Jimmy Kimmel Blasts Reports of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Losing $40 Million for CBS: ‘Not a Snowball’s Chance in Hell That’s Accurate’

https://variety.com/2025/tv/awards/jimmy-kimmel-defends-colbert-late-night-tv-not-dying-1236479160/

20 comments

  1. > There have been reports that Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year. What’s your take on that?

    > I just want to say that the idea that Stephen Colbert’s show was losing $40 million a year is beyond nonsensical. These alleged insiders who supposedly analyze the budgets of the shows — I don’t know who they are, but I do know they don’t know what they’re talking about. They seem to only be focused on advertising revenue and have completely forgotten about affiliate fees, which number in the hundreds of millions — probably in total billions — and you must allocate a certain percentage of those fees to late-night shows. It really is surprising how little the media seems to know about how the media works. There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate. Even that — that’s all you need to know. Suddenly he’s losing $40 million a year? I will tell you, the first 10 years I did the show, they claimed we weren’t making any money — and we had five times as many viewers on ABC as we do now. Who knows what’s true? All I know is they keep paying us — and that’s kind of all you need to know.

  2. Hollywood is notorious for creative accounting to make successful projects appear less profitable than they are for tax and revenue sharing reasons. It was used on Forrest Gump to basically avoid paying the author of the book his share of the box office profits. NBC also did this with Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show as a way to retroactively justify their decision to go back to Jay Leno.

  4. I mean it could be losing money. But that could also be due to mismanagement by the company. Like it is one of if not the most viewed late night show on YouTube. His monologue alone get over a million views regularly in the first 24 hours.

    This is on paramount, not the creative.

  6. If it is losing $$ then every CBS late night executive should be fired but won’t!

  7. Tv accounting is all about not showing any profit. 

  8. If the show was actually making money they just would have not renewed colbert and hired someone else. It’s not like he created the format or the show, he was just the latest host of it.

  9. I agree with Kimmel. One thing I’ve seen in Hollywood finances is there’s always a number that can be justified to support an executives decision.

    For instance… shows that don’t always get the highest of ratings but do well in the awards circuit can all of the sudden be justified as prestige attention to the network that has a beneficial cost to them. And vise versa. Hollywood accounting in its history is something that if often a mystery to most. Even the guys who report on it like Puck admit they don’t get the full picture

  10. Hollywood Accounting 101. Took that course when I was in hell for a week. Learned some evil practices there. Not quite for me.

  11. Who believe this shit? The shows budget isn’t even $40mil.

  12. For every post, and commentor complaining about how unjust Colbert’s canceling was just watched the show none of this would have happened.

  15. Losing 40m is the same movie studios accounting shenanigans to pretend it doesn’t make money

  16. The studios and record labels subsidize the late night shows to advertise their movies, music, but also actors and musicians. The whole show is literally a commercial, these shows print money

  17. Did Kimmel say this while shedding a tear ? I can’t believe the guy from The Man Show turned into the ultimate corporate shill.

  18. I mean duh , you would have to be insanely dumb to believe this

    They should have at least picked a more realistic number

  19. The problem with understanding if CBS is lying is that networks (and film studios) have often applied creative accounting in determining profit/loss of specific shows and films. I’ve dealt with enough Chief Financial Officers to know they understand how to massage a balance sheet.

  20. I don’t always “believe the media,” but when I do it’s when they self-report their accounting.

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