Actually, it’s been quite well documented that the laye night shows are not the profit engine they used to be, and Colbert’s show might have been legit losing money. Its hard to find hard data on this, particularly after it all got so politicized. But I did find this, which shows that late night ad revenue is much lower than it has been 10 years ago

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/28/late-night-tv-corden-ratings-decline

People simply aren’t as likely to wait and watch a thing live when you can always stream it after the fact