Thursday’s shocking cancellation announcement of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” could have a reverberating effect on the rest of the late night landscape.
Fellow TV stalwarts Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers were among those decrying CBS’s decision to nix the decades-old show due to so-called “financial” reasons, while Jon Stewart revealed that he isn’t sure about the future of his own long-running “Daily Show” series on Comedy Central.
Like CBS, Comedy Central is owned by Paramount Global, which is currently in the midst of a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance Media. Industry insiders have speculated that executives at Skydance had been scrutinizing the liberal-leaning Colbert, as well as Stewart, particularly in the wake of Paramount settling a CBS News lawsuit with Republican President Trump for $16 million.
On Thursday’s episode of “The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart” podcast, the host fielded questions from listeners, with one flat out asking about the fate of “The Daily Show” amid the merger.
“Boy, that’s a good question. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard anything from them,” the 62-year-old funnyman said in response. “They haven’t called me and said, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that office, Stewart.’ But let me tell you something, I’ve been kicked out of sh–tier establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet. I honestly don’t know.”
“The Daily Show” premiered in 1996, first with Craig Kilborn as host before Stewart took over in 1999. He remained with the program until 2015, then returned in 2024 as a part-time host. The show remains the longest-running program on Comedy Central, and has won 26 Primetime Emmy Awards in its nearly three decades on TV.
Stewart knows that the popular series is the basic cable channel’s anchor and could therefore escape the axe.
“I think we’re the only sort of life that exists on a current basis other than like ‘South Park,’” he said Thursday. “I’d like to think we bring enough value to the property, like if they’re looking at it as purely a real estate transaction … But that may not be their consideration. I don’t know, they may sell the whole f—ing place for parts, I don’t know.”
