That’s certainly possible, plausible even. But it’s far from certain.
Broadcast TV has been bleeding viewers for nearly two decades now. The same article this one cites to say Colbert was #1 in its time slot also says, in the last quarter all the late night shows lost 7-8% of their audience. Colbert lost 17% among younger viewers. That’s just the last quarter alone. That’s a crazy drop.
And remember they aren’t just canceling Colbert, but the entire The Late Show altogether. One of their cornerstone programs for I don’t even know how many decades.
Also, If they were canceling The Late Show just because Rump wanted them to, he wouldn’t accept having to wait a whole year for it. He’d want it now.
So I actually do believe it was a purely financial decision. Colbert’s contract probably ends with the the next season, and rather than giving him another raise for a show that’s bleeding viewers, it makes sense to just let it all end.
That’s one hell of a coincidence given all the 60 Minutes drama with resigning producers, lawsuits and settlements, and the Skydance merger.
Also it’s the number one late night show. Why aren’t the other networks cancelling their less successful late night shows?
All seems a bit odd to me.
It certainly could be a coincidence that they were told to canceled a show that’s also loosing them $40M.
That article is also from just a few days ago. Very convenient. Can you find an older article?
Why are all the other networks not losing all of this money on their late night shows which have lower ratings?
They probably have substantially lower budgets.
Late night shows can be very cheep to produce. It might just be The Late Show with a frankly insane $100M budget. If they cut that in half, they’d be profitable.
…and the late show was the only one getting larger and larger viewership.
Financially, the cancelation makes no sense.
Edit: Just to provide some reference to the viewership
Second-quarter Nielsen ratings show that the program helmed by comedian Stephen Colbert had 2.42 million viewers across 41 new episodes, taking some 9% of the audience share and besting other shows in his timeslot. It was also the only show to rake in more viewers than in the previous quarter. And earlier this week, it received a Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding talk series. - Source
Relative viewer counts aren’t the whole story. It also matters how much they cost, and how much they revenue they bring in. Late night TV has been doing terribly overall. The Late Show specifically is apparently losing $40M this year.
The practice named “Hollywood accounting” is infamous for claiming losses.
Right, but this isn’t Hollywood. The specifics of Hollywood accounting don’t really work for ongoing television programs. It requires the short term nature of movie production.
