CBS is canceling The Late Present With Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert introduced the information on to his studio viewers through the taping of his July 17 episode. “Earlier than we begin the present, I wish to let you already know one thing that I discovered simply final night time,” he mentioned. “Subsequent yr might be our final season. The community might be ending The Late Present in Could.” Watch Colbert’s full message beneath.
“The Late Present With Stephen Colbert will finish its historic run in Could 2026 on the finish of the published season. We think about Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and can retire the Late Present franchise at the moment,” reads a press release shared with a number of media shops, together with The New York Instances, and credited to CBS executives. The community additional defined the cancellation as “purely a monetary choice towards a difficult backdrop in late night time.”
The Late Present’s inception got here in 1993, when David Letterman was handed over in favor of Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson as host of NBC’s The Tonight Present. Letterman’s 22-year tenure yielded a few of late-night TV’s most enduring musical moments. After being identified with most cancers in 2002, longtime pal Warren Zevon gave his last stay efficiency on Letterman, the place he performed “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.” And, in 2011 and 2014, respectively, TV on the Radio and Future Islands delivered two definitive blog-era relics with their Late Present renditions of “Wolf Like Me” and “Seasons (Ready on You).”
Colbert assumed the Late Present mantle from Letterman in 2015. Below his tenure, the Ed Sullivan Theater performed host to a variety of pop stars, up-and-coming indie acts, and established legends, amongst them—within the final two years alone—Mannequin/Actriz, Wednesday, Pavement, Father John Misty, Arooj Aftab, Kacey Musgraves, Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy, Bikini Kill, Jessica Pratt, Billie Eilish, Tyla, Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, De La Soul, and André 3000. Jon Batiste additionally served as Colbert’s bandleader till his departure in 2022.
Revisit the 2015 column “Letterman’s Musical Legacy.”
