Getting canceled may end up being the best thing that ever happened to Stephen Colbert. The same cannot be said for its impact on late night television.
Consider that Conan O’Brien turned into a folk hero after NBC took away his time slot and that David Letterman hit the height of his popularity after he didn’t get the job as host of “The Tonight Show.” Until last week, Colbert, host of “The Late Show,” was the ratings leader of an art form in decline.
Then CBS, citing economic issues, announced that his program would go off the air next May, news that came at a time when its corporate parent, Paramount, needs the government’s approval for a merger with the Skydance company. Now Colbert, one of the most prominent critics of President Trump, seems to many like a comedic martyr. For the next 10 months, his show will have a spotlight in a way it never has before. He will not only have a chance to continue to make fun of the president, but he also will be setting himself up for his next act.
Marrying a pugilistic comedic streak with courtly manners, Colbert became the finest conversationalist of the current hosts and his political monologues helped him become a ratings leader. He respected the history and conventions of late-night television, perhaps to a fault. But you also got the sense that “The Late Show” wasn’t always the perfect showcase for his myriad talents.
His quick, improv-honed wit and intellectual depth could feel hamstrung by the show’s short segments. And sometimes when he got on a good riff or dug into an area of major interest (Tolkien, faith, the history of comedy), you wondered if it would fit better on a podcast.
Before taking the job, Colbert developed an elite reputation in comedy circles as a Second City performer, a comedy writer and a correspondent on “The Daily Show.” But mostly he was known for “The Colbert Report,” an inspired and singular reinvention of the late-night form whose greatness has already been overshadowed by his later work. Satirizing a blowhard conservative pundit through entire episodes, he somehow managed to lead guests nimbly into arguments, making jokes and serious points at the same time. He conveyed a clear point of view while often saying the opposite. Improvising multiple layers of meaning, he pulled off one of the great comedic feats of this century.
There was an impressive degree of difficulty to that show that exceeds all the other current network late-night shows — and it’s why, right before he took the job as the host of “The Late Show,” I wrote a column worrying about what would be lost with this new, more mainstream position. Something was, and while his current, more conventional role is less virtuosic, he succeeded in this transition.
DURING A “LATE SHOW” MONOLOGUE last week, Colbert described Paramount’s $16 million payment to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris as a “big, fat bribe.” In that moment, the host belonged to a venerable history of late-night hosts biting the hand that feeds them.
But the cancellation three days later made one wonder about a related late-night tradition: network bosses’ taking abuse in stride. Rick Ludwin, longtime head of late-night programming at NBC, once told me that insults from hosts like David Letterman, who regularly called executives “pinheads” and “weasels,” were great for business. “The audience loves it. They wish they could say it to their own bosses,” he said, adding, “Executives come and go but these franchises roll on.”
Not anymore. Late-night television is not finished. In fact, you could say we are reverting to the era before the early ’90s when NBC dominated and there were occasionally network alternatives.
The loss of “The Late Show” is not the death knell, but it is a death knell. The other late-night network hosts Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel each have their strengths, but they weren’t comic supernovas the way Colbert was when he took the job. They don’t define the sensibilities of young viewers and future comedians the way Letterman or O’Brien did. And the success of the current crop of hosts — and some of their most interesting work — is built for an online audience.
If video killed the radio star, who did in the network late-night superstar? The internet is the primary suspect, increasing competition, chipping away at advertising dollars and transforming the time at which we watch these shows, making the term “late night” itself a misnomer. The growing politicization of nightly talk shows, starting with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, played a part, balkanizing the audience and crowding out some comedic ambition.
But if there’s an autopsy of late-night television, Paramount’s suspiciously timed decision deserves some attention. Announcing the cancellation, the CBS President George Cheeks argued that it was “a purely financial decision.” The current debate over whether Colbert’s cancellation was the result of politics or the struggling economics of the show misses the point. It can be (and probably is) both.
OF COURSE, MONEY MATTERS, but so does the climate in which it’s allocated. Late night used to be, among other things, a prestige business. The hosts were some of the key faces of the network. On top of profits, the shows generated press attention, in-house promotion and buzz.
Now media bosses seem more willing to cut a check for millions of dollars to make a political problem go away rather than spend that money to keep a late-night show. In trying to take control of the narrative, sources inside CBS have said that “The Late Show” lost $40 million last year, which happens to be the same amount Jeff Bezos’ Amazon is reportedly paying for a Melania Trump documentary.
Just as news organizations depend on trust, entertainment companies rely on credibility. Comedians should (and must) make fun of the powerful. It’s part of the job. And they need producers and executives to support them, financially and otherwise. What young comedian would now feel entirely comfortable satirizing the current administration on CBS?
It’s worth recalling that Letterman’s comic attacks on network executives in the mid-1980s proliferated because of a merger, when General Electric bought NBC. Letterman was not just appealing to viewers’ annoyance with their bosses; he was also making a point about the dangers of corporate consolidation. He was revolted that people in the business of selling toasters and lightbulbs thought they understood broadcasting. This issue has only become more urgent as tech titans have taken over the news media and Hollywood.
Even if you think politics played no role, canceling this franchise now seems like the move of someone who doesn’t understand or care about late-night comedy. — just as the “60 Minutes” settlement seems like the decision of someone far too cavalier about the importance of an independent press. These moves don’t just threaten to chill speech. They hasten the demise of network TV.
Many people found solace in watching Colbert poke fun at the news every night. That audience will probably go elsewhere. It might be to Fallon on NBC or more likely Kimmel on ABC, but an increasing number of viewers will flock to YouTube or a podcast. When they seek out these platforms, I would not be surprised if they eventually find a new version of Stephen Colbert there.
