“We’re all basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Records.”
That’s how Jon Stewart described the state of late night shows and network television in Monday’s episode of “The Daily Show” — like two once-powerful, now totally irrelevant brands. That harsh reality lies beneath the drama over the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” which has stirred a virulent backlash and accusations of political bribery and corporate intrigue.
But the economics of late night no longer work, and Stewart — like his colleagues — knows it.
Six years ago, the average viewership for Colbert’s “The Late Show” was 3.81 million, according to Nielsen. By the second quarter of 2025, it was 2.4 million. During that same period, average viewership has dropped 13% for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and 51% for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
And it’s not just viewership that’s down. Ad revenue for “The Late Show” dropped about 25% from 2022 to 2024, according to data from iSpot TV, with “The Tonight Show” faring even worse with a 35% decline — though late night on the whole did see a 6% bump from July 2024 to July 2025 on the heels of Trump’s reelection. As viewership and ad buys have been largely shrinking, the costs of these shows remain high.
“Those shows are bloated,” a former late night producer told TheWrap. He pointed to people who join shows like “The Late Show” early in their careers and stick around for years. “They might be good people, but there’s like 18 of you people here. The salaries at those places are out of control.”
Cuts already hit Fallon and Seth Meyers’ shows last year. Colbert wasn’t afforded the same opportunity — CBS scrapped his show outright.
While most experts agree that Fallon, Kimmel and Meyers will likely be the last people to host their respective franchises, it’s less clear what happens after late night TV ends and where these nightly stewards of broadcast TV go next. Podcast hosts now seem to hold more sway over audiences than late night hosts do. Comedians are being discovered on TikTok rather than through stand-up sets at 30 Rock. And celebrities are warming to longform podcast interviews that offer a more intimate connection than an eight-minute TV segment.
But there are consequences — both tangible and intangible — to these shows eventually going extinct. A successful late night show gives a network a built-in ambassador for its brand, which also helps drive publicity for the corporate parent’s other products, incubate talent and foster relationships with up-and-coming artists. And despite the declining ratings, the shows still offer a massive platform to comment on what’s going on in the world.
“One of the biggest things [late night shows] offer that’s hard to engineer anywhere else is that they are a stamp on cultural memory. It becomes this landmark moment in an artist’s career,” Bryant Kitching, Global Director of Communications at Partisan Records, told TheWrap. “It’s something that’s documented, archived and referenced years later in a way that an Instagram story or a TikTok just can’t do.”
But if late night is going away, how soon could it evaporate?
- Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” ends in May of 2026.
- Jon Stewart’s contract to host “The Daily Show” for Comedy Central is up at the end of 2025.
- John Oliver’s HBO deal for “Last Week Tonight” concludes in 2026.
- Jimmy Kimmel’s contract with ABC runs through the end of the 2025-26 season.
- Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers’ contracts to host their NBC shows run through 2028.
Kimmel has hinted at retirement in recent years and already takes the summers off from “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” so his exit could come as soon as next year. But Fallon and Meyers both seem unlikely to bow out of their own accord, and Stewart – Colbert’s close friend and fellow Paramount employee – said on Monday he has no intention of letting late night go without a fight. The same night, all the New York late night hosts rallied for cameo appearances on “Late Show.”
If late night is ending, it’s going down swinging.
Representatives for ABC, CBS, NBC and HBO declined to comment for TheWrap’s story.
The rising value of social
The formula for having a successful late night show used to be simple: if your ratings were high, you were a success.
But each year, these shows lose more of their linear audience as viewers migrate to digital alternatives. As of the second quarter, all five of the biggest late night shows saw year-over-year decreases in total viewership. NBC’s brands — “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers” — saw the biggest drops at 16% and 12%, respectively. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” saw a 7% drop in total viewership, while “The Late Show” saw a 4% drop.
But even “The Daily Show,” which has seen the most viewership growth likely owing to Stewart’s return, saw a 1% decline during that stretch.
