Colbert had 219K daily viewers in the 18-49 demo. Kimmel has 220k and Fallon has 157k. These numbers are dreadful and it's not surprising Colbert got the axe.
The Hollywood Reporter made solid points a year ago:
“The audience is getting older, and desirable viewers aren’t watching [on TV],” Adgate says. “They’re gonna watch little snippets the next day on YouTube.”
Five years ago, The Late Show finished first in total viewers among late-night talk shows with 3.81 million, to 2.44 million for The Tonight Show and 2.04 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live. In 2023-24, The Late Show remained No. 1, but with only about 2.6 million viewers — a decline of about 32 percent from 2018-19. Kimmel moved into second with 1.82 million viewers, down about 11 percent from five years earlier (having Monday Night Football as a lead-in once a week last fall helped some; the show averaged 1.77 million viewers from January to May). The Tonight Show slipped to third in viewers with 1.43 million, losing 41 percent of its 2018-19 total.
for the rest of the article:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/late-night-tv-downsizing-1235997584/
He are the latest numbers:
CBS’s Late Show was the only show among the nine tracked by LateNighter to draw more total viewers in Q2 than it had in the first quarter of 2025—although just barely, with the show growing its audience by 1% quarter over quarter. All told, the Stephen Colbert-hosted show averaged 2.42 million viewers across 41 first-run episodes, comfortably outpacing ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1.77 million) and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (1.19 million). In the advertiser-coveted 18–49 demo, however, Kimmel surged ahead with 220,000 viewers—his strongest performance in a year—edging out Colbert (219,000) and leaving Fallon (at 157,000) in a distant third.
These shows have been on a steady decline for quite some time. No need to put on a tinfoil hat.
(how does Fallon still have a job?
