On Thursday, CBS introduced that it was going to cancel The Late Present With Stephen Colbert after Colbert’s contract ends in Could 2026. The information comes at a politically fraught second for CBS and its mum or dad firm, Paramount International. It’s additionally the capper on the lengthy arc of late-night political comedy, a style Colbert was instrumental in constructing and which now, lastly, seems to be on its final legs.
In a press release, CBS stated its choice to finish The Late Present — which started with David Letterman as host in 1993 — was “purely monetary.”
“We’re proud that Stephen referred to as CBS residence,” the CBS assertion stated. “That is purely a monetary choice towards a difficult backdrop in late evening. It isn’t associated in any method to the present’s efficiency, content material or different issues taking place at Paramount.”
That final line, that The Late Present’s cancellation has nothing to do with “different issues taking place at Paramount,” appears immediately geared toward tamping down hypothesis about CBS and Paramount International’s political motivations for cancelling a decades-long fixture of community tv.
Paramount International is presently trying to merge with Skydance Media, and firm management has been performing as if they’re involved that President Donald Trump would possibly attempt to block the merger. Earlier this month, CBS and 60 minutes introduced a $16 million settlement in its lawsuit with Trump over the modifying of a phase about former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — a unprecedented concession for a media firm in a case that consultants agree CBS would have doubtless gained in court docket. The longtime government producer of 60 Minutes additionally resigned earlier this 12 months, citing threats to his journalistic independence.
Days earlier than the cancellation, Colbert stated on his present, “I’m offended” by the settlement. “I don’t know if something — something — will restore my belief on this firm. However, simply taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would assist,” he quipped. The payout, he added, was a “huge fats bribe.”
Colbert’s ousting feels symbolic, not simply of CBS’s obvious choice to bow right down to Trump, however of the tip of late-night political comedy as a style.
Two days later, experiences say, CBS advised Colbert they had been canceling his present.
The community’s acknowledged cause for canceling the present has the sheen of believability. It’s true that the late-night ecosystem is struggling. Nonetheless, Colbert’s present has persistently led the rankings for its time slot. CBS and Paramount International, The Atlantic contended on Thursday, now not deserve the advantage of the doubt.
On Reality Social, Trump — a frequent goal of Colbert’s jokes — is celebrating.
“I completely love that Colbert obtained fired,” Trump posted Friday morning. “His expertise was even lower than his rankings.”
Colbert’s ousting feels symbolic, not simply of CBS’s obvious choice to bow right down to Trump, however of the tip of late-night political comedy as a style. Certain, John Oliver’s Final Week Tonight continues gamely on HBO, however the form of late-night present that felt pressing and essential 20 years in the past — the stalwart outraged host cracking clever in regards to the foibles of the corrupt federal authorities and the credulous media ecosystem that enabled it — has been fading for a very long time. Now, its second is coming to an in depth.
Jon Stewart and the rise of political comedy
The late-night political comedy present as we all know it was developed and perfected by The Day by day Present beneath Jon Stewart over the course of the 2000 presidential election. Because the query of whether or not Al Gore or George W. Bush had gained the electoral school wended its method by way of the Supreme Courtroom, The Day by day Present took on a central function: Stewart and his colleagues, together with Colbert, had been the TV personalities greatest geared up to speak about how essentially bizarre and complicated the entire thing was.
After Bush emerged victorious, The Day by day Present grew to become much more essential. Their ability set was uniquely suited to the Bush years. Whereas the administration took on a pious pose of compassionate conservatism, it was mendacity to the American individuals and embroiling the nation in an limitless overseas battle. Stewart and his cohorts knew how you can name Bush out on their hypocrisy and be humorous about it, too. They had been younger and edgy, making some of the thrilling exhibits on tv. It felt as in the event that they had been telling the reality in a time when nobody else was.
Stewart all the time insisted that he wasn’t an actual journalist and The Day by day Present wasn’t an actual information present. Nonetheless, a 2007 ballot from the Pew Analysis Middle discovered Stewart tied for fourth place in a listing of America’s most trusted journalists, together with Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Slightly, and Anderson Cooper. For plenty of liberals, particularly younger ones, Stewart completely was a journalist, and so had been the comedians he elevated.
In 2005, Colbert developed his personal Day by day Present spin-off, The Colbert Report. Much more biting than The Day by day Present, The Colbert Report noticed the host enjoying a parodic model of Invoice O’Reilly, then the largest star on Fox Information. Like O’Reilly, Colbert’s character was pompous and swaggering, lapping up his viewers’s applause and pontificating on “truthiness” and the American dream. In 2006, he headlined the White Home Correspondent’s Dinner in character and ripped into Bush on to his face, in a second that Vainness Honest would say turned Colbert right into a “people hero for the left.”
With The Colbert Report an accepted establishment, Colbert and Stewart developed a double act. They held a 2010 Rally to Restore Worry and/or Sanity, with Stewart pleading for sanity and Colbert for concern. On reflection, these years would characterize the zenith of their reputation.
Colbert was the primary Stewart acolyte to get a Day by day Present spin-off, however his wouldn’t be the final. John Oliver obtained his personal present in 2014. Samantha Bee obtