CBS Axes Stephen Colbert, Wishes You Were Gullible Enough To Believe Official Story
Waving the white flag
CBS has cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, just a few days after Colbert called out the network for caving to Donald Trump, whose billionaire friends the Ellisons are set to take control of the network. However, CBS insists this is “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.” This explanation is so defensively transparent it reminds me of the scene from The Simpsons Movie when Tom Hanks insists that the government isn’t about to blow up Springfield and make a new Grand Canyon: “It’s nowhere near where anything is or ever was!” (Watch below.)
CBS and right-leaning media have tried to defend the cancellation on financial grounds. The Late Show — like all late night talk shows — is losing money, but the timing is highly suspicious and alarming. During his monologue last Monday, Colbert mocked CBS for paying the sitting U.S. president $16 million to settle a bogus lawsuit: “I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles. It’s Big Fat Bribe.”
The Late Show is currently the highest rated talk show on late night with a recent average of 2.417 million viewers. (I am deliberately excluding Fox News’ Gutfeld! — not just because it’s terrible but because it technically airs in prime time at 10 p.m.) ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel is a distant second with 1.772 million viewers, although he just narrowly edges out Colbert among my former 18–49 demo. (Not sure why that demo is still the most highly coveted, as the current economy’s especially brutal for younger people.) The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon averages 1.188 million viewers and 157,000 in the 18-49 demo. Yes, David Letterman’s former series has almost double the ratings of Johnny Carson’s old home. Fallon is the youngest of the three but also the least pointedly political. Jay Leno’s monologues were more trenchant. It’s clear that viewers aren’t picking a particular late night show based solely on celebrity guests or musical performances. They are drawn to sharp political humor. (Colbert first toppled Fallon in the ratings during Trump’s first nightmare term.)
It’s true that late-night numbers have steadily declined since the days when Carson and Letterman were on the air (and I was in that 18-49 demo). The Late Show with David Letterman boasted 7.8 million viewers in its debut season in 1993 and ended with about 2.8 million viewers when Letterman retired in 2015. During his run(s) at Tonight Show host, Leno easily averaged three times Colbert’s current ratings. Meanwhile, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (and the rest) both average under a million viewers.
However, Meyers, Stewart, Kimmel, and Colbert boast significantly greater viewership on YouTube and social media. It’s still nothing like the days when Carson was king. (NBC recently reduced Fallon’s Tonight Show to just four new episodes a week.) This all makes Trump’s obsession with Colbert and Kimmel even pettier and disturbing. He boasted last Thursday, “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
Yes, this is still the sitting U.S. president, who has time to watch all the late night talk shows (plus Gutfeld!) while simultaneously wrecking the nation. He is, of course, callous enough that he only cares that “Colbert got fired.” A former TV host himself, Trump doesn’t acknowledge that Late Show’s cancellation means that at least 200 people who worked on the show will lose their jobs. Colbert has an estimated net worth of $75 million. He’ll be fine. (Colbert graciously thanked his crew when he announced the end of his show.)
Trump is not known for his subtlety or emotional restraint. He’s Sonny Corleone without any redeeming qualities. His online victory lap hardly disputes the theory that The Late Show was cancelled for blatantly political reasons. It’s “purely a financial decision,” as CBS claims, because Trump would make life difficult for CBS if it didn’t comply with his wishes. He’s so pathetic he can’t cope with Colbert or Kimmel making fun of him every night before an audience of a couple million people, almost all of whom probably voted for Kamala Harris. Late night hosts have no true political sway. Over on Fox News, Greg Gutfeld is just playing to a crowd that willingly watches Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity.
Networks used to fold because they feared losing advertisers or offending middle American viewers, who might turn off the TV and do something desperate like talking to their family. Now, they fear a senile adolescent, the political equivalent of the monstrous Anthony Fremont from The Twilight Zone.
This isn’t an entirely new development. The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was abruptly cancelled in 1969 because of its overtly liberal content. Now, Republicans would call it The Smothers Brother Woke DEI Showcase. President Lyndon B. Johnson called the head of CBS William Paley demanding that Paley “get those bastards off my back.” The Smothers Brothers frequently skewered Johnson (mainstream Democrats today would likely blame the comedians for helping force out Johnson in 1968 and thus electing Richard Nixon.) The brothers singing “The Draft Dodger Rag” with actor George Segal is daring primetime content, even for today. (Watch below.)
When CBS cancelled its successful series Lou Grant in 1982, the network cited declining ratings, but star Ed Asner insisted the decision wasn’t purely financial. Asner was a liberal political activist who was openly critical of President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy. Reagan didn’t release any gloating messages, though. Unlike Trump, Reagan at least tried to maintain a veneer of respectability.
In 2003, CBS buckled to right-wingers and buried its miniseries about the Reagans. The network moved the production to Showtime after “concluding” that it “does not present a balanced portrayal of the Reagans for CBS and its audience. Subsequent edits that we considered did not address those concerns.” Of course, Republicans didn’t want a “balanced” portrayal of their working-class-crushing hero. They complained that Ronald Reagan was depicted as unfeeling toward AIDS victims — a verifiable fact. Senate Democratic leader at the time Tom Daschle said CBS’s decision “smells of intimidation to me.”
CBS’s political and artistic cowardice isn’t new, but it’s still alarming. Trump is a small-time thug who imagines himself a glorified tyrant. Nothing will ever satisfy him but total fealty.
Colbert needs to do what Joy Reid and Don Lemon have done, go indie and become ungovernable. I bet he would do numbers.
Everyone sees what Paramount did; they want their corporate mergers and Republican tax cuts. So they are getting rid of the top-rated late night host.
Think any one of these networks would cancel a successful show because they talked shit about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? Absolutely not. And this should tell you a lot.
All eyes are on Jimmy Kimmel next I bet. Let's see what Disney does.
It's especially ironic that CBS owns "The Twilight Zone" and has the episode right there for streaming any time it wants.