{"id":680571,"date":"2025-07-19T04:15:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T01:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/what-will-stephen-colbert-do-after-late-show-ends-he-has-options\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T04:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T01:15:21","slug":"what-will-stephen-colbert-do-after-late-show-ends-he-has-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/what-will-stephen-colbert-do-after-late-show-ends-he-has-options\/","title":{"rendered":"What Will Stephen Colbert Do After \u2018Late Show\u2019 Ends? He Has Options"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIt\u2019s the old \u2014 and not very funny \u2014 joke: Where does a 1,000-pound gorilla sit?<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tAnswer: Wherever he wants.<\/em> <\/p>\n

\n\tThe Late Show<\/em> host Stephen Colbert may not quite be the 1,000-pound gorilla of the modern interview format (that would be Joe Rogan), but he certainly carries a lot of weight. When you\u2019re the highest-rated late-night host on broadcast television and one of the most recognizable people in media<\/a>, plus have a loyal audience that has grown addicted to watching you five nights a week for years \u2026 you have a significant value in the marketplace, even if CBS is showing you the door.<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert may not be able to sit anywhere<\/em> he wants when his series<\/a> ends, but he\u2019s definitely going to have a few seats to choose from. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn some sense, the 61-year-old\u2019s relative lack of future-proofing preparedness for this upheaval is his own fault. Despite coming to CBS from the once-edgy realm of Comedy Central\u2019s The Daily Show<\/em> and his own The Colbert Report<\/em>, the host\u2019s tenure on broadcast has been marked by his embrace of a highly traditional talk show format. On NBC, Jimmy Fallon has long produced digital shorts, making potentially viral content for online users. On ABC, Jimmy Kimmel made himself into a network utility player \u2014 hosting awards shows, game<\/a> shows and delivering a set each year at the New York upfronts. Conan O\u2019Brien \u2014 having previously been fired from a broadcast talk show \u2014 wisely and pre-emptively launched his hit podcast three years before TBS pulled the plug on his cable network talk show in 2021.<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert \u2014 and this isn\u2019t meant as a slight \u2014 seemed to simply enjoy doing the job as a talk show host in the studio every night to the best of his ability. Given that his ratings were better than his rivals, why would he have done anything different? One could easily imagine Colbert being reassured by network executives over the years: Just keep doing what you\u2019re doing<\/em>. After all, if you\u2019re consistently winning your time slot, and staying out of trouble, that\u2019s all you\u2019ve ever needed to do on television since \u2026 well, since the dawn of television. Your business has a real problem if you can\u2019t win by winning (The New York Times<\/em> reports ad revenue for late night has dropped by half in the last seven years and, last month, broadcast fell below 20 percent of all TV viewing for first time).<\/p>\n

\n\tWith CBS deciding to cancel The Late Show<\/em> \u2014 not ditch the show\u2019s highly paid current host, but retire the format \u2014 the network has basically undercut the speeches that all broadcast presidents and ad sales executives give each year at the upfronts: That broadcast remains strong, that it\u2019s still relevant and still matters. Colbert arguably has better options than the network giving him the boot. He is a talent and talent can draw an audience. While CBS now has \u2026 what? A hole that needs to be filled.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what happ<\/a>ens now? Not at CBS, but for Colbert? <\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Letterman launched an elevated interview show on Netflix. Jon Stewart did his own twist on The Daily Show<\/em> for Apple TV+ and launched a podcast before returning to The Daily Show<\/em>. And O\u2019Brien not only launched a podcast, but a whole podcast network, which he sold to SiriusXM for a tidy $150 million, and on the side makes a travel<\/a> show for HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe easiest option for Colbert would be if another company \u2014 perhaps a deep-pocketed streamer \u2014 wants to pay him to keep doing something rather similar to what he\u2019s already doing for a chance at getting his 2.4 million viewers a night. The bigger hurdle, one imagines, is finding a company that\u2019s both down for this and doesn\u2019t mind potentially irking the Trump administration in the process (especially given that Disney, Apple and Amazon have seemed inclined to bend the knee, not just CBS parent Paramount).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother road is if Colbert decides to launch his own talk or interview show \u2014 whether a podcast or on YouTube. The average age of a Colbert viewer is 68, which perhaps says more about CBS\u2019 audience than it does Colbert\u2019s, but it also makes it a bit tougher to imagine Colbert hustling viewers to \u201csmash that like and subscribe button\u201d on YouTube alongside MrBeast.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy big thesis here is that what you\u2019re seeing is the slow destruction of the traditional Hollywood pipeline, and you\u2019re going to see a lot less big shots, and a lot more individuals taking a shot,\u201d Gavin Purcell, the former showrunner for NBC\u2019s Tonight Show<\/em>, and host of the AI For Humans <\/em>podcast, told THR<\/em>. \u201cDistribution is easy now. That\u2019s the thing that\u2019s really interesting. What\u2019s hard is attention. And the thing that Colbert and that team still do a great job of is commanding attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also the unforeseeable possibility that Colbert might get signed onto some entirely new format somewhere and rise, phoenix-like, as part of a brand new thing. While he might be the most traditional of the broadcast hosts, in some respects, the man has certainly done major pivots before. The Colbert Report<\/em>, after all, was Colbert pretending to be an entirely different person.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe wild-card outcome is that Colbert decides \u2014 after rolling out Trump jokes for a decade \u2014 to get in the political game himself. While Colbert lives in New Jersey, he\u2019s from South Carolina, and one of the state\u2019s Senate seats is open next year. Colbert has joked about the idea of running for office over the years, but when asked directly about whether he\u2019d be interested, he tends to deflect the question. Back in 2007<\/a>, when Larry King asked if he\u2019d ever considering running for president, Colbert replied, \u201cObviously, every boy has thought of it. And when you look at a field [of candidates] like this, you know \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFinally, there\u2019s an option that\u2019s perhaps even less likely than Colbert running for office: That he retires and stays retired. The thing about broadcast late-night hosts is all have made more than enough money to never work again, and yet they still get lulled back into some variation of the job, regardless of their age. They rarely quit a show, and, if pushed out, they eventually get another similar gig. Even Letterman \u2014 who seems like the sort of man who would retire \u2014 only managed to stay home for less than three years before popping back up on Netflix. There is, perhaps, something about the kind of person who is well suited for the late-night grind that is also the type of person who doesn\u2019t ever want to entirely walk away.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou know who didn\u2019t come back, however? Johnny Carson. The Tonight Show<\/em> host \u2014 general<\/a>ly considered greatest late-night host ever \u2014 retired in 1992 and never hosted again. As he told Esquire<\/em> in 2002, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to know when to get the hell off the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut if Spotify was around in the \u201990s and told Carson he could earn $30 million by working from home, interviewing whomever he wanted and could say whatever he wanted \u2026 the man might have been tempted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s the old \u2014 and not very funny \u2014 joke: Where does a 1,000-pound gorilla sit? Answer: Wherever he wants. The Late Show host Stephen Colbert may not quite be the 1,000-pound gorilla of the modern interview format (that would be Joe Rogan), but he certainly carries a lot of weight. When you\u2019re the highest-rated…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":680572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/2319539_0327-H-2023.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2443,49839,50990],"class_list":["post-680571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-cbs","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}