The Stephen Colbert We Needed Was Cancelled Over A Decade Ago

The Late Show version was never half as good as The Colbert Report character.

In my latest video (above) I talk at length about the cancellation of the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, which was rather suddenly axed by CBS and its parent company Paramount under what appear to be rather suspicious circumstances. Was CBS buying off Donald Trump with the cancellation? Was it really just about money — the long-running show was reportedly losing $40 million a year. Or was it some combination of factors, including the slow death of late night and traditional television in the streaming era?

For further reading on this issue, check out this post by Ethan Strauss which has a great quotation from Johnny Carson; Nate Silver’s excellent discussion of the various moving pieces involved in the cancellation; and this rather hilarious piece from Jeff Maurer, which includes the single best line about this whole debacle:

In TV, if you’re making money, you could wave your genitals at the Pope while high on crack and the network will loudly defend your right to free expression. But if you’re losing money, it’s like A Quiet Place: Make any noise at all, and you will be whisked away to instant death.

It seems rather obvious that “all of the above” is the correct answer when trying to determine why the Late Show was cancelled. Late night TV is on the way out with dwindling numbers. Collapse is just around the corner. Trump is also a bully who sues whoever he can to silence them (South Park’s latest episode lampoons all of this beautifully) and it makes sense for CBS and Paramount to placate the president by giving him Colbert’s head on a platter. They save money, wrap up the lawsuit and get the president’s blessing on the big Skydance merger which, by the way, has been given the green light by the FCC.

Of course, to my point in the headline, the real Stephen Colbert (and by “real” I mean “fake”) was killed off over a decade ago when CBS gave him the Late Show gig and The Colbert Report came to an end. That show was infinitely better and funnier and more effective as political satire than anything Colbert has done since. It still baffles me that Jon Stewart wasn’t given the late night spot after hosting The Daily Show all those years. He would have been a much more natural and logical choice, and Colbert could have gone on with his blowhard routine, lampooning all the crazy Republican nonsense we’ve seen in the Trump years while also avoiding the drift into woke-land that has so neutered his comedic brand.

Oh well. We can’t turn back time. Colbert made his choices, vastly increasing his reach and salary in the process. It’s just a shame his best and funniest character had to die for the cause. Maybe now, or in ten months when he’s really free of CBS, he can do something more worthwhile.