Trump's most persistent critic: CBS fires satirist Stephen Colbert

At the beginning of "The Late Show" on Thursday night, Stephen Colbert announced that CBS would be canceling the satirical program. The studio audience greeted the 61-year-old host's announcement with boos. The news triggered a wave of reactions, and not just among fans.

Late-night shows still carry weight in America. President Trump, a frequent target of Colbert's jokes, responded Friday with a post on his Truth Social platform: "I think it's absolutely great that Colbert was fired."

The show's cancellation is just one of a series of sweeping changes at CBS. Meanwhile, concerns are growing in the American media landscape that the company is losing its journalistic independence—and no longer prioritizing it over political expediency.

Stephen Colbert took over the "Late Show" in 2015 from David Letterman, who had shaped the format for 22 years. Previously, Colbert had become known for his appearance on the "Colbert Report," in which he played a fictional, ultra-conservative news anchor—a sharp parody of the rhetoric of right-wing opinion makers during the Bush era.

Under Colbert's direction, the show became the most successful late-night show on CBS in the United States. The show gained popularity especially after Trump first entered the White House. From then on, Colbert, who never strived for political neutrality, had reliable material for his opening monologues. This earned him an average of 2.42 million viewers per episode. The "Late Show" was the only show of its format to even slightly increase its audience compared to the previous year.

CBS executives emphasize that the show's cancellation was motivated solely by economic reasons. It had "nothing to do with the content, ratings, or anything else at Paramount."

However, CBS's decision cannot be completely separated from the political environment in which it was made. Parent company Paramount is currently hoping for a multi-billion dollar merger with Skydance, which is contingent on approval by the US government's Federal Communications Commission. At the same time, just this month the company settled a lawsuit brought by Trump over a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. From Trump's perspective, the segment was edited too favorably; he accused CBS of "news distortion" and demanded $10 billion in damages. At the beginning of July, CBS announced that it would pay $16 million to Trump's Presidential Library as part of the settlement.

Many legal experts considered the settlement an unnecessary concession. Stephen Colbert commented on it on his show as a "fat bribe." In a statement on Friday, the Writers Guild of America called on the New York Attorney General's Office to launch an investigation. Representatives of the writers' union expressed concern that Paramount would fire a persistent critic of the president "in order to curry favor with the administration." The letter further stated that the decision came against the backdrop of President Trump's relentless attacks on the free press.

The pressure on the entire American media landscape is intense. The Writers Guild of America is citing a decision made by the U.S. Congress last week. Starting in September, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will no longer receive government subsidies. This affects approximately $1.1 billion that previously flowed to public media—primarily PBS (television) and NPR (radio).

However, those most affected are smaller stations in rural areas, which receive about a third of their funding from federal funds. For larger stations, the figure is only a few percent. The stations mostly finance the rest through donations from listeners. The New York Times reports that, according to estimates by the Public Media Company, more than 100 local radio and television stations are threatened with closure.

Public broadcasting in the United States only emerged in 1967 as a counterweight to commercial television and in response to calls for more educational content, political balance, and a certain seriousness in programming. Since then, the Public Broadcasting Act has been a political bone of contention. Conservatives, in particular, view broadcasters like PBS and NPR as left-wing bastions. All proposals for cuts have so far failed, but now the Republican majority has prevailed.

Stephen Colbert will be able to speak on CBS until the end of May 2026, when his contracts expire. "I'm not being replaced. This all just disappears," says the satirist. But there is, of course, life after "The Late Show." Colbert could start a podcast like former NBC host Conan O'Brien. Or he could be snapped up by Netflix or another deep-pocketed streamer. Whether those resources can achieve the same cultural reach that Colbert had at CBS is another question.