Former late-night TV host Conan O’Brien is saying that his former genre is dead, but he is also sure that canceled CBS host Stephen Colbert is “too essential to go away” permanently.
O’Brien made his comments at the Television Academy Hall of Fame where he accepted the 2025 TV Academy Hall of Fame award alongside Viola Davis, Henry Winkler, Ryan Murphy, Mike Post, and Don Mischer, Variety reported.
While accepting the award, the TV writer and comedian told the audience, “This is the honor of a lifetime. It means everything to me. I’m stunned to be in this company. I don’t think I deserve it, but I’ll take it. And my grandfather always said, take what you can and ask for more. And I’m going to do that tonight.”
But he also spoke about the massive changes going on in the TV industry by noting that “there’s a lot of fear about the future of television, and rightfully so. The life we’ve all known for almost 80 years is undergoing seismic change.”
He said he doesn’t “mourn what is lost,” but he admitted that “Streaming changes the pipeline.” Still, he feels that “the connection, the talent, the ideas that come into our homes.”
While he agreed that late night TV is over, the talent isn’t.
“It’s all electrifying a new generation of viewers. Yes, late-night television, as we have known it since around 1950, is going to disappear. But those voices are not going anywhere. People like Stephen Colbert are too talented and too essential to go away,” he claimed.
O’Brien also insisted that there is a bright future for the extreme, left-wing Colbert, despite Colbert’s low ratings and years of losing tens of millions for his network.
“Stephen is going to evolve and shine brighter than ever in a new format that he controls completely,” O’Brien prophesied. “So, technology can do whatever they want. It can make television a pill. It can make television shows a high-protein, chewable, vanilla-flavored capsule with added fiber. It still won’t matter, if the stories are good, if the performances are honest and inspired, if the people making it are brave and of goodwill.”
Colbert, of course, was fired by CBS after losing more than $40 million every year since he took the air a decade ago. The loss adds up to at least $160 million thrown away on his failed show.
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