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He called it. He said that this would happen in order for the deal to go through. They are trying to silence as many people as possible like any other fascist authoritarian countries.
Source (skipped ahead to the right timestamp):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzvx3L3DQb8&t=248
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I can't wait for it to be replaced with nonstop infomercials for supplemental medicare.
The jokes on them. people don't watch it on TV. They just look for the YouTube video with Stephen Colbert in it. He can do that on his own
YouTube with those kind of numbers every day is some real money. They could create an online only channel, not constrained by formats, which could have huge audiences, with the taping done during late night's time slots.
Assuming google doesn't start blocking it to please the dictator, of course.
Also Colbert has a big staff. YouTube doesn’t pay what CBS was paying all those people.
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Criticized Trump. Had to go or the merger was not going to be approved by Trump's ass-suckers.
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Highest rating show. Financial decision.
Nah. All who oppose Trump will be silenced.
Kimmel next
Late show was also just nominated for an Emmy.
Kimmel and John Stewart are in fact being targeted next.
I predicted that this would happen if the country started an irreversible slide into fascist warlord dictatorship, I just thought it would be much further down the road.
Watch, in about a year all of these comedians and liberal pundits are going to be replaced by right-wing grifters and podcasters capturing the stupid, populist attention spans of people who just want to stare at flashing lights and listen to people screaming about how evil trans children are interrupted by ads for essential oils and testosterone supplements. This isn't an exaggeration, this is what we can expect.
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Kimmel has already said this is his last season, voluntarily.
Daily Show is next. Maybe Seth Meyers.
Kimmel has already said this is his last season, voluntarily.
Remember that when Conan was forced out, he had specific gag orders about what he could say or not, so take the "voluntary" part with a few grains of salt until that potential gag order expires, if it ever does.
Really what's happening is fascist censorship of opposition voices and satire is a powerful tool in speaking truth to power, making comedians highly threatening to fascists. Corporations like Skydance don't care about civilization or a better world, they need line to go up, and the fastest, most efficient way to get that line up is to buy some fascists to run the country you're located in.
I hope he uses this to go off the rails going into the election summer
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Firing Colbert and canceling his show, days after he criticized Paramounts Payola to Trump. Thats the "financial decision"
He criticized the surpreme leader? Probably lucky to still be alive...
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This was part of CBS' bribery payment, along with the $16 million to settle the 60 Minutes case, which would have been an easy win in court.
ABC and CBS have been compromised and have paid bribes. When will he go after NBC?
I used to watch "Late shows" on YouTube, but after the 2nd time Trump got elected, I stopped consuming any political content from the US, and again after the "Liberation Day", I stopped consuming any US produced media (including YouTube content creators). I just can't deal with so much "Trump content", nor do I want to keep to, in any manner, help content that thrives on that.
I just can't deal with a second season of "The House of Trump".
I'm not implying that this is why it got cancelled, just expressing the reason to why I even stopped watching it, on YouTube. Can't say if others have done the same or not, but following American politics is... exhausting.
You think it's exhausting, try living in it.
My parents already lived through a dictatorship, and I know the struggles that came along with it, including a post-colonial war and being subject to a thought police, that persecuted and prosecuted anyone, just for owning specific books, many of which were not even political. So while I have not lived through it, my parents did, much worse than you, and I was raised in a post-dictatorship regime completely aware of what the previous generation had to go through, thank you very much!
And has the old saying goes... "Those who forget history, are doomed to repeat itself", and considering you are on the second Trump term, just after a 4 year hiatus, you guys must have the memory of a gold fish.
PS - I had a much longer and extensive post originally, but quite honestly, I do not want to enter a debate about this. But what you guys need is though love. In fact I believe that the only way that the US can escape the current political paradigm, is if you go full dictatorship, live under it for a few decades, and finally have a revolution. You are constantly on a situation where you move 1 step ahead, and 2 backwards, shifting between Democrats and Republicans, and with neither having the will to make a meaningful change to the system. I could say much much much more, but I wont, if only because, I no longer have the bandwidth for US politics, as I have already stated!
