James Corden’s Late Late Show lost $20m a year, but how are other late night talk shows faring financially?

As the curtains closed this time last week on James Corden’s last Late Late Show and CBS’ fourth and final iteration of the late night talk show, new alleged details have emerged surrounding Corden’s ‘cheerio’ from the network.

While James stated it was time to ‘go home’ to the UK as his family were getting older, Corden’s eight years of Carpool Karaoke, Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts and Crosswalk Musicals also worked out to be quite an expensive venture for CBS.

Days after James signed off alongside Tom Cruise, Harry Styles and Will Ferrell, reports revealed that the Late Late Show was losing as much as $20 million (£16m) a year, as a result of spending $65m on production while only making $45m back.

Shedding a new light on James Corden’s departure, a CBS executive reportedly said: “It was simply not sustainable. CBS couldn’t afford [Corden] any more.”

Through Corden’s first contract with CBS, the British host was paid between $4-5 million but had a pay rise following the success of his late night show.

In addition to the lack of profits made by the television series, viewing numbers were reportedly on the decline too, as seen by Corden’s last ever episode drawing in its largest audience of 1.43 million viewers since 2021.

As one of James’ final skits on the CBS show, the Gavin and Stacey star was approached by hosts of other late night shows including Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman to ‘advise’ him on what to do next after leaving the ‘elite club’.

However, with CBS acknowledging that James’ show was losing money, it got PeopleWorld wondering how well the other late night shows are faring financially and how successful they are, especially as James’ departure follows Trevor Noah’s prompt exit and live television falls victim to social media.

Keeping it short and sweet, late night TV is expensive. In comparison to James Corden’s salary, hosts like Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert earn north of $15 million each year, with their shows also spending thousands of dollars on bands, rights fees and celebrity guests every week.

Ad revenue per late night show reached an all-time high in 2016 with David Letterman’s Late Show racking up the most at $179.6 million, Fallon second with $113.4m and Kimmel third at $77.3m two years prior; but now, advertising during late night shows is down 60%.

This sharp decline may have social media to blame with platforms like YouTube drawing viewers away from watching Jimmy Kimmel in bed and instead watch short clips of interviews, games and skits whenever they want.

Although the Hollywood Reporter stated in 2019 that there was still a steady stream of viewers for the TV shows, live viewership had dropped by 2 million people over nearly a decade, from 2010 to 2019.

For example, according to a 2021 report, Jimmy Fallon had amassed just shy of 25 million subscribers to his YouTube since he joined in 2006 and had pulled in 13.7 billion views. These stats allowed him/NBC to earn between $20,000 and $170,000 of ad revenue a day, so this number has only increased now that he has over 31 million subscribers in 2023.

It must be noted that even though trends seem to show people watching late night shows on social media, all of these revenues support the late night shows.

At time of writing, no other reports have been published to suggest that NBC or ABC are losing money with their respective programmes, therefore one should not expect any more sudden departures (especially because Kimmel and Fallon have signed contracts until 2025 and 2026) after James Corden heads back to the UK.