First on LateNighter: Stephen Colbert’s Late Show just hit a season-to-date ratings high, thanks to Monday night’s Strike Force Five reunion.
According to preliminary Nielsen live-plus-same-day data, Monday’s episode drew 2.819 million total viewers and 231,000 viewers among adults 18-49.
That marks The Late Show’s largest live-plus-same-day total-viewer audience since January 26, 2025, when a special Sunday night episode airing after CBS’ AFC Championship Game coverage delivered a football-fueled lift. To find a higher-rated regular weeknight episode, you have to go back to October 2024, when then-Vice President Kamala Harris visited the show in the final stretch of the presidential campaign.
Monday night’s viewer numbers are likely to grow significantly once delayed-viewing data is factored in. Linear ratings data also don’t include online viewing on YouTube, social media, or Paramount+. (At last count, an extended YouTube upload of their appearance had racked up 3.2 million views.)
The Late Show’s reunion of Strike Force Five, the limited-run podcast launched during the 2023 writers strike, marked the first time Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, and John Oliver have all appeared together on a single late-night show.
As we’ve reported, the quintet stuck around after Monday night’s taping to record a brand-new episode of their old podcast, which launched online earlier today.
With Colbert’s two time-slot competitors at the Ed Sullivan Theater with him, both Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon aired repeats Monday night. Neither show drew even half of Colbert’s audience Monday night, with Kimmel drawing 1.32 million total viewers to Fallon’s 1.28 million.
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He’s going out with a whimper. It’s amazing nobody realized when Leno and letterman left that they should have just shut it all down. Nobody but BOOMERS even know who these boring cringe lords are.
No one but boomers remember Leno. The show has continued to be a juggernaut for years after he left. Colbert is going out with record ratings. Your bizarre post has more cringe in it than a whole season of Fallon. Grab a tissue and stop crying.
You think Colbert’s last episode will beat Letterman’s last episode in terms of ratings?
Source?
Leno had 4-5 million consistently. Colbert has 2.2 million. I know losing is this new winning for you Zionists, but it doesn’t translate like this IRL.
That post of yours should be removed!
Your entire world is based on curated idiosyncrasies that you internalize for work bizarre reason. You care more about the well being of some untalented overpaid has-been like Colbert than your own kids or grandkid.
Life’s gonna be so fucking hard for you losers, because you’ve been coddled your whole life by mommy and daddy! You’re incapable of solving problems, because you’ve been badly undereducated! And you can’t accept criticism without behaving like a hair on fire loon!
Enjoy a future of being homeless and hungry, turd!
You millenial zeros are the whiniest crybabies around, alongside MAGAts! Grow up, child!
Gen X are even cringier than boomers. You creepy losers are the ones who think it’s so hot when a teacher sleeps with an underage student.
Because you’re an underdeveloped loser with no life skills who thinks talking into your phone is some human connection! Good luck going forward, y’all are gonna have a hard time dealing with a world you’ve made shittier!
It’s hilarious joe easier you are to troll. You take everything personal besides your own kids. You all don’t care about them at all. You just care about maintaining this obsolete orbit like Colbert, Kimmel and the entire dying media. News flash it’s dead. You can blame Trump, MAGA and youngsters all you want, but that’s reality.
When you zeros are suffering through the worst of climate change while you struggle to make ends meet, because AI took your jobs away and you’re living under a highway pass.
But you all could have avoided it, if you had voted Democrat, instead of letting Drumpf win the White House again!
all 5 will be out of a job soon
Anything that helps you cope with life!
If it helps you cope with life!
wasn’t Taylor Swift bigger