Good luck!
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Conan is the only one worth watching/listening to. Hardly ever gets into politics.
Funniest podcast available too imo (well, maybe that or Bonanas for Bonanza)
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Hey, gotta pay for their corrupt bribes somehow, right?
Stephen deserves better, so does the audience, and I hope he spends the rest of the time there making the pus-sucking execs regret their bullshit. While I doubt they can feel shame or embarrassment, I'm confident he can find ways to make the stain set; and then move on to do something independent so I can support him, cause through ups and downs he's been a real one for a large part of my life. Mostly I hope Paramount actually dies of shame and fails entirely as a company, and the merger their executives burning this all for is a monkey's paw that gives them all gigaherpes and ass cancer.
This sucks to see. Hopefully he’ll get picked up somewhere else and go back to a format closer to what the Colbert report used to be.
Yeah I didn’t really enjoy prim and proper corporate Colbert. His show was pretty mediocre. I believe it was also his decision to step away from his original persona and move on to a standard talk show host, so he actually wanted that change. Ferguson is still the GOAT for me.
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tl;dr - Late Night was killed by the Internet. This has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the increasing irrelevance of television.
Late night is dying. This isn't a conspiracy. This isn't bowing to Trump. It's just good timing for Trump.
Before I say anything else, I need to make one thing abundantly clear that these headlines keep being sketchy about. Colbert was not cancelled. His contract just wasn't renewed. That is a pretty big distinction. One of them is ending a contract pre-emptively, the other is just deciding to not continue with those services after an agreed upon point.
Everyone keeps suggesting this is because of Trump but you're ignoring what has been happening to both the Late Show and Late Night in general for years. The entire format is dying. Most people don't watch the show live anymore, they do it on YouTube. Financially that's not viable for the studios. The cost they put into it doesn't equal out over the amount they can get back from YouTube. It doesn't make financial sense for them to keep making the show when no one is watching it on its primary method. They could try to pivot the entire show to YouTube but that also would be kinda hard to justify the cost.
Like all of you in these comments seem to forget that Conan was reduced to 30 minutes before being cancelled, not having any Late Show replacement. Seem to forget that Corden was cancelled and replaced with an internet game show. Seem to forget that Samantha Bee's show wasn't replaced by any late show either. ~~Or Lily Singh's~~. Or that the Outstanding Variety Talk Series has gone from 6 entries in 2019 to just 3 entries in 2025. Or the fact that Colbert has lost 1 million viewers from 2019 to 2025 while still retaining topdog for Late Night in viewership? If the other hosts didn't get bumps in viewers (they didn't) then it's because they just stopped watching...
Why? First off, the entire market is saturated. You've got too many Late Night hosts to choose from, all of them in essentially the time slot or close to it. All of them then talk about the exact same thing. The only thing you're watching one show over the other for is the host or the guests that episode. Then there's the focus on American politics which makes sense because it's an American show but it alienates people outside the country from watching it on YouTube. And due to it having a heavy focus on American politics, like a lot does now a days, a lot of people are exhausted and don't want to tune in. They want an escape not another reminder. Not to mention the fact that attention spans have become shorter and we've gotten accustomed to on-demand viewing.
Seth Meyers is probably the only host who could easily survive this. Fallon and Kimmel have way too much money dumped into their shows, granted Fallon has more shows so maybe more pull. Meyers runs everything on a shoestring and has a hard focus on politics, not splitting his attention. He focuses the majority of his non-Guest screentime on politics with stuff like A Closer Look as well so his show doesn't feel quite as pulled in two directions. The guest conversations are also super relaxed and casual, seeming to focus more on smaller celebrities than having constant big ones. He's already basically an Internet show so the transition for him is fine. Kimmel, Colbert and Fallon? They're too big, too grandiose, too expensive and now have far too little profit from the investment.
Edit: Downvote me all you want. This isn't some grand plan to try and silence Colbert. The only people who listen to him are left leaning to begin with. He's not reaching anyone new or changing minds. He's not being the single educating point. Him being cancelled on its own might have a point but considering every late night show has been talking about the death of Late Night for years? This is a reach. Enjoy your bizarre conspiratorial nonsense. I'll go shave with Occam.
