"The Late Show" ends tonight. CBS News Radio signs off tomorrow night. Plus, there's big news from Netflix, and a curious comment from One America News... |
What 'The Late Show' meant |
"The Late Show" was about so much more than politics.
First with David Letterman, then with Stephen Colbert, the show was an amusing and comforting ritual for viewers; a treasured stage for comedians; a coveted platform for politicians and authors; and a reliable marketing vehicle for CBS.
The interviews made news. The monologues made sense of the news. The comedy bits made the whole world feel a little less bleak.
But tonight the show is over, and the political dimension is inescapable. Bruce Springsteen said to Colbert last night, "You are the first guy in America who lost his show because we got a president who can't take a joke."
Springsteen called out Paramount for appeasing Trump in the next breath, saying, "Larry and David Ellison feel they need to kiss his ass to get what they want."
The Ellisons were awaiting the Trump administration's approval to take over Paramount when Shari Redstone's management team decided to cancel the show, citing broadcast TV's financial woes. The Ellisons could have reversed the decision, if they'd wanted to.
But you already know all that. Today I'd rather highlight what made "The Late Show" special and what Colbert's sign-off represents.
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Curtains close on institutions |
"The Late Show" was about Letterman's top-ten lists, and stupid human tricks, and silly pranks at CBS's expense. It was about Colbert's unpredictable live shows and unusually incisive interviews. It was about viewers across the country teleporting to Manhattan's Ed Sullivan Theater, spending an hour (unless they dozed off early) with a performer who felt like an old friend.
In a media environment of infinite choice and complexity, "The Late Show" was curated and consistent. People tuned in not because a clip randomly surfaced in their social media feed, but because they'd been watching for years. It was a habit.
But, of course, habits change, and you know broadcast ratings have collapsed. Judging from some of the viewer comments and emails I’ve read, the fans mourning the end of "The Late Show" are also mourning the end of shows like it — communal spaces that have been around for as long as they can remember.
I see a lot of similarities between "The Late Show" and the other CBS institution that's reaching the end of the line this week. The network is shutting down the CBS News Radio division tomorrow, citing similar financial pressures, namely that the legacy division is unprofitable. Tonight's "CBS Evening News" will be paying tribute to the radio division...
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Truth-telling through humor |
Now back to Colbert. I have a new column on CNN.com (for subscribers) about how "The Late Show" evolved from 2015 onward.
Trump's "political ascent changed everything," The Guardian's David Smith wrote, arguing that Colbert's nightly monologues should be studied by "future historians struggling to comprehend this era."
Colbert, Kimmel and others "told us the truth through comedy," Don Lemon wrote in this essay, "because the truth had become so surreal that comedy was the only container large enough to hold it. They were journalists in clown shoes. And they were essential."
"I suspect this was not the show Colbert imagined doing when he started it in 2015," the NYT's James Poniewozik wrote. "But then these are not the times many of us imagined we'd be living in, and the host stepped up to them."
>> Semafor would label this part "room for disagreement": Perhaps the push into politics "ultimately hurt the format," Variety's Brian Steinberg suggested in this piece. And WaPo contributing columnist Will Leitch argued that "the host who coined 'truthiness' never found his footing in the world it predicted."
>> WaPo analyzed late-night commentary about Trump. The headline: "Trump tried to silence late-night hosts. They're mocking him even more."
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Colbert's 'very human ministry' |
The best thinkpieces this week have conveyed the "very human ministry" of Colbert, as LA Times culture critic Mary McNamara put it. She said the longtime Sunday school teacher has been "the single greatest argument for married Catholic clergy," offering a "modern vision of active and informed faith, while still being culturally grounded, politically fearless and funny as hell."
Colbert's "sincerity" is what "will be missed most of all," THR's Daniel Fienberg wrote.
Writing for TIME, my friend Rebecca Soffer highlighted Colbert's interviews about love, loss, and grief, "making it normal to talk about the hardest parts of being alive."
"We are living in a moment of increasingly fragmented media, where fewer spaces bring large audiences into the same conversation," Soffer wrote. "Late night television remains one of them. Colbert used his platform not just to comment on politics or culture, but to expand what could be said there."
