8 Biggest Late-Night Shake-Ups Ever, Ranked
Suffice it to say, CBS blindsided Hollywood and the viewing public last week when it announced the imminent end of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. The talk show had been a leader in its time slot, but CBS contended the cancellation was a matter of dollars and cents.
The Late Show’s unexpected demise isn’t the first late-night shift to send shockwaves through the TV industry, though. Below, see our selections for the biggest shake-ups in American late-night TV history.
8. ABC scales back The Dick Cavett Show
In the early 1970s, ABC’s late-night host Dick Cavett competed with The Tonight Show’s Johnny Carson, and his self-titled talk show even won an Emmy Award in 1972. Later that year, however, ABC announced that it was cutting back The Dick Cavett Show to one week per month. In the resulting arrangement, former Tonight Show host Jack Paar hosted Jack Paar Tonite for another week per month, while other ABC’s Wide World of Entertainment programming filled in the other two weeks.
7. Chevy Chase’s talk show comes and goes within weeks
A week after Late Show With David Letterman debuted on CBS in 1993, Fox attempted to join the late-night wars with The Chevy Chase Show. But Chevy Chase got dismal ratings and worse reviews, and Fox canceled the show a month later, marking an expensive failure for the network. Even Fox’s chairperson at the time called the show “uncomfortable and embarrassing.”
6. CBS ends The Late Late Show with James Corden’s departure
Another late-night institution ended in 2023 when CBS opted to shut down The Late Late Show franchise upon the departure of host James Corden. The post-Late Show talk show had aired with various hosts since 1995, but CBS wanted a less expensive option for the after-midnight time slot. Appropriately enough, the network’s answer was After Midnight, a short-lived reboot of Comedy Central’s @midnight.
5. The Daily Show goes without a permanent host
For fans and staffers of The Daily Show, the search for a permanent post-Trevor Noah host has been exhausting. After Noah’s departure in 2022, Comedy Central rotated guest hosts in for more than a year before Jon Stewart came back to the show in 2024 to at least provide some consistency every Monday night. (Former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. even mouthed “Please hire a host” on the 75th Emmy Awards stage.)
4. Jaak Paar walks off The Tonight Show
After NBC censored one of his Tonight Show jokes in 1960, Paar walked off the talk show’s set just 18 minutes into the taping of the next night’s episode. Less than a month later, and after negotiations with the network, Paar returned to his hosting duties. “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” he quipped at the start of his first episode back.
3. Jay Leno, not David Letterman, takes over The Tonight Show
As host of Late Night in the 1980s, David Letterman was Carson’s heir apparent at the Tonight Show desk, and Carson reportedly supported that succession plan. But NBC chose Jay Leno as the next Tonight Show host in 1992, so Letterman left the network and headed to CBS to host Late Show, starting a rivalry that lasted more than two decades.
2. CBS lets Stephen Colbert go and cancels The Late Show outright
The Late Show franchise will end after 32 years in 2026, as CBS has decided to cancel the show and send Stephen Colbert packing. The network said it was “purely a financial decision,” but viewers (and some politicians) have wondered whether the cancellation was politically motivated, especially since Colbert had just called out parent company Paramount Global for its settlement payment to Donald Trump.
1. Conan O’Brien gets The Tonight Show and loses it months later
NBC ushered in Conan O’Brien as The Tonight Show’s new host in 2009, but it kept Leno around with a primetime talk show called The Jay Leno Show. Both shows underperformed, so NBC reversed course and gave Leno The Tonight Show back just months later, much to the outrage of fans and celebrities alike. The about-face robbed O’Brien of a dream, and in our books, it makes for the messiest late-night saga to date.
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Not mentioned in the linked "Remind" article concerning # 4: The joke that NBC censored on Jack Paar's "Tonight" show concerned the confusion of the letters WC. The article mentioned one of the meanings-Water Closet or in the more familiar vernacular restroom-but the other meaning of the initials was Wayside Chapel. I think one can figure out why the network cut that out of that particular broadcast...
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