The 33-year late-night era at CBS is officially over. Stephen Colbert signed off “The Late Show” for the final time on Thursday night, capping an 11-year run with a surreal broadcast that stretched to nearly 1 a.m. ET. The finale comes less than a year after CBS parent company Paramount Global cancelled the franchise, officially blaming broadcast television’s financial pressures. But industry consensus points directly to Colbert’s fierce criticism of the second Donald Trump administration, particularly following Paramount’s $16 million legal settlement to secure FCC approval for its $8.4 billion merger.
The final hour bypassed standard wrap-up nostalgia for something stranger. Before the musical finale, Colbert delivered an earnest thank you to his crew and audience, but the broadcast actually concluded with a fable where a giant green hole swallowed the entire set.
Paul McCartney served as the evening’s final guest, sitting down for a rare extended interview. The music legend closed out the broadcast by performing The Beatles’ classic “Hello, Goodbye” alongside Colbert and a large ensemble of musicians, including former bandleader Jon Batiste and Elvis Costello, a musical sign-off that anchored the 1 a.m. runtime. The upbeat singalong directly contrasted the show’s final visual, an apocalyptic fable ending that critics interpreted as a final poignant commentary on the corporate and political pressures that forced the show off the air.
McCartney brought a piece of history to the Ed Sullivan Theater. During the interview, he gifted Colbert a framed color photograph of The Beatles performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964. That performance took place on the exact same physical stage 62 years earlier.
The rest of the late-night television circuit effectively shut down to give Colbert the floor. In a highly unusual show of industry solidarity, rival hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver all chose to either air reruns or skip their Thursday broadcasts entirely, keeping the national spotlight exclusively focused on Colbert’s farewell.
CBS is not launching a new original program to fill the void. The network is breaking over three decades of tradition by selling the post-local-news hour to syndicated programming moving forward.