Stephen Colbert.
The Washington Post (Emily Davies) asked some prominent authorities in the field of television about the likelihood that the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show was just based on financial considerations, as Paramount maintains. The experts aren’t buying it; neither should we. Forty-eight hours after Colbert called the $16 million payment to Trump by Paramount a bribe on his show, one designed to help facilitate the sale of CBS to Skydance, Colbert was fired, despite being #1.
“How often does the No. 1 guy get canceled? You can analyze this 100 different ways, but Colbert has the No. 1 show in late night and they’ve canceled him. If it walks like a duck, it’s a duck,” Rob Burnett said. “I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s going on up there, but I just don’t think if Stephen Colbert isn’t saying the things he’s saying that this happens.” Rob Burnett ran things at the Tonight Show for 19 years as David Letterman’s producer.
Burnett conceded that revenue is down in late night: At its peak, during Johnny Carson’s long stint as host, NBC’s time-slot champion “Tonight Show” drew 17 million viewers, according to Adweek, whereas Colbert’s top-rated “Late Show” has averaged about 2.5 million viewers this year. All the late-night shows now share digital excerpts online. That allows fans to consume an episode in pieces whenever they choose, and younger viewers choose to do that. But YouTube doesn’t offer nearly the same ad revenue as television. Still, the lock on late night viewers is no longer the pull it was for older generations. Viewers under 35 might not watch any of the late night hosts.
Merrill Markoe
Merrill Markoe, who was the head writer on Letterman’s show during its early-1980s incarnation on NBC before he went on to launch “The Late Show” and moved to CBS in the 1990s, said she “had nightmares” after she heard the news about Colbert.
“CBS, Paramount, the merger, the buyout with Trump, all of it came tumbling down like dice and added up to me in a second,” she said. “It hit me in a very hard way. He was No. 1 in his time slot. And a talk show is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment there is.”
As far as what’s next, Colbert still has many shows to produce at CBS before May. Daniel Kellison, another former Letterman producer, doubts he’ll make it. “I just hope he’s going to go all scorched-earth now. There’s no way he’s going to be on the air for nine months,” Kellison said. “He’s such a smart guy, and it would be really cool if he did a slow burn.”
It’s classic authoritarian behavior to forbid criticism, especially if the target is someone as thin-skinned as DJT. Our First Amendment freedoms are under attack and the Jimmys (Fallon and Kimmel) and other hosts (Jon Stewart, Seth Meyer, Bill Maher, Conan O’Brien, John Oliver) are being bullied into submission, just as our universities, our judges, our elected representatives in Congress and anyone whom DJT has a beef with is being bullied into submission.
How long before our First Amendment Freedom of Speech and of the Press and of the right to assembly are eroded? Our leaders of conscience of any party must stand up for the Constitution and the right of habeas corpus and all of our cherished American freedoms, before DJT and Steve Bannon and the boys completely destroy the freedoms our citizens have exercised and prized for 250 years.
Some suggest that Colbert ought to run against Lindsey Graham, since they are both from South Carolina. It would be a waste of a top-notch talent we sorely need at these moments of crisis.
Thank you for speaking truth to power, Stephen Colbert, and let’s hope that the venality of the nation’s biggest bully—out there for all to see—gives pause to some of the worst excesses of MAGA land.
