The Colbert Cancellation

They Finally Did It...

Paramount, the parent company of the CBS network, has cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

I found out about it last week, right after Colbert had come back from vacationing in Turkey.  He did one monologue about his mustache and something that Orange Chucky had done to CBS...and bam, the next day he got the news and announced it on the show that night.

Now, you have to understand that Stephen has been on TV for twenty years - nine of those as the star of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, which was seriously deep satire;  Colbert basically played a right-wing news anchor who unknowingly and unironically demonstrated just how ridiculous the right wing actually was.  Also, he added a word to the English language:  truthiness, which basically means "feeling" the truth to others, rather than telling them the truth.  So, it's being passionate and sincere...and most likely false.  Hey, but at least it's truthy!

Stephen took over The Late Show in 2015, right after the end of The Colbert Report (he always, BTW, pronounced "report" to rhyme with "Colbert" - with a silent "t").  Orange Chucky was running for office the first time;  Stephen helped us laugh at him, and doubled down on laughing at him when he got into the White House.  Stephen Colbert is probably single-handedly responsible for saving the sanity of our entire nation during that horrible first term;  he even hosted a socially-distanced series of videos during the pandemic lockdowns, which he called A Late Show - smaller, no audience, filmed at home, often with his wife Evie laughing off-camera.  But still relevant, still funny.  And when he returned to the Ed Sullivan Theater and his live audience, he was better than ever, and has stayed that way.  The show is even up for another Emmy Award!

So, What The Frak Happened?!

Depends on who you ask.

Paramount and CBS say it was for financial reasons;  sure, Colbert was popular, but there are too may late-night competitors, and nowadays you just can't get the market share that something like, say, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show would have averaged.  And they insist it's not because of Stephen;  they're not replacing him, they're just cancelling the show.

But there are others who are looking at other things that happened right before Stephen came back from his vacation.

Like, for example, the settlement of a lawsuit.  (This is that "thing" that Orange Chucky did to CBS.)

Orange Chucky sued Paramount over a 60 Minutes episode that featured an interview with Presidential candidate Kamala Harris;  he contended that they had edited an answer given by Harris to make her look better.  (He himself backed out of even appearing on the same program in October of 2024, but he was on in both 2016 and 2020;  he has never been happy with how the interviews have gone, no matter how softball the questions have been.)  It was a bullshit accusation, and Paramount could have fought it and won.  Easily.

BUT....

Since Mango Mussolini is now President again, he has control of the Federal Trade Commission, which has to approve a merger before it can go through (this is supposed to protect the general public, but it hasn't done so for decades).  Stephen's popularity notwithstanding, Paramount was in financial trouble and was aiming to be bought out by another media megacorp known as Skydance Media.  They weren't likely to get approval for that merger if they were fighting with the President, so they settled out of court for $16,000,000.  Colbert called it out for what it was:  A "big, fat bribe."

The next day, the hammer dropped on his show.

Coincidence?  Mmmm, maybe.  But Orangey has always hated Colbert - and, indeed, anybody in the public eye who laughs at him.  And since this second term seems to be all about getting back at all his haters, - whom he refers to as "failing," "not funny," and "liars" - it would be exactly on-brand for him to make Colbert's firing a condition of the settlement.

And wouldn't you know it, apparently $16 mil isn't enough for Velveeta Voldemort - he has been crowing about how Skydance will also be giving him another $16 to $20 million in advertising and PSAs once the merger is done!  Paramount denies this, and Democratic Senators are pressuring Skydance to reveal any such "side deal."  (This addendum is fresh from the Daily Beast, and it has the ring of truth;  our current President is a greedhead of the first [polluted] water!)

Yes, I Am Angry.  And Sad.

But there is one consolation:  The firing wasn't immediate.  Instead, CBS is letting the show run to the end of Stephen's contract - which means it won't end until May of 2026.

And he's going out swinging.  So stay tuned!