I’ll note that Colbert has the highest viewership (and therefore ad revenue) in his time slot. This is almost surely about the Ellison family, which now controls CBS, wanting to silence him.
I’ll note that Colbert has the highest viewership (and therefore ad revenue) in his time slot. This is almost surely about the Ellison family, which now controls CBS, wanting to silence him.
I don’t get why you all are upset. The folks who are pointing out that the format is dying are correct, no matter how many down votes they get. I haven’t watched it in years, except for the occasional clip on the Internet, because I am an old man and can’t stay up that late.
But I think this might be mutual (or at least not as bad to Colbert as you all think.) They did Colbert a favor by simply letting his contract run out vs. finding a way to fire him:
He can take the gloves off and really lean into the Trump bashing, because what are they gonna do, fire him early?
He will have no problem finding something else to do. He might not even have to make a functioning business out of it, he has the money to go into semi-retirement and do some independent schtick. It’s a lot harder for the government to exert pressure on your boss to fire you if you don’t have one.
They can both hype the final month/week/ episode. Remember that this show was originally Letterman’s baby, I am looking forward to him coming back once or twice and seeing the two of them skewer Trump (and CBS!) together. Those last episodes might send Trump’s ticker into the abyss. And CBS will make bank on it, all while technically being compliant to Trump’s conditions on that merger.
Colbert will continue to be outraged on camera, because that’s what his viewers want. And maybe he is pissed about being forced out. But I think he sees an opportunity here, and will take it.
It’s not about Colbert getting paid. That part is about the 200 people working for him.
And yeah, one should be outraged. He’s fired for political speech. That’s pretty damning for our country. Nobody is allowed to criticize dear leader.
Carson would like a word.
It seems a plausible concern with Colbert, but doesn’t explain Conan or Corden.
So I think there’s some ambiguity here and some potential to look silly declaring this with absolute certainty and then Colbert ends up explaining he wanted to retire or move on to other projects while handing the show off to some other host, but the network decided not to bother with that show after the current host goes.
Meanwhile more unambiguously Trump has been restricting access to news media he doesn’t like and we can keep talking about that and other unambiguous things and even saying there’s a solid chance that appeasing Trump is to some extent causing this event, but certainty needs more information from authotive sources.
If he were gonna do that, it would have been yesterday when he made the announcement.
The point is, it is a fact that those late night shows are an anachronism. It is plausible that they would still be doing this even if Trump didn’t win, and wasn’t in a position to extort them. Heck, I think it would be more likely, because Colbert would have had less political material if our politics weren’t so bonkers.
Colbert is rich, he’ll be alright. He’ll continue his comedy shtick in another format; there are enough media startups looking for content.