Stephen Colbert's Late Show airs its final episode tonight, and media analyst Joe Concha just laid out the autopsy numbers in the Washington Examiner — and folks, the corpse was cold long before CBS pulled the plug. We're talking $40 million in annual losses, 200-plus staffers for a show where two people sit across a desk, and a guest list so politically lopsided it makes MSNBC look balanced.
Pass the popcorn. This one comes with receipts.
Concha asked the question nobody at CBS wanted to answer: "Can anyone explain why a program that consists almost entirely of two people talking across a desk needs more than 200 staffers?" Good question, Joe. The Late Show employed 22 writers just for the monologues alone. Twenty-two writers and the best they could come up with, night after night, was the same thing.
As Concha put it: "The days may change, but everything stays the same. Trump. Trump. Trump."
That's not comedy. That's obsession with a punchline factory stuck on one setting.
The numbers from the Media Research Center tell the real story. After CBS announced the cancellation in July 2025, a staggering 95% of Colbert's jokes targeted Trump and conservatives. Not some of the jokes. Not most. Ninety-five percent. And the guest bookings? One hundred percent liberal after the cancellation announcement. Every single one.
The lone Republican Colbert bothered to have on? Liz Cheney. Of course it was Liz Cheney. The woman who couldn't win her own primary is apparently the only conservative CBS considers acceptable company.
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders appeared on the show 15 times. Fifteen. Jake Tapper showed up 14 times — because apparently CNN's ratings weren't low enough and he needed to drag Colbert's down too. But comedian Sebastian Maniscalco — one of the biggest touring stand-ups in the country — hadn't been on in 8 years. His last appearance was 2018. Bill Maher, a fellow liberal who at least occasionally says something interesting, wasn't invited once in the past decade.
Think about that. Colbert's booking strategy was so ideologically rigid that he froze out even liberals who occasionally go off-script. If you weren't 100% on-message, you didn't get the call.
And all that rigidity cost CBS $40 million a year in losses. Forty million dollars. For a show that hemorrhaged viewers in every key demographic while Colbert turned the entire operation into a nightly anti-Trump rally. Advertisers noticed. Audiences noticed. The only people who didn't notice were the 200-plus staffers cashing paychecks to produce content that fewer and fewer Americans wanted to watch.
The timeline matters here. CBS announced the show was ending in July 2025 — months after the 2024 election where Kamala Harris lost and Colbert's audience had to face reality. Rather than pivot, adapt, or — heaven forbid — be funny about something other than Donald Trump, Colbert doubled down. He went from mostly anti-Trump to exclusively anti-Trump. And his audience, the ones who were already leaving, left faster.
Here's the thing about late-night TV that the networks refuse to learn. Johnny Carson was funny because he made fun of everyone. Letterman had an edge but he'd roast both sides. Colbert decided he'd rather be a DNC surrogate than an entertainer, and the market spoke.
The Gateway Pundit reported on Concha's full breakdown, and every number points to the same conclusion — this wasn't a cancellation, it was a mercy killing. The audience had already delivered the verdict. CBS just finally read it.
Tonight's the last episode. Don't worry about missing it. Nobody else was watching either.
