Last Thursday, when Stephen Colbert announced on air that CBS had decided to cancel The Late Show, its flagship late-night comedy program, after 33 years in May of next year, I was shocked.

For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.

Reporting in the days since the announcement have lent some credence to CBS’s claim that this was “purely a financial decision”. Though The Late Show has led the field of late-night comedy in ratings for years, it only averages about 2.47 million viewers a night. Its ad revenue plummeted after the pandemic; Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that the show loses $40m for CBS every year. Of the network late-night shows – NBC’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – Colbert’s Late Show has the smallest footprint on social media, where........

© The Guardian