The final episode of CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert aired Thursday night with an extended run time of one hour and 17 minutes, featuring a slew of star cameos, including a final send-off from Paul McCartney.
An emotional Colbert opened by addressing the audience in New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater and viewers at home, calling The Late Show “the joy machine,” praising the staff and telling viewers “how important you’ve been to what we have done.”
Thursday night’s series finale was the most-watched weeknight episode of Colbert’s eleven-year tenure on the show, according to overnight Nielsen ratings. Colbert averaged 6.a74 million viewers, even beating his first episode as host back in 2015, which averaged 6.55 million viewers. The ratings results must be bittersweet for Colbert since it wasn’t his choice to sign off. CBS decided last summer to cancel the show, citing financial pressures evident across the late-night TV landscape.
Late-night talk shows like “The Late Show” have been shedding viewers for years in an increasingly fragmented media environment. Many fans who used to watch at 11:35 p.m. simply catch up later on YouTube or via social media. In the first quarter of 2026, “The Late Show” averaged about 2.7 million viewers a night, according to CBS.