James Corden and Trevor Noah may have both left late-night TV in 2023, but Stephen Colbert is sticking around. The Emmy-winning host has extended his contract with The Late Show by three more years, through 2026. His contract with CBS was set to expire this year.
CBS CEO George Cheeks revealed the extension during the Banff World Media Festival on Tuesday, June 13, in Alberta, Canada. “We just extended him for three more years and I was praying for that to happen,” Cheeks said during his panel appearance, per Deadline, noting that Colbert is still “absolutely crushing it” and the show is still “firing on all cylinders.”
The Late Late Show with James Corden ran on CBS immediately after Colbert’s program for eight years. As previously reported, the network was seriously considering a reboot of @midnight, executive produced by Colbert, for the time slot. Cheeks confirmed the @midnight reboot during this panel, according to Variety.
“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.”
Per Cheeks, the WGA writers’ strike is the “only reason” the reboot has not yet been officially announced. Cheeks said they wanted to lock in a showrunner and head writer before announcing, and were in the process of doing so, but the strike delayed their efforts. “I still believe that once the strike’s over, that they can come back,” he said, implying there were people close to landing the jobs.
Colbert’s contract extension comes amid the WGA’s ongoing fight for a fair contract from the AMPTP. The Late Show, and its fellow late-night talk shows, went dark when the strike began on May 2 and have been airing reruns since. Colbert expressed his support for the WGA (of which he is a member) and unions at large in a segment on May 1, just hours before the strike began.
“This negotiation impacts our whole staff, of course, who work so hard to bring you this show every night, which is why everybody, including myself, hopes both sides reach a deal,” he said in the May 1 episode. “But I also think that the writers’ demands are not unreasonable. I’m a member of the guild. I support collective bargaining. This nation owes so much to unions. This is true: unions are the reasons we have weekends.”
Colbert has been hosting the late-night staple since September 2015. David Letterman hosted it from 1993-2015. He was a correspondent on The Daily Show from 1997-2005 and then hosted The Colbert Report from 2005-2014.