Late Night in Winter

Late night television was born in NYC.

When the Tonight Show with Steve Allen premiered in 1954, it created a whole new world, not only for television, but for the entire culture. Late night TV was a America's bedtime story. During his 30-year reign as host of the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson was the nation's comforter-in-chief. In the years and decades since, so many other late night shows and hosts have come and gone that it's hard to keep track. And, of course, late night TV extended for beyond NYC, into "beautiful downtown Burbank" and the West Coast.

But late night TV has always been, at heart, a New York City thing. Like the city itself, it's always been a little edgy, a little nasty, a little smartass, a little offbeat, and yet always had a big welcoming heart.

Think Letterman. Think Jon Stewart. 

So it's a sad occasion that the Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been cancelled. In May 2026 it will end completely. Its network, CBS, is getting out of the late night business altogether. The reasons for this cancellation are, according to CBS, purely financial. But it's entirely possible that it was done to help grease the wheels of a huge merger that is taking place between CBS and Skydance. Skydance is owned by ultra-Republican billionaire Larry Ellison and Colbert used his show daily to bash Trump. Ending the show not only saves CBS money but also appeases the FTC to approve the merger, as well as Larry Ellison's ego (it's rumored that he'll turn CBS into another Fox News).

The financial and the political are, let's face it, one and the same. One hand washes the other. Power speaks to power. 

Also, the economics of late night TV awful: the Tonight Show is down to four nights a week, Late Night lost its band, other late night shows have been cancelled and not replaced, it's a shrinking, dying breed. People would rather watch streaming or YouTube or watch their phones. Who needs late night TV?

But it's a sad moment for late television, for the culture, and for NYC. Something has been lost, never to be replaced. We'll remember late night TV the same way some people remember cigarette ads on TV or other cultural ephemera. Gone, but not forgotten.

P.S. the Colbert show is the only late night show that I went to a taping of, and I wrote about it briefly in 2018.