With Colbert’s CBS Exit, Late Night’s Tricky IP Question Resurfaces

On June 25, 1993, David Letterman exited NBC and headed off toward the rest of his career uncertain how much of the comedy he’d created over the previous 11 years still belonged to him.

Nearly 33 years later, Stephen Colbert will face a similar situation. On Thursday, May 21, he will put CBS’ Late Show to bed after his own run of 11 years and direct himself to his next career post, also uncertain about what he’ll be able to take with him.

The coincidence of timing—11 years each, spring departures for both—has something to do with vestigial notions of when a network television season ends, and mostly to do with CBS’s decision to cancel Colbert at the end of his current contract.

But the other similarity has to do with just how bad the terms of divorce can get when a major talent and a network part ways.

When Letterman ended his association with NBC, the breakup was tempestuous. He didn’t get The Tonight Show; NBC tried to induce him to stay; he said there was no trust anymore; he found a new partner.

NBC didn’t make it easy. Then–NBC Entertainment president Don Ohlmeyer fired a parting shot, threatening to sue Letterman and the show if they used comedy material NBC had paid for, claiming “intellectual property” ownership.

Letterman publicly mocked the threat. “The name of the new show, which is a setback for us automatically, was going to be ‘Late Night with Don Ohlmeyer,’ so we can’t do that.” He suggested they’d either do what they want and be fine, or be sued and that would be fine. And if there was a trial, he said, people should be sure to “get a seat down front.”

The truth was that no one on the show was sure what they owned or didn’t. They tried to cover themselves by changing Dave’s theme song, the name of the band, and fictional characters like Larry Bud Melman, who got new names—in the latter case, the actor’s own, Calvert DeForest.

Fast-forward to 2026. Little is known about what’s going to happen with Colbert after The Late Show ends. He has not indicated what he intends to do, other than a joking appeal to Netflix and diplomatic takes on running for public office.

What has grown clearer as Colbert’s end date approaches is what many viewers want him to do next. Calls for him to revive The Colbert Report—and/or the swaggering, satirical persona that powered it—have grown louder in recent months, fueled by nostalgia, political appetite, and the sense that the character feels newly relevant.

That demand centers on the faux right-wing political talk-show host Colbert created long before The Late Show, a character that became one of the most fully realized—and successful—fictional personas in late-night history during his run on Comedy Central.

Though the pleas have gone unanswered, they immediately raise the issue of who, exactly, owns “Stephen Colbert”—and whether Colbert could freely take that creation with him if he wanted to.

That question is sharpened by the circumstances surrounding Colbert’s CBS exit. The unexpected cancellation order that set a May end date for The Late Show came with plenty of smoke that Colbert’s relentless comic skewering of Donald Trump played a hand.

CBS, after all, needed to close a massive deal with Skydance; that company’s ownership is close to the President. That sort of smoke.

Does that mean Colbert has reason to worry that the sword of intellectual property might be swinging over him as he wends toward his sell-by date?

It wouldn’t be the first time he has confronted questions of ownership over the character who shares his name.

After reviving the character early in his run on CBS, Colbert revealed that “another company” had suggested a lawsuit could be filed over intellectual property claims tied to the character.

That company was Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom, which at the time did not fall under the same corporate banner as CBS.

In response to the threatened suit, Colbert formally killed off his old character on The Late Show, explaining, “I cannot reasonably claim I own my face or name,” before memorably introducing “Stephen Colbert’s identical twin cousin, Stephen Colbert”:

Three years later, Viacom and CBS merged, making any intellectual property claims between Comedy Central and CBS moot. The character has since returned a handful of other times, most recently in an appearance last September to comment on the White House’s effort to pressure ABC station groups over Jimmy Kimmel.

But the episode served as a reminder that the question of who owns “Stephen Colbert” has never been entirely academic.

The other great late-night contretemps of our time took place when Conan O’Brien hit the eject button and flew out of NBC.

Conan was temporarily banned contractually from doing a TV show at all, which he countered by going on tour with a stage show—one that looked and played a lot like Conan’s Late Night and Tonight shows.

At the time, NBC did claim ownership of Conan’s famous bits, from “Desk Driving” to the Masturbating Bear. Again, the issue never came to a head, as most of the older bits were dropped when Conan emerged with a new show on TBS.

That leaves the larger question unlitigated: Who owns the rights to comic creations on a late-night show? Some of the most familiar bits have clearly not ended up in network hands. Letterman never stopped doing Top Ten lists, because the idea is so generic, and he continued to showcase tricks done by both stupid pets and humans.

And Robert Smigel, the great late-night writer, has continued to appear everywhere as his famous creation, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who originated on Conan’s Late Night.

While it’s clearly not decided what will happen with Colbert’s material—especially his brilliant self-to-cousin creation—rancor may again be a factor.

When Trump announced his Board of Peace with a price tag of $1 billion per seat to join, Colbert said that price was a little steep to pay to obey Donald Trump, because “after all, CBS got to do it for just $16 million.”

(That was what CBS paid to Trump to settle a nuisance suit he filed against 60 Minutes.)

Maybe it’s time to consider a seat down front?

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