, when his frivolously-overspent program was hemorrhaging money like that, year after year?

The reason for the show’s announced cancellation is therefore as clear as can be; there’s no reason for controversy about it other than the Left’s insistence to blame everything they don’t like on the fact that President Trump is back in the White House.

There is a lesson for us all in this, however, a lesson that goes beyond late night television.

When the cancellation announcement was first made – naturally (and correctly) blaming its cockeyed cost structure – many voices on the Left shouted in anger “How dare you say Stephen Colbert isn’t good! How dare you say our hero isn’t worth $15 million a year!” As they thought of him as their champion, they just couldn’t bear to imagine that someone could say he’s not worth whatever he was being paid (even though none of them had known that figure the day before).

But in fact, few are saying the man is untalented or worthless; long before he drove this show into the ground, he made a good living as a comedian, voice actor, and author. Presumably, he can do so again once this gig is over.

He has in fact already been hired for a guest spot on an a television series nobody’s heard of, called Elsbeth, also produced by CBS.

Every potential employee is worth something, and no matter how much people may try to avoid reality, it is the market that determines how much a person is worth. The job of the individual employee is to figure out what he or she is best at – to figure out exactly what path the market will reward him most generously for choosing.

In television, if a show brings in enough ad revenue or ticket sales to pay its cast and crew well, the show will last; if the show doesn’t bring in enough ad revenue or ticket sales, then the show will fail. A wise production team is one that understands the potential audience well enough to be able to calculate those balance sheets in advance, bringing it in under budget and guaranteeing a profit.

This is true of any business; it’s not just about television.

A good plumber can make a good living if he does good work and drives a $30,000 truck; if he insists on going from job to job in a $400K Rolls Royce, he’ll go bankrupt, because he could never repair enough sinks and bathtubs to cover the cost of that ride.

A good hot dog stand can be successful if it takes in $2000/day with expenses under $1000/day; but if those numbers are reversed, you’ll be out of business in a week.

Maybe Stephen Colbert is worth $15 million/year, just not to the CBS Late Show. Or maybe his arrogance is what caused the outlandish cost structure that doomed the program. We don’t know how often the network asked him to trim the budget, and how he reacted to the request.

The current ratings juggernaut in late evening television is Greg Gutfeld, a former magazine editor whose talk show has a panel of comedians and newsmen, a team of writers, and an audience as huge as the free-TV networks despite being on cable. This program has staffers with Economics degrees; they understand how a profit-loss statement is constructed, and they make sure to stay in the black.

The American Left – and frankly, the global Left as well – is notorious for a certain lack of understanding about money. They don’t know where it comes from; they just know how much they want to be paid, how much they want to distribute, how much they want to boast that they control.

All of us in TV-land, sitting at home flipping channels, might want to use this as a teachable moment for our children.

In recent years, too many of our nation’s corporations, charities, and organizations have been behaving like The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: staffing needless departments, throwing away money on unnecessary contributions, “giving back” despite really being unable to afford it.

How many companies have we seen, enjoying the thrill of a good boom year (as many did during the Covid years), gave permanent raises to staff, hired DEI departments and doled out generous new benefits, and addicted local charities to their support, only to find a year later that this largesse would not be sustainable when the economy returned to normal?

Our economy has booms and busts, good years and bad. We have years of high profits and years in which the margins are tight. The wise company – and the wise individual citizen – is the one who remains frugal and responsible in all environments, laying the foundation for longevity.

And while we’re at it, we might want to apply some of this thinking to government.

Ever notice how, from the municipal and county levels to the state and federal levels, we have administrations that insist on spending as much of their constituents’ money as they want, without a care in the world to how much income they are legitimately taking in?

In truth, we have a nation of irresponsible Stephen Colberts, at every level of government. And perhaps it’s time for their constituents to teach thousands of them the exact same lesson.

Copyright 2025 John F. Di Leo