Stephen Colbert’s late night series may be over, but the fondness people had for The Late Show lives on. That’s true of his fans, of course, but even other people in the industry really respected what the CBS host was doing before the network axed The Late Show. In fact, late night writer Jon Rineman recently revealed the thing Colbert’s team did that gave them an edge in the game, an edge that helped them land that #1 slot.
Rineman worked on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for years, and during that time, he found out exactly how Colbert’s team was staying ahead of everyone else in terms of timely jokes. The writer was working on Fallon's show after Twitter really took off and people started using the social media network for timely jokes. Late night shows started getting beat at their own game, until Stephen Colbert reportedly found a solution.
When we started losing to Colbert, I started paying attention to what Colbert was doing. I found out that Stephen, when there was breaking news during taping, would actually go [back] over to his monologue mark and film three or four jokes about that breaking story. And then they would edit it into the monologue.
Now, it's worth noting the same audience using social media is not always simultaneously the same audience consuming late night. Still, I see why a writer on one of these shows would prefer to have fresh jokes.
Rineman said in a longer profile with Late Nighter he brought a similar idea to The Tonight Show, but the execution would have been such chaos, no one really seemed enthusiastic about making the attempt.
The response I got was, ‘That's bleeping crazy.' And that's when I knew that we weren't going to win against Colbert.
It’s also probably worth pointing out that The Tonight Show has never been as political as The Late Show was. The Tonight Show actually crushed Colbert early on via a steady stream of viral segments: “Wheel of Musical Impressions,” “Box of Lies,” and “Classroom Instruments” rank among those. When President Donald Trump came into office in 2016, tastes shifted, and the ratings shifted too. More people started tuning in to the CBS show over its competitors.
Ultimately, what morphed out of the political landscape changing was late night itself changing. The network shows are still hitting the 2026 TV schedule, but they are also trying to compete on platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, too. Fallon’s head writer Wayne Federman confirmed as much in his own comments about the landscape now.
Late night has morphed into something else. It's a different universe from David Letterman or Jay Leno or Conan. That's how far we are down this road.
He’s not the first person to say so, either. Kimmel talked about how “there are far more people watching late-night” than there’s ever been, but the monetary gains are being diluted thanks to many people consuming late night via social media platforms and not TV. CBS would say losing money is why The Late Show got axed, while Kimmel (and others online) have speculated the platform is being “poisoned” by political shenanigans and the FCC cracking down on free speech. What’s not in doubt is that it’s certainly a harder landscape and there’s less money to go around. But ABC is seemingly picking up where The Colbert Show left off; I'm just not sure if he's quite as on the money with those last minute monologue changes.
