Colbert and Letterman during Monday's show Scott Kowalchyk/CBS Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment It's the old - and not very funny - joke: Where does a 1,000-pound gorilla sit? Answer: Wherever he wants. The Late Show host Stephen Colbert may not quite be the 1,000-pound gorilla of the modern interview format (that would be Joe Rogan), but he certainly carries a lot of weight. When you're the highest-rated late-night host on broadcast television and one of the most recognizable people in media, plus have a loyal audience that has grown addicted to watching you five nights a week for years ... you have a significant value in the marketplace, even if CBS is showing you the door. Related Stories TV Trump Reacts to 'Late Show' Ending: "I Absolutely Love That Colbert Got Fired" TV Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon Shocked Over CBS' Decision to End 'Late Show': "F*** You and All Your Sheldons" Colbert may not be able to sit anywhere he wants when his series ends, but he's definitely going to have a few seats to choose from. In some sense, the 61-year-old's relative lack of future-proofing preparedness for this upheaval is his own fault. Despite coming to CBS from the once-edgy realm of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and his own The Colbert Report, the host's tenure on broadcast has been marked by his embrace of a highly traditional talk show format. On NBC, Jimmy Fallon has long produced digital shorts, making potentially viral content for online users. On ABC, Jimmy Kimmel made himself into a network utility player - hosting awards shows, game shows and delivering a set each year at the New York upfronts. Conan O'Brien - having previously been fired from a broadcast talk show - wisely and pre-emptively launched his hit podcast three years before TBS pulled the plug on his cable network talk show in 2021. Colbert - and this isn't meant as a slight - seemed to simply enjoy doing the job as a talk show host in the studio every night to the best of his ability. Given that his ratings were better than his rivals, why would he have done anything different? One could easily imagine Colbert being reassured by network executives over the years: Just keep doing what you're doing. After all, if you're consistently winning your time slot, and staying out of trouble, that's all you've ever needed to do on television since ... well, since the dawn of television. Your business has a real problem if you can't win by winning (The New York Times reports ad revenue for late night has dropped by half in the last seven years and, last month, broadcast fell below 20 percent of all TV viewing for first time). With CBS deciding to cancel The Late Show - not ditch the show's highly paid current host, but retire the format - the network has basically undercut the speeches that all broadcast presidents and ad sales executives give each year at the upfronts: That broadcast remains strong, that it's still relevant and still matters. Colbert arguably has better options than the network giving him the boot. He is a talent and talent can draw an audience. While CBS now has ... what? A hole that needs to be filled. So what happens now? Not at CBS, but for Colbert? David Letterman launched an elevated interview show on Netflix. Jon Stewart did his own twist on The Daily Show for Apple TV+ and launched a podcast before returning to The Daily Show. And O'Brien not only launched a podcast, but a whole podcast network, which he sold to SiriusXM for a tidy $150 million, and on the side makes a travel show for HBO Max. The easiest option for Colbert would be if another company - perhaps a deep-pocketed streamer - wants to pay him to keep doing something rather similar to what he's already doing for a chance at getting his 2.4 million viewers a night. The bigger hurdle, one imagines, is finding a company that's both down for this and doesn't mind potentially irking the Trump administration in the process (especially given that Disney, Apple and Amazon have seemed inclined to bend the knee, not just CBS parent Paramount). Another road is if Colbert decides to launch his own talk or interview show - whether a podcast or on YouTube. The average age of a Colbert viewer is 68, which perhaps says more about CBS' audience than it does Colbert's, but it also makes it a bit tougher to imagine Colbert hustling viewers to "smash that like and subscribe button" on YouTube alongside MrBeast. "My big thesis here is that what you're seeing is the slow destruction of the traditional Hollywood pipeline, and you're going to see a lot less big shots, and a lot more individuals taking a shot," Gavin Purcell, the former showrunner for NBC's Tonight Show, and host of the AI For Humans podcast, told THR. "Distribution is easy now. That's the thing that's really interesting. What's hard is attention. And the