David Letterman has cast doubt on the longevity of late-night talk shows, saying he would be “surprised” if the format lasts much longer. The remarks come ahead of the final episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which airs on CBS on 21 May after a 33-year run.
In an interview with the New York Times published on Tuesday, Letterman, 79, expressed “disbelief” upon learning the show had been cancelled. He alluded to other nightly comedians such as Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, saying the format was “not completely dead on arrival, but I would be surprised if it lasts more than a year or so”. He added, “It’s such an easy soothing format that it’s got to stay on.”
When pressed, Letterman said he may have been referring to “specific shows”, and he did not think late-night would ever go away because “it’s just the best. It’s humans talking to humans.” CBS announced the cancellation in July, citing “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night”.
However, critics noted that the decision came as Paramount, CBS’s parent company, was finalising a multibillion-dollar merger with Skydance requiring approval from the Trump administration. Colbert has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump. The cancellation also followed Colbert’s criticism of Paramount’s $16m settlement with Trump over a lawsuit about a 60 Minutes interview.
Letterman, who hosted The Late Show for 22 years before Colbert took over in 2015, questioned the financial reasoning. “They don’t share the books with me,” he said, adding that the television industry had been affected by digital streaming. He argued that Colbert, his employees and his fans deserved better, describing the move as a decision by the network’s sellers to avoid trouble in the merger. CBS reiterated that the cancellation was “unequivocally a financial decision”.
