In a wide-ranging conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran host reflected on the looming end of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and the brief suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments made after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, highlighting how the media landscape has shifted away from the old network model, according to Fox News. O’Brien’s remarks come as legacy television continues to lose ground to online platforms that operate with a fraction of the cost and bureaucracy, yet routinely draw audiences that rival or surpass broadcast ratings.
O’Brien’s 2024 appearance on “Hot Ones,” the YouTube series where celebrities field questions while eating progressively spicier chicken wings, has now been viewed more than 15 million times. Reflecting on that experience, he told The Hollywood Reporter, “That was the moment the scales fell from my eyes,” adding, “If a guy can do World Series numbers with overhead that looked, to me, to be about $600, and you have every big star lining up to do his show or Chicken Shop Date … that’s when I profoundly understood that late night shows are in trouble.”
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Colbert, whose CBS program is scheduled to end in May, jokingly dubbed O’Brien the “patron saint of ex-talk show hosts” and revealed that O’Brien had been nudging him toward the exit for years. “We were out, a few Emmys ago, and he kept saying, ‘I want you to know there’s a lot of fun to be had when this is over, so don’t feel like you need to stay.’ It almost hurt my feelings, but he was just being kind. He Dutch uncle’d me,” Colbert told The Hollywood Reporter.
O’Brien’s perspective carries weight given his nearly three-decade run in late night, from “Late Night” (1993-2009) and a brief tenure on “The Tonight Show” (2009-2010) on NBC to his long stint on TBS with “Conan” until 2021. He now operates largely outside the old network system, maintaining a podcast and an HBO Max series while preparing to host the Oscars this Sunday for the second consecutive year.
The end of Colbert’s show has sparked speculation that his relentless attacks on President Donald Trump may have contributed to the decision, particularly as Trump’s FCC, led by Brendan Carr, was required to sign off on David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquiring CBS parent company Paramount. While corporate executives insist the move is purely financial, the timing has fueled questions about whether overtly partisan programming and declining trust in liberal-leaning late-night comedy have made such shows more vulnerable.
O’Brien himself appears resigned to the broader shift, saying, “I’m of the mind that yes, these shows are going away and will become something else.” Yet he drew a sharp line at political or corporate interference, adding, “But I don’t like when other malign forces intervene, because they’re trying to curry favor. That pisses me off.”
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The turmoil has not been limited to CBS, as ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was temporarily pulled in September after Kimmel’s remarks about Kirk’s alleged assassin triggered public outrage and what was described as a veiled warning from the FCC. Disney yanked the show after two major affiliate groups refused to air it, and while Kimmel reportedly told executives he would not apologize, the program eventually returned following a short hiatus.
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CBS has publicly maintained that Colbert’s departure is driven solely by financial considerations and unrelated to the then-looming Paramount–Skydance merger, a claim that will likely remain under scrutiny as audiences continue migrating to cheaper, freer online alternatives. For O’Brien, the future of comedy appears to lie beyond the old gatekeepers, even as he and his peers grapple with a media environment where cultural politics, regulatory power, and corporate consolidation increasingly collide on the late-night stage.
