Stephen Colbert Gets Career Win After Recent Setbacks

Stephen Colbert hasn’t gotten his way on every deal lately, but he is still not going anywhere. Just over a month after two of Colbert’s other shows were canceled, the comedian signed a new contract to continue hosting The Late Show on CBS. According to a report by Deadline, Colbert will remain on the talk show at least through 2026.

CBS CEO George Cheeks announced Colbert’s new contract extension on Tuesday at the Banff TV Festival. He said: “We just extended him for three more years and I was praying for that to happen.” Colbert’s current contract was set to expire later this year. The Late Show and all the other late-night talk shows have been on hiatus since the day the WGA began its writers’ strike back in May, but Cheeks said that before then, Colbert was “absolutely crushing it.”

“It’s just a great cohesive group that is firing on all cylinders and Stephen’s really enjoying himself,” Cheeks said. Colbert has given his full support to the WGA writers striking right now, so there’s no telling when The Late Show may resume. In the meantime, Colbert suffered two other cancellations back in May: Tooning Out The News and Hell of a Week with Charlamagne That God.

Tooning Out The News was an animated series that aired on Comedy Central — a network under the Paramount Global umbrella, meaning it is ultimately under the same parent company as CBS. The same was true for Hell of a Week, which was a talk show hosted by radio legend Charlamagne Tha God. Colbert was an executive producer on both shows, so while he was not on camera, he had a strong hand in both productions.

On Tuesday, Cheeks also acknowledged that this is a transitional time for CBS’ late-night lineup in general since James Corden is leaving The Late Late Show behind. He said addressed the plans to scrap that show and fill its time slot with a revival of @Midnight.

“The 12:30 a.m. slot is ripe for reinvention,” he said. “There aren’t a ton of people watching at that hour, you really do need to think about what is the true cross platform version? What we ended up doing, first of all, it’s Funny or Die and Stephen Colbert, so the auspices couldn’t be any better. But when we sat down and talked about it, we talked about @Midnight, and it’s sort of been an irreverent comedy game show with stand-up comics and celebrities as guests. To me, it has a really nice feel coming out of Colbert.”