For more than a decade, Stephen Colbert made the Ed Sullivan Theater his home, turning ‘The Late Show’ into a nightly ritual of sharp wit, political satire, and genuine emotional connection with his audience. The series, which ran for 33 years as a CBS institution, had been home to two legendary hosts, with David Letterman presiding over the franchise before passing the keys to Colbert in 2014 after 22 years in the chair. When the curtain finally came down, it did so on Colbert’s terms, with a sendoff that felt less like a cancellation and more like a celebration.
CBS announced the cancelation on July 17, 2025, with Colbert himself breaking the news live to a stunned audience. The network cited financial losses, claiming the series had been bleeding roughly $40 million every year, though many observers found the timing suspicious given the broader political climate surrounding CBS’s parent company and its dealings with the Trump administration. Colbert himself noted the move was particularly surprising to him, since CBS had offered him a five-year contract as recently as 2023.
Whatever the circumstances behind the ending, the audience showed up for the goodbye in a way that underlined the absurdity of the whole situation. According to preliminary data from Nielsen, the May 21 series finale drew 6.74 million viewers on Thursday night, making it the most-watched weeknight episode in the show’s entire history. That figure surpassed the show’s 2026 first-quarter average of 2.69 million viewers by a considerable margin, and it edged above the series premiere from September 8, 2015, which had pulled in 6.55 million.
The all-time viewership record for the show remains the post-Super Bowl episode from February 7, 2016, which drew an extraordinary 20.55 million viewers on a Sunday night, a benchmark no weeknight broadcast could realistically chase. Still, the finale’s numbers were remarkable enough to put the network’s stated financial rationale under a harsh light, with nearly seven million people tuning in to say farewell to a show they had apparently been watching all along.
The finale itself was packed with celebrity appearances, including Paul McCartney, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, Ryan Reynolds, and all four of Colbert’s late-night peers, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver, appearing together in a tribute. McCartney closed the night by turning out the lights at the Ed Sullivan Theater, the historic venue where the Beatles made their American television debut in 1964 and where ‘The Late Show’ had been filmed since 1993.
The musical farewell saw Colbert joined by McCartney, original bandleader Jon Batiste, current bandleader Louis Cato, and Elvis Costello for a performance of the Beatles classic “Hello Goodbye,” a song whose title could not have been more fitting for the occasion. In his final monologue, Colbert reflected on what the show had truly meant, telling his audience: “We were here to feel the news with you, and I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”
For context, Letterman’s farewell episode in May 2015 drew 13.76 million viewers, a number that reflects just how much the television landscape has fractured in the decade since. The fact that Colbert came anywhere close, in a world of streaming and social media clips, speaks to the particular hold he had on his viewers. With the late-night slot now handed over to Byron Allen’s ‘Comics Unleashed,’ the conversation has already shifted to whether CBS made a decision it will one day deeply regret, and if you watched the finale, we want to hear where you fall on that question.