Late night math doesn't add up. Any of it.
Colbert's pulling in 2.7 million viewers on a $100 million budget with 200 full-time staff. That's 37k per viewer just to exist.
Stewart's making $25 million to salvage The Daily Show after Trevor Noah hemorrhaged two-thirds of his audience. Kimmel and Fallon both hitting $16 million for 2 million and 1.3 million viewers respectively.
These shows are getting gutted and the networks are still overpaying whoever's left. The economics are completely broken but apparently the sunk cost fallacy matters more than logic.
The series finale of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” drew 6.74M viewers on Thursday night, making it the most-watched weeknight episode in the show’s history. • The finale was up sharply from the show’s 2026 Q1 average of 2.69M viewers • It’s also above “The Late Show” series premiere on Sept. 8, 2015, which averaged 6.55M viewers • The most-watched episode remains Colbert’s post-Super Bowl broadcast on Feb. 7, 2016, which drew 20.55M viewers https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert-finale-ratings-1236757376/
Source
x.com