Jimmy Kimmel called out CBS for canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and urged viewers to tune out after Colbert’s final episode.
Colbert announced last July that CBS had canceled his show, with his final episode scheduled for Thursday, May 21. CBS canceled not just Colbert’s show but The Late Show entirely, which was first hosted by David Letterman in 1993.
Kimmel, alongside late-night hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, appeared on Colbert’s show last Tuesday to show his support.
“I think you know how I feel about the fact that [the crew of The Late Show] are being pushed out,” Kimmel said in his Wednesday monologue. “I hope the people who did the pushing feel ashamed of themselves tonight, although I know they probably won’t.”
“I will be watching tomorrow night,” Kimmel said about Colbert’s final episode.
He told viewers, “I hope that those of you who watch our show will also tune in to CBS for the last time. Don’t ever watch it again, but watch tomorrow night to wish Stephen and our friends at The Late Show a fond farewell."
Kimmel and his fellow late-night hosts have long been critical of CBS’s decision to cancel Colbert’s show, especially in light of the network’s controversial changes to their other major shows like 60 Minutes and CBS Evening News.
CBS’s new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, has made a string of Trump-friendly editorial decisions throughout her tenure. In December, she reportedly helped shelve a 60 Minutes segment about the Trump administration sending migrants to an El Salvador mega prison with no due process.
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart trashed CBS on Colbert’s show on Tuesday, joking that he thought it was “so smart what CBS is doing.”
Stewart joked further, “I just think it’s such a good move to take this show off the air, and then to also ruin your evening news, and then reduce 60 Minutes to like six good ones. I think it’s so smart.”
Speaking again about Colbert’s final episode, Kimmel told viewers, “We will be off tomorrow night out of respect for our colleague and friend Stephen Colbert ... whose final show on CBS airs opposite ours.”
Fellow late-night hosts Meyers and Fallon are also taking off on Thursday, although The Daily Show (owned by CBS’s parent company Paramount) will still air at its usual 11 p.m. ET time slot.
