Which comedian hosted Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report from 2005 until 2014?

Stephen Colbert hosted Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report from 2005 until 2014. He played a fictionalized, self-important conservative pundit whose exaggerated certainty satirized political television commentary.

The series premiered on October 17, 2005, as a spin-off from The Daily Show, where Colbert had been a correspondent. Its title deliberately echoed the word “report,” and its visual style parodied cable-news programs. Colbert’s character used rhetorical habits associated with opinion hosts, turning them into recurring comedy devices.

The program ended on December 18, 2014, shortly before Colbert took over CBS’s The Late Show. A common mix-up is treating the character in The Colbert Report as identical to Colbert’s real on-air persona. The show’s satire depended on the distinction between the fictional pundit and the performer portraying him.