The applause hadn’t even faded from the final Late Show taping when Stephen Colbert stepped off the stage, microphone still hot in his hand, and looked straight at Tom Hanks standing in the wings. “We’re done pretending,” Colbert said, voice steady but electric.T

On January 22, 2026, in a move that stunned the entertainment and media industries, Stephen Colbert and Tom Hanks announced the launch of Uncensored News, a subscription-based streaming channel dedicated to unfiltered reporting. The announcement came during a surprise joint appearance on Colbert’s final Late Show episode, where both men walked away from their longtime corporate homes—CBS for Colbert, and decades of studio-backed film projects for Hanks—to build something independent.

“No more sponsors. No more notes from the top. No more pretending the powerful are untouchable,” Colbert declared, voice steady. Hanks, standing beside him, added simply, “We’ve spent our careers in rooms where truth gets edited for comfort. We’re done.”

The channel, funded entirely through viewer subscriptions and a small group of anonymous high-net-worth donors who signed ironclad non-interference agreements, promises nightly deep-dive segments, long-form interviews, and document releases that traditional networks have avoided. Its flagship program, “The Ledger Files,” will be built around Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir and related Epstein documents, with plans to expand into other long-buried scandals involving finance, politics, and entertainment.

Early leaks suggest the first month will feature unredacted court transcripts, whistleblower testimony, and on-camera confrontations with named individuals who have so far refused comment. The channel has already secured partnerships with independent investigative journalists and survivor advocacy groups, and it will operate without advertisers, board oversight, or algorithmic suppression.

Critics called the venture quixotic, predicting legal battles and financial ruin. Supporters hailed it as the most significant act of media rebellion since the rise of cable news. Within hours of the announcement, pre-subscriptions crashed the website twice. Hanks addressed doubters directly: “We’re not here to save the world. We’re here to stop helping hide it.”

For two men who once embodied safe, beloved mainstream success, the pivot is seismic. Uncensored News launches February 15, 2026. Its mission statement is one sentence long: “Truth doesn’t need permission.” In an era of controlled narratives, that promise alone has already made it the most talked-about media experiment of the decade.