“The internet has become a vital part of our viewership,” Molly McNearney, executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” told TheWrap in an interview that was conducted ahead of Colbert’s cancellation. The ABC show has 27.3 million subscribers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, making it the third most subscribed-to late night show behind Fallon and “The Daily Show.” “We need to keep feeding that audience while also upholding our obligation to put on a show on broadcast TV every night.”
But feeding that audience does not produce revenue. As a CBS insider told TheWrap, “YouTube is digital dimes versus network dollars.”
As has been widely discussed since last week, CBS claims that Colbert was losing $40 million a year. “Network advertising in late night fell off a cliff four years ago,” said the insider. “Digital does not make up for those losses. So when you have the number one show in late night you’re going to lose money.”
Still, that vast influence has value. And on this metric, “The Tonight Show” is the clear winner. At 76.3 million subscribers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, Fallon’s show has twice as many subscribers as its closest competitor “The Daily Show,” which has 33.8 million combined subscribers. This year, “The Tonight Show” saw 9.2 billion views across social media from June 1, 2024 to May 30, 2025, marking a 55% rise compared to the same time period last year.
“Wherever people are watching Jimmy [Fallon] and the show is a win in our books because it just means they’re more likely to consume us, no matter what screen they’re on,” Nick Dyer, head of digital and supervising producer for “The Tonight Show,” previously told TheWrap.
Social media views were so important to “Last Week Tonight” that John Oliver publicly lambasted HBO when the network delayed posting his segments on YouTube last year. HBO later returned to posting Oliver’s full clips on Mondays earlier this year.
“Part of what makes late night so special is that you’re talking about the news of the day and reacting in real time,” a current staffer at one of the late night shows told TheWrap. “I don’t know if a special every few months scratches that same itch. And if you look at the social media numbers, people are still very much watching. Just in a different way.”
Jordan Klepper, a senior correspondent and occasional host for “The Daily Show” has noticed people define him based on which platform they see him on, an odd tic among different generations. “People who are over 40 talk about ‘The Daily Show’ and understand the stuff I do within the context of ‘The Daily Show.’ People 30 to 40 are talking about YouTube. And then underneath that, for people in their 20s, everything is content and it’s sort of devoid of place,” Klepper previously told TheWrap in an interview about his “Fingers the Pulse” segment.
Klepper feels “lucky” about the diversity of social media, noting that his show offers everything from 30-second clips to 20-minute deep dives.
“‘The Daily Show’ is actually now all of these things because people are gathering it,” Klepper said. “They’re not just sitting down and watching. You start to refine your longform storytelling, your shortform storytelling and your five-second short storytelling.”
Political powerhouses
As culture becomes more segmented, late night stands as one of the few remnants of monoculture remaining. Who could forget when Kimmel responded to Trump’s tweet on stage while hosting the Oscars? Or when “The Daily Show” correspondents joined together to scream at Stewart when he brought up Israel?
Stewart revolutionized the late night format by introducing blistering political takes into his monologue and “The Daily Show” segments. Now leaning into political material has become the norm for most late night hosts, and it’s an approach that has resonated with viewers. Highlighting upsetting political stories is so common for Oliver that he often jokes about it with his audience, calling “Last Week Tonight” things like “Sad Zazu’s Mildly Interesting Explain Train.” Meyers’ most political segment, “A Closer Look,” also often appears on YouTube’s weekly list of its top podcast shows, a testament to the segment’s popularity.
“I don’t feel as though ‘Late Night’ is a quieter voice than it was 10 years ago,” Meyers previously told TheWrap of his show’s reach on YouTube and social media. “I think, ultimately, there are challenges to make it as valuable a property. But we’re not doing our show and thinking we’re just yelling into a void, we feel very heard, and I would prefer that to anything.”
And while Colbert got off to a rocky start on “The Late Show,” when he finally brought a more political bent to the CBS series his numbers went up.
