After more than a decade of political satire, celebrity interviews, and nightly monologues, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" aired its final episode on Thursday, bringing down the curtain on a programme that had broadcast from the historic Ed Sullivan Theater in New York since 2015. The finale featured a performance with Paul McCartney of the classic "Goodbye, Hello" and, in a pointed act of restraint, Colbert did not directly name the president who had publicly celebrated his departure.

Colbert, who took over the show from David Letterman and had previously spent a decade on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" — itself a spin-off of "The Daily Show" — built "The Late Show" into the top-rated programme in its time slot. CBS announced the cancellation last July, describing it as a purely financial decision, citing mounting annual losses. Yet the explanation satisfied few observers. The network's parent company, Paramount, was at the time finalising a merger requiring government approval, and President Trump had repeatedly attacked Colbert on social media, calling him "a pathetic train wreck with no talent." CBS had also recently paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over the network's editing of a Kamala Harris interview — a payment Colbert himself called "a big fat bribe" on air. The proximity of these events led many to conclude that politics, not just finances, had shaped the decision.

In the weeks leading up to the finale, Colbert was joined by fellow late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, and Jimmy Fallon — all veterans of the "Strike Force Five" podcast the group had recorded together during the 2023 writers' strike. Kimmel, whose own show was temporarily suspended last year following pressure linked to Trump administration criticism, joked that the group would soon be down to three.

The broader context is one of structural decline for the late-night format. Across all networks, viewership has fallen sharply and advertising revenue has followed. CBS has announced that Colbert's time slot will be filled by "Comics Unleashed" with Byron Allen. Some media critics argue the cancellation reflects something deeper than economics: in an era when political reality has grown so extreme, satire struggles to land its punches. As German daily taz observed, jokes about corruption or incompetence risk becoming a coping mechanism rather than a force for accountability — provoking laughter among those already converted while leaving those in power unmoved.

For Colbert, the ending closes a chapter that began well before "The Late Show." His departure marks the end of more than 30 years of continuous late-night television history on the CBS network, and leaves a significant gap in a landscape already shrinking. Whether his exit represents a purely commercial calculation, political interference, or simply the slow erosion of a television era, the result is the same: one of America's most prominent satirical voices has left the building.