By Megan Cartwright

Copyright

Stephen Colbert took home the trophy for Outstanding Talk Series at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday months after CBS announced The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s cancellation.Newsweek reached out to Colbert’s representative for comment on Monday via email outside regular working hours.Why It MattersColbert’s program won television’s top award in its category just after CBS said it would remove the show from its schedule, a decision the network called financial while critics and some peers suggested political considerations may have played a role.The financial reasons CBS cited were associated with Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, which required Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval under President Donald Trump’s administration. Paramount is the parent company of CBS.What To KnowDuring Colbert’s acceptance speech, the comedian gave CBS a shoutout, and he also dedicated the award to his longtime assistant Amy Cole, who died in March 2024 following a “brief illness,” Deadline reported at the time.”Thank you for this honor. I want to thank CBS for giving us the privilege to be part of the late-night tradition, which I hope continues long after we’re no longer doing this show,” he said after receiving “Stephen!” chants from the audience. “I gotta thank these people, those people up there, the 200 incredible professionals—you are the pros from Dover, and I’m so proud to be one of you.”The 61-year-old continued: “We gotta thank the people who have supported us for the last 20 years: Carrie Byalick [president of Colbert’s production company, Spartina Productions], James ‘Baby Doll’ Dixon [his talent agent]. Personally, I want to thank my beautiful, brilliant wife Evie [Evelyn McGee-Colbert], who’s the real brains of the outfit. My three children: Madeleine, Peter and John. I want to dedicate this to my mom and dad, her mom and dad and a young woman who should be here tonight, Amy Cole.””Ten years ago, in September of 2015, Spike Jonze stopped by my office and said, ‘Hey, what do you want this show to be about?’ I said, ‘Spike, I don’t know how you could do it, but I would like to do a late night comedy show that was about love,'” the Washington, D.C. native added. “I don’t know if I ever figured that out, but at a certain point—and you can guess what that point was—I realized that in some ways, we were doing a late night comedy show about loss. And that’s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it.””Ten years later in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately. God bless America, stay strong, be brave, and if the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy and punch a higher floor. Woo!”Other nominees in the category included Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Daily Show.What People Are SayingThe Late Show’s cancellation prompted political figures and fellow late-night talk show hosts to speak out.CBS said in a press release sent to Newsweek in July: “We are proud that Stephen called CBS home. He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats that graced late night television. This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.””Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult. Stephen has taken CBS late night by storm with cutting-edge comedy, a must-watch monologue and interviews with leaders in entertainment, politics, news and newsmakers across all areas. The show has been #1 in late night for nine straight seasons; Stephen’s comedy resonates daily across digital and social media; and the broadcast is a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist.”Colbert said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: “I’m not being replaced, this is all just going away. And I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners. I’m so grateful to the Tiffany Network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home. And of course I’m grateful to you, the audience, who have joined us every night.”President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social in July: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert the day of the cancellation announcement, said on X: “Just finished taping with Stephen Colbert who announced his show was canceled. If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, shared on X: “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump—a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons. Watch and share his message.”Jon Stewart, whose The Daily Show is owned by Paramount, said: “I acknowledge late night TV is a struggling financial model… but when your industry is faced with changes, you don’t just call it a day. My God! When CDs stopped selling, they didn’t just go, ‘Oh well, music, it’s been a good run.’ The fact that CBS didn’t try to save their number one rated network late night franchise, that’s been on the air for over three decades, is part of what’s making everybody wonder, ‘Was this purely financial or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger?’Andy Cohen, who hosts Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, said on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live: “Typically what would happen if a show is losing money that is also super important to the network, which that show, and the late nighttime slot has been important to CBS for the last 25 years since Letterman began it on CBS at the Ed Sullivan Theater in like the mid-nineties, what they would probably do is say, ‘Listen, Stephen, your show is losing X amount of money a year. There’s two things we could do. We could cut the budget in half, maybe move out of the Ed Sullivan Theater, do the show in a small studio that we already own,’ because CBS has a lot of studio space. Cut down on staff. You have 200 people working here. We needed to be 100 people or 60, and instead of you doing your show five days a week, we’re gonna do your show four days a week, and you’re gonna pre-tape your Thursday show, so you’re actually gonna be in production three days a week. That’s a way right there to cut the budget at least in half … Instead they’re turning the lights out completely at 11:30, which says to me, it’s like CBS is just cooked. I mean, you got, it’s just, it is cooked. They are saying, ‘We are done.'”What Happens NextThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert will conclude in May 2026.