Final season?

When CBS announced in July that it would cancel The Late Show after more than 30 years, fans of Stephen Colbert’s program were shocked. But the top-rated show was the leader of a weakening pack. In the last decade, late night shows have steadily shed younger viewers and, with them, advertisers. Ratings or no, The Late Show was losing CBS $40 million a year.

It’s just one of the many shows crumbling amid a shifting TV landscape. But the streaming services that strangled the old networks have their own problems keeping viewers’ attention. Younger audiences are spending more of their time consuming social media.

When streaming TV took off in 2013, it revolutionized the industry. Dubbed the “peak TV” era, it was marked by the incredible growth of original, scripted content on subscription video-­on-demand giants like Netflix. The number of scripted shows on streaming platforms jumped from 28 in 2013 to 599 at its 2022 peak.

As streaming shows became more popular, they slowly but surely poached subscribers from cable TV. At the start of peak TV, more than 80% of U.S. homes had a cable subscription. Today, less than 40% do. Now 80% subscribe to at least one streaming service. Younger generations, millennials and Gen Zers, average five paid streaming services per household.

For cable TV, losing viewers was a one-two punch: First, subscription fees dwindled, then ad revenue soon followed, especially for the prime 18- to 34-year-old range that advertisers are most eager to find.

“It’s been a gradual progression of the business model of cable crumbling,” said Brad Adgate, an independent media consultant with more than four decades of experience. The loss of subscriber fees and ad revenue, he explained, “led to a dearth of quality programming on cable television.” Naturally, that drove even more viewers toward streaming, then packed with fresh content.

As various streaming services feverishly competed for viewers, the market became increasingly crowded. Studios climbed to new spending heights and approved show after show in eager bids to stand out.

In return, streaming-exclusive shows raked in Emmy nominations and critical acclaim, netting new subscribers for their home platforms. But the benefits didn’t outweigh the cost.

In 2022, Netflix announced its first-ever quarter with a net subscriber loss. Stock prices for Netflix and other streaming services promptly dropped. In 2023, the screenwriter’s strike delayed some shows and forced the cancellation of others.

Streamers have responded by focusing more on quality and profits, and less on relentlessly chasing subscribers. They’ve raised prices, cut costs, explored new revenue streams, and cracked down on password sharing.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris makes a July 31 guest appearance on Stephen Colbert’s show. Scott Kowalchyk / CBS via Getty Images

Today, the average household pays $69 a month for streaming services, up 13% from last year. These price hikes are sending providers into dangerous waters, with 47% of consumers complaining they already pay too much.

Most notably, many streamers started supplementing their traditional subscriber fee revenue with advertising dollars through cheaper, ad-supported tiers. In the first quarter of 2025, 72% of all TV watched in the United States was on an ad-supported platform.

Streaming services are also trying to improve their margins by trimming or entirely canceling popular shows like The Diplomat or The Wheel of Time. Netflix, the leading producer of original content, has decreased its output every year for the past decade. Instead, platforms are offering reruns of familiar shows like Grey’s Anatomy or Suits that offer cheap, ad-friendly content.

But streamers aren’t just competing with other TV providers for attention and advertising revenue. Social media, filled with a seemingly limitless reservoir of easy-to-produce, free content, is challenging the TV business model.

Deloitte research shows that the average person spends about six hours a day on media and entertainment. Despite the rapid influx of options, that number has held fairly steady, leaving media and entertainment companies scrambling to prove themselves worthier than their competitors.

And social media is winning the race with younger generations. More than half of Gen Zers report feeling that social media is more relevant to them than TV shows or movies. They spend about 50 more minutes on social media and 44 fewer minutes watching TV and movies than the average consumer.

While streaming services work to find their footing, user-generated content continues to explode on social media, with personalities like Charli D’Amelio or MrBeast and more relatable influencers producing content that attracts ­hundreds of millions of followers—and the ad revenue that comes with them.

Three years ago, then–Netflix CEO Reed Hastings predicted cable and satellite TV would go extinct within a decade. But will streaming be on top of the entertainment world when that happens? As TV fights to attract new viewers and maintain profits in an age seemingly dominated by social media, tomorrow’s leader is harder than ever to predict.

Maybe a TV influencer on TikTok could say.