Samantha Bee calls Stephen Colbert's Late Show cancellation awful but a 'no-brainer': 'It definit...

"I know so many people who work there. I love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend," Bee said, but noted she was &34;not surprised&34; by Paramount's decision

"I know so many people who work there. I love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend," Bee said, but noted she was "not surprised" by Paramount's decision.

Samantha Bee calls Stephen Colbert's Late Show cancellation awful but a 'no-brainer': 'It definitely was hemorrhaging money'

"I know so many people who work there. I love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend," Bee said, but noted she was "not surprised" by Paramount's decision.

By Ryan Coleman

Published on July 30, 2025 08:29AM EDT

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Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert on 'The Late Show' in 2019. Credit:

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty

Samantha Bee is taking up arms to defend her former colleague Stephen Colbert. Kind of.

On Tuesday's episode of the *Breaking Bread with Tom Papa* podcast, Bee shared in host Papa's grief over the shocking cancellation of CBS' *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*, which has ignited a firestorm of political acrimony. Chiefly, critics have pointed out the suspicious timing of the network canning of one of its signature programs ahead of parent company Paramount's pending merger with Skydance, which needed the approval of President Donald Trump, a frequent target of Colbert's criticism. The FCC approved the merger on July 24, eight days after *Late Show*'s cancellation was announced.**

"It's awful. I know so many people who work there. I love Stephen. I consider him to be a friend. I think he's amazing. So I'm shocked," she lamented, then admitting, however, she's "not surprised."

Stephen Colbert on 'The Late Show'; Samantha Bee.

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty; Manny Carabel/Getty

Bee and Colbert overlapped for three years as correspondents on *The Daily Show *under the first-time-around tenure of Jon Stewart. They both spun off to great solo success — Colbert with *The Colbert Report *and then taking over *The Late Show *from the venerable David Letterman, and Bee with *Full Frontal with Samantha Bee*.

The politically inclined comedians are media veterans, having fought on the same side of many wars. Bee even pointed out that on *Full Frontal*, "We had like three mergers when we were in business and it was a constant source of conversation."

The stress of that experience endowed Bee with empathy for Colbert in his current situation, but she now also understands all too well how strings once thought to be unbreakable can so easily be snipped. "It definitely was hemorrhaging money," she said of *The Late Show*. "You know, these legacy shows, they are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that in sight. People are just not tuning in even remotely, comparatively, to how they used to."

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On the audience side, "people are literally on their phones all the time" and "actually don't necessarily need a recap of the day's events," Bee continued. And on the business side, "It doesn't matter what your values are. It doesn't matter how important you think legacy media is. None of that f—ing matters when you're talking about people, hundreds of millionaires and billionaires literally making their business transactions."

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Shortly after news of the cancellation broke, media company Puck published a report alleging that *The Late Show*'s annual losses rise to the level of double-digit millions. While some of the specifics in that report remain contested, it's clear that *The Late Show *was performing worse in key ways than nearly all of its competition, including the late-night programs hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and the leader of the pack, John Oliver.

Stephen Colbert on 'The Late Show'.

Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty

Still, the late-night universe has rallied around their comrade in the wake of the death of one of the genre's most intrepid institutions. Letterman recently praised Colbert as "a precise, crisp, witty political satirist," and then blasted "the goons at CBS" for axing *The Late Show *to avoid "trouble from that guy." Though even he had to admit the cancellation may have been "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late-night."

Meyers also spoke highly of the "many reasons to watch Colbert's show" in a recent interview, before airing his concerns over the welfare of his own *Late Night* in the wake of the chilling cancellation. "There is this weird thing that I feel like I shifted from fearing that I wouldn't be good enough, and now my fear is weirdly more outside of my control - which is just at some point, the ecosystem might not support it... I guess that's better than thinking it's your fault. But it is weird to not feel any control over it."**

You can watch the rest of Bee's interview with Papa above.

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