“The Late Show” set heads to MBC here in Chicago

The display will be on exhibit this summer

If you want to experience being on a late-night TV show set, well, here’s your chance.

The recently relocated and re-opened Museum Of Broadcast Communications is putting the Late Show With Stephen Colbert set on display beginning later this summer, with a date yet to be announced.

Donated by CBS, the entire set arrived to the MBC’s West Loop location from New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater last week. CBS pulled the plug on Late Show last July and aired its final episode May 21, drawing about nine million viewers – with 6.74 million of those watching it the night it aired. Colbert’s desk, chairs, stage columns, and other props will be on display. Guests can sit at Colbert’s desk, and explore other artifacts of the show, which ran for eleven seasons and more than 1,800 episodes. 

The display is being added to MBC’s “The Evolution Of Late Night Television”, which already features props from The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and the sax Bill Clinton used when he made his guest appearance on The Aresnio Hall Show as a presidential candidate in 1992. 

Colbert suggested his set should be donated to MBC here in a city where the South Carolina native got his start, being a Northwestern and Second City alum. Colbert’s show visited the city in August 2024 during the Democratic National Convention, with live shows at the Auditorium Theater downtown (you can see the desk he sat at in the photo below.) Colbert also taped some skits while in town, including one in Wrigley Field. 

Colbert’s set is the latest coup for MBC, which moved into a “pop-up” space in the West Loop at 440 W. Randolph last October, and has been a hit with the public. Much of the memorabilia on display was previously at MBC’s previous locations at the Chicago Cultural Center and at a building at the south-west corner of State and Kinzie in River North. 

As for future hosts being added to MBC’s late night television exhibit, don’t look for Byron Allen’s name to be added to the list anytime soon, if ever. His Comics Unleashed, which replaced Stephen Colbert’s show May 22, continues to underperform his predecessor in terms of household ratings, total viewers, and key demos, and is far behind NBC’s Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. CBS said Unleashed was only “temporary” while they search for a “low-cost replacement” for the fall 2027 season.