By John Koblin
Copyright nytimes
But they were also speaking at a moment when an unforgiving economic landscape is putting all late-night shows in jeopardy.
After “The Late Show” goes off the air in May, CBS will abandon the late-night business. It is unclear what will happen after the contracts of Mr. Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, on NBC, expire. Streaming executives have shown little appetite for programming late-night-type talk shows after years of poor results.
The numbers have been going in the wrong direction for some time. Mr. Colbert, the ratings leader among late-night hosts, once commanded a nightly audience of 3.1 million viewers. That is down to 1.9 million. Mr. Kimmel used to see nightly viewerships of 2.6 million. That’s now 1.6 million, according to Nielsen.
Mr. Colbert and Mr. Kimmel’s locking arms on Tuesday was representative of the in-the-trenches-together connection among the present — and perhaps last — generation of hosts.
They frequently appear on one another’s shows, and lavish praise on one another. (Seth Meyers of NBC popped up for a cameo on Mr. Kimmel’s show on Tuesday, too.) This summer, after Mr. Colbert’s cancellation was announced, Mr. Kimmel put up a giant Emmy “For Your Consideration” billboard at a busy intersection in West Hollywood, Calif., that read: “I’m Voting for Stephen.” One of the first things Mr. Kimmel did when he learned his show was being suspended, he said on his show on Tuesday, was fire off a text to a group chat with his fellow late-night hosts.
