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“The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert mocked Paramount for canceling his show after being honored at the 2026 Writers Guild Awards Sunday night.
At the ceremony, Colbert received the Walter Bernstein Award for demonstrating, with “creativity, grace and bravery, a willingness to confront social injustice in the face of adversity” after his show’s recent cancellation by CBS and its parent company Paramount.
Though Colbert denied connections between himself and the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter behind the award’s name, he joked about Paramount effectively ending the “revolution” by ending his show.
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CBS announced during the summer that it would be canceling “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” at the end of May 2026 for financial reasons. (Getty Images)
“This is not the 1950s,” Colbert said. “This is not the Red Scare. And, as far as I can tell, no one in late night is fomenting a revolution. As we know, the revolution will not be televised. It was going to be televised, but then Paramount bought it.”
He added, “Evidently, the revolution was losing, like, $40 million a year — it had to go. I guess the revolution is thinking about starting a Substack.”
Digital reached out to Paramount for comment, but did not immediately hear back.
CBS announced in July that it had canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and that it would officially be off the air in May 2026. Liberal critics have accused CBS and Paramount of ending the show to appease President Donald Trump and receive approval for a long-planned merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media.
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CBS has said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,” adding, “It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Critics have accused Paramount of canceling “The Last Show with Stephen Colbert” to appease the Trump administration. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)
The Writers Guild of America East, however, claimed that Colbert, a frequent Trump critic, has been using his platform to push back against a “threat to democracy” in the wake of his show’s impending conclusion.
“Walter would be proud to see the award go to Colbert,” Tom Fontana, president of the Writers Guild of America East, said in a statement. “Colbert put his career on the line to fight back against a threat to democracy that’s much greater than just the loss of the beloved ‘Late Show.’ Stephen Colbert has built an empire by speaking truth to power, and we’re beyond proud to have him as a WGAE member.”
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Despite Fontana’s statement, Colbert rejected the parallel between himself and Bernstein’s history of being blacklisted.
Stephen Colbert speaks during the 2026 Writers Guild Awards New York Ceremony at Edison Ballroom on March 8, 2026, in New York City. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Writers Guild of America East)
“The blacklist wasn’t a law or a regulation or an executive order,” Colbert said. “It was a voluntary industry-wide agreement to deny work to left-leaning artists out of fear that certain members of the government might publicly attack the parent corporation of these artists for the union that they belong to. It was that threat, only the threat, of trouble, that ended so many careers.”
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He continued, “And now while to be associated with Mr. Bernstein in any way is a great honor, I want to be clear that I do not deserve the implied parallel.”
‘ Brian Flood and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