“Colbert is a left wing show, and that’s part of the reason why he was successful,” Nick Bernstein, CBS’ former senior vice president of late night programming on the West Coast, said on a recent podcast. “When he finally embraced that, he went to No. 1, and that has been his lane, but it’s also a little bit polarizing for brands.”
But whereas speaking out against Trump used to be an almost guaranteed way to net a following and gain media attention, it now seems to be putting these hosts in danger of losing their jobs. “It’s not good to be in the resistance on television anymore,” a former late night producer said of the prickly environment.
A good corporate citizen
Aside from ratings and ad revenue, there’s another intangible benefit for these late night shows: being part of their corporate parent’s press machine. The late night interview has been a staple as long as the format has been around, but as corporations gobbled up other corporations, these shows eventually became one more promotional lever the parent company could pull.
Comcast put this to great use last year with the release of “Wicked,” which was promoted by putting cast members like Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande on Fallon and Meyers’ shows in the weeks leading up to release. Fallon even showcased a custom musical video featuring Erivo and Grande, whose chemistry anchored the successful press campaign that fueled “Wicked” to nearly $800 million at the worldwide box office.
Comcast-owned Universal Studios created an entire attraction at their Florida theme park devoted to Fallon’s “Tonight Show” called Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon, with a bevy of promotional videos featuring Fallon and The Roots at the park meant to boost ticket sales.
“There’s a promotional arm of late night TV that needs to be considered outside of traditional ratings,” the current late night staffer said. “Paramount, Universal, WBD, etc. all have stuff they need to sell. Late night helps with that — especially in a time where we’re watching less commercials.”
Late night hosts also serve as something of an ambassador for the parent company’s brand, a friendly and familiar face to attach to another piece of the synergistic puzzle. Kimmel hosted four Oscar telecasts for ABC, Fallon is the host of several game shows that air on NBC and Meyers’ name has risen to the top of wishlists for who will eventually take over “SNL” when/if Lorne Michaels retires.
To podcasts and beyond
So if late night’s days are numbered, what happens next? In the digital age, especially over the last 10 years, specified algorithms and an increasingly fractured distribution system mean that fewer and fewer people are watching the same things at the same time.
But as linear has faded and streamers have failed to really figure out late night talk shows, one area that’s ballooned in popularity is podcasts. Considering the reach and influence they have over their listeners, it’s not a leap to see Alex Cooper, Marc Maron, Joe Rogan or even the Smartless trio of Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes as the next evolution of late night hosts — at least in terms of the connection audiences make with hosts.
Of course, late night stalwarts themselves have found success in the podcast realm already, most notably Conan O’Brien. Launched in 2018 a few years before his TBS talk show “Conan” would end, “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” has amassed over 300 episodes and over 430 million downloads. Like most podcasts it’s built around an interview subject, but O’Brien’s podcast grew in popularity thanks to the host’s knack for making every episode laugh-out-loud funny – up to and including O’Brien’s ad reads.
Current late night hosts also seemingly see where things are going. Meyers hosts two podcasts – the “SNL” digital shorts retrospective podcast “The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast” and “Family Trips” with his brother Josh — while regularly appearing on others, like Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang.”
As for what’s next after late night ends – whenever that may be – perhaps folks like Meyers and Oliver will be a part of shaping that next evolution. John Mulaney’s “Everybody’s Live!” was certainly a delightfully chaotic experiment on Netflix, although it didn’t exactly light up the viewership charts. Or maybe it’ll be the young staffers working on these shows who figure out where to go next.
“It’s up to the rest of us to come up with new formats. New things are exciting, and those are probably not going to be on linear TV,” the former late night producer said. “Those are probably going to be online. They’re going to be shorter. It’s going to have to cater to a different audience if you want to get seen, and there’ll be some legacy media left over.”
Additional reporting by Lucas Manfredi and Sharon Waxman
