CBS cancels “After Midnight”

Programming plans unknown; may hand time back to affiliates

After thirty years, CBS is exiting the late-late night business with the cancellation of the comedy game show After Midnight. 

An adaptation of an earlier version titled @Midnight on Comedy Central, the show was brought back to CBS in January 2024 with Taylor Tomlinson as host, airing after The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, whose host also produced. Tomlison decided to depart after two seasons, preferring to return to the stand-up comedy circuit. Midnight exits in June with reruns likely continuing through September. 

“Hosting After Midnight has genuinely been the experience of a lifetime, and I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunity to be part of this incredible journey. Though it was an extremely tough decision, I knew I had to return to my first passion and return to stand-up touring full-time.” Tomlinson said in a statement. “I appreciate CBS, [executive producer] Stephen Colbert, the producers, and the entire After Midnight staff and crew for all the love, support, and unforgettable memories.”

Added Colbert, “I want to thank CBS for their constant support and invaluable partnership on After Midnight, and the whole staff for their amazing dedication. While we were excited and grateful for our third season to start in the fall, we respect Taylor’s decision to return to stand-up full-time.”

With Tomlision departing, CBS decided to end the show rather than find a new host in a late fringe daypart that’s been bleeding viewership for a long time as more and more viewers headed to bed early, with the rise of 4:30 a.m. local newscasts across the country in the late 2000s and early 2010s as part of the reason. But the daypart was still alive back then, with the Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien controversy. The current late-night hosts – Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Kimmel- are the only ones left as younger viewers watch the shows’ clips on social media rather than the full hour. The only original late-night show besides the three on broadcast TV – at least in Chicago – is WGN-TV’s GN Sports nightly sports wrap-up program. 

CBS said it would not field any new programming for the post-Colbert time slot but didn’t clarify if it would hand it back to affiliates, as the network didn’t program the daypart until 1969 when The Merv Griffin Show premiered. After his cancellation, CBS filled the slots with reruns of old movies and TV shows under the banners The CBS Late Movie and CBS Late Night throughout the 1970s and 1980s (including adding original programming in the later 1980s with new T.J. Hooker episodes and Canadian imports such as Night Heat), but faced pre-emptions from affiliates to run syndicated programming. A year after The Pat Sajak Show bit the dust, CBS launched CrimeTime After Primetime with original crime dramas Sweating Bullets and Forever Knight, added game shows (Personals, A Perfect Score), and Kids In The Hall on Friday nights.

After David Letterman moved to CBS, his production company produced The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder from 1995-99, succeeded by Craig Kilbourn, Craig Ferguson, and James Corden in that order. 

If CBS does hand time back to the affiliates – which seems likely, it would join NBC as they gave up programming the 1:30 a.m. ET time slot in 2021 after 33 years, starting with Late Night With Bob Costas in 1988 and ending with A Little Late With Lilly Singh in 2021. Don’t look for syndicators to fill the void with specific late-night programming, as they have issues of their own keeping shows on the air in other dayparts. The last specific syndicated late-night show was Arsenio Hall’s failed revival attempt from 2013-14, who had tremendous success in the daypart in the early 1990s, followed by youth-oriented dating shows (such as Blind Date and Elimidate) later in the decade and into the 2000s. 

ABC has no plans to alter its late-night schedule of Kimmel and Nightline, and except Saturdays, Fox hasn’t programmed late-night after the cancellation of the very short-lived Chevy Chase Show 32 years ago. 

In other late-night news Wednesday, ESPN announced it was ending its SportsCenter editions from Los Angeles on May 16, shifting them to its East Coast studios in Bristol, Conn.