Stephen Colbert’s Final Goodbye Is Breaking Everyone

Why would CBS cancel its number one late night show just three days after Stephen Colbert called out its parent company on air? Officially, the network blamed money. Reports said The Late Show was losing around $40 million a year. But the timing was impossible to ignore. Colbert had just accused Paramount’s settlement with Donald Trump of looking like a “big fat bribe.” Then, suddenly, the lights at the Ed Sullivan Theater were scheduled to go dark for good. Was this really a business decision, or did one of television’s most powerful hosts cross a line he was never supposed to cross? Tonight, we follow the money, the merger, the settlement, and the decision that turned a late night cancellation into one of the most explosive scandals in modern American television.