Are late-night TV hosts Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon joining together to create a new "Freedom Show"? No, that's not true: This is an unsourced clickbait claim, made up and distributed by a spam network based in Hanoi, Vietnam. The network targets American audiences with false stories about celebrities, sports figures, and politicians that are posted on Facebook pages managed from Vietnam. A Google search for any U.S. media reports on the purported "Freedom Show" only found posts related to the Viet Spam operation.
The claim appeared in multiple posts, including a post (archived here) published by the Late Night Line Facebook page on January 10, 2026. The caption read:
Late-night TV is about to detonate.
Insiders confirm Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon are officially teaming up for a new "Freedom Show" -- mixing brutal satire with real investigations.
With Colbert's era ending, this isn't a replacement. It's a revolution.
What are they exposing in 2026 -- and why now?
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri Jan 16 19:53:11 2026 UTC)
This is what the image in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
The caption included a link to an article (archived here) "Late-Night Uprising: Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon Join Forces for 'Freedom Show' as TV Faces a 2026 Reckoning."
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of newstvseries.com)
The article opened:
Late-night television, long defined by predictable formats and safe punchlines, may be heading toward its most radical transformation in decades.
According to industry insiders, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon are officially teaming up on a new project tentatively titled Freedom Show -- a program described as equal parts sharp satire and real investigative storytelling.
If confirmed, the collaboration would mark an unprecedented shift in late-night television.
Colbert's departure from his long-running late-night role has left a noticeable vacuum. Rather than filling it with another desk and monologue, sources say the industry's biggest names are choosing to burn the old playbook entirely.
Freedom Show is not being positioned as a replacement for traditional late-night. It is being framed as a reaction -- to politics, media distrust, and an audience increasingly skeptical of surface-level comedy.
"This isn't about jokes anymore," one insider said. "It's about impact."
There is no sourcing for the claim other than "industry insiders." While legitimate entertainment news sources may sometimes cite anonymous sources, this website does not have a reputation as a legitimate news organization. It is filled with similarly unsourced and unreal articles. A google search for the terms "freedom show, colbert" did not find any known news websites reporting the "Freedom Show" claim.The only relevant search results were the Facebook pages making the claim.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Google.com)
Each of these Facebook pages is administered from Vietnam, according to Meta transparency data.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
Lead Stories and other fact checking organizations have extensively investigated the Viet Spam operations, and we've published dozens of fact checks targeting these false claims (read them here.) A deeper dive into this can be found in our article Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'.