Edit 2: I messed up and said Lily Singh's show wasn't replaced by another Late Show. It was. The Amber Ruffin Show.
Holy shit, killing off the late show? It's an institution
TBF it only started because Letterman got fucked over and CBS wanted to compete with the Tonight Show. It's been around for a long time but not nearly as long as -- okay I'm old.
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Nobody gives a shit about late night TV anymore but boomers. I mean the entire concept has been obsolete for years now due to streaming... Anyone under the age of 55 just watches clips on YouTube if anything from the show was worth watching.
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happened right after 16million lawsuit paid to trump by cbs, and after he criticized him.
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Everybody is saying this is politically motivated and I don't really think I buy that. Not ruling out the possibility entirely, though. Anything is possible but the logic just doesn't work out to me.
First, CBS paid Trump. Trump didn't pay them. They already capitulated by paying him off. Why would they capitulate further by getting rid of the most popular late night program if it was profitable?
Second, if this was political why are they keeping the show on until May of next year? Wouldn't trump want them to cancel it sooner?
Third, they're canceling the late show entirely. If they were canceling it to get someone critical of trump out of there why wouldn't they just replace colbert with someone more favorable to him?
Fourth, these shows have had declining ratings for years now and the writing has been on the wall for a long time that these shows were not going to be able to hang around for forever in today's streaming climate. I think more cancelation announcements are likely.
As much as I hate trump and wouldn't put something like this past him I really don't think it's likely that this has anything to do with him. Doing this for money reasons is fully in line with how terrible capitalism is for art and I can absolutely believe that this was some dumbfuck accounting decision.
CBS' parent company, Paramount, is in merger talks with Skydance. Mergers must be approved by the federal government. (I thought it was the FTC, but I see the FCC mentioned in articles about this ... don't want to dig into the weeds here. The feds must approve.)
This used to be done by a theoretically impartial board which would make decisions based on benefit to the public. Now there isn't even a pretense of caring about the public good. If Trump is happy with the tribute he receives, the merger will go through. If he's upset, it won't.
Yeah, CBS already folded and paid a huge fine as a "settlement" to a lawsuit they could almost certainly have won in court, but when you're trying to appease a mob boss you just have to keep paying.
It's true that putting the end date for Colbert a year out isn't as extreme an appeasement than just pulling him off the air, but there are many factors involved. The mob boss has declared that he is pleased with the outcome, so mission accomplished.
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It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch that Trump wanted the payout AND getting rid of Colbert as part of a bribe to allow the merger.
Keeping the show until May of next year may just be due to contracts that they have with Colbert and other employees of the show. This way they avoid any lawsuits, etc related to breach of contract.
Same with cancelling the show. It seems kind of like how instead of termination for no reason, companies "eliminate the position".
If the show had low ratings, I might agree, but it doesn't seem like that was the case. It's awfully suspicious given that we already know Paramount will bend over for Trump, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.
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TBH, I haven't watched late night television since we lost Letterman, Ferguson and O'Brien.
We will never again see the likes of:
or:
or:
If you prefer long form humor:
Ferguson was legend!
I feel like he just replaced Letterman a year or two ago and now the show is already ending. Where the hell did all the time go? How am I nearly 40 already?
If it makes you feel better, this has nothing to do with normal Hollywood celebrity shuffling and contractual disputes, this is entirely targeted political censorship. Colbert is/was the highest rated talk show on network television and was just nominated for an emmy.
That doesn't really confort me much, given that I just realized that it has been TEN YEARS since Letterman left! I hate how quickly time started moving when COVID first hit. Time never slowed back down, it never slowed back down!
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If he wants to continue he should just produce his show on his own and air it on YouTube. No one really watches broadcast tv anymore.
Jon Stewart should do the same.
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I'm kinda with this. He was the absolute best on the Colbert Report, but the second he went mainstream, he lost his luster. Hopefully he finds a new show to host where he can get back to his roots.
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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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