Again: So much more than politics. In a farewell interview with People mag, Colbert said of his longtime viewers, "I hope they laughed. I hope they felt better at the end of the day." That's what it was all about for him...
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Kimmel: Watch CBS tonight — and never again |
While Springsteen was performing a solo rendition of his recent protest song, "Streets of Minneapolis," on CBS, Jimmy Kimmel was on ABC talking about Colbert's impending sign-off.
"I think you know how I feel about the fact that they're being pushed out; I hope the people who did the pushing feel ashamed of themselves tonight, although I know they probably won't," Kimmel said. He also urged his viewers to watch CBS to see Colbert's finale — and then "don't ever watch it again."
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>> Last night's episode featured Colbert taking "The Colbert Questionert." It's posted in four parts on YouTube here.
>> An awesome fan created a searchable archive of all those segments called "The Coal Bare Questionnaire."
>> CBS has been promoting tonight's episode as "the extended 'Late Show' series finale," which means it will run longer than the show's usual hour.
>> A colleague just asked me, "Any hunches on Colbert's last guest?" Colbert has publicly dreamed about an interview with Pope Leo, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Pope somehow appears on the show.
>> When Trump was asked yesterday "what message he had for Colbert" ahead of the finale, the president said, "I'll have a message at a later date."
>> A view from Canada: The CBC is spotlighting "what Stephen Colbert’s cancellation says about dissent in Trump's America."
>> At Fortune's Workplace Innovation Summit in Atlanta, I said Colbert is a role model in showing how to gracefully exit a big stage.
>> CNN's Liam Reilly has more on what's next for Colbert here...
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Some new #s to keep in mind while assessing whether there's a market for the type of Trump criticism that Colbert delivered: This new Fox News poll is headlined "Disapproval of Trump hits new high." Dana Blanton says "a record 61% disapprove of the job he’s doing, including 48% who strongly disapprove." |
Netflix now has a daily live show... |
"Netflix is taking another step toward becoming a live TV destination," CNN's Liam Reilly writes: This morning, the streamer announced that it will simulcast "The Breakfast Club" live every weekday starting June 1, marking its "first daily live program."
Lauren Smith, Netflix's VP of content licensing and programming strategy, said "it's a big step forward in how we bring culturally defining audio-first franchises to life for Netflix audiences around the world." Reilly has more here...
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MAGA media eyes Trump's settlement $$ |
Right-wing activists have railed against publicly funded media for decades. They cheered when PBS and NPR were defunded last year. But now here's a twist...
Marshall Cohen writes: Pro-Trump news outlets that paid millions of dollars in 2020-related legal settlements could now seek reimbursement from the DOJ.
Yesterday, a lawyer for One America News confirmed to CNN that the channel is thinking about tapping Trump's new $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" compensation fund.
"OAN is seriously considering pursuing rights under this fund and will make a decision shortly about whether to file a claim," lawyer Chris Babcock said.
OAN settled lawsuits with Dominion and Smartmatic for undisclosed amounts. The cases stemmed from OAN promoting egregious lies about voting machines flipping millions of ballots from Trump to Joe Biden in 2020.
Supporters of the network have suggested, without evidence, that the Biden administration pressured AT&T and DirecTV to drop OAN from their carrier agreements — a move that could factor into a request for federal compensation...
>> Read Cohen's full story about Jan. 6 rioters and election deniers welcoming news of the fund here...
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Turnover atop Business Insider |
Barbara Peng, Business Insider's chief executive, is exiting next month. The interim replacement, Christian Baesler, serves as a senior advisor at Axel Springer, where he works on strategy, M&A, investments and AI, per his LinkedIn page. Peng's announcement came less than a week after BI underwent another round of layoffs...
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...and atop The Daily Wire |
Amid lots of reporting on The Daily Wire's financial struggles, the right-wing outlet's CEO Caleb Robinson is stepping down. "Effective immediately, my new title is 'guy on the board who still owns a lot of the company.' Pay cut in stress. Raise in the important things," he wrote, giving no reason for his exit. Mike Richards, the former "Jeopardy!" producer who became The Daily Wire's CCO last year, will take over as CEO...
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FCC's 'lone Democrat' cheers Disney's defiance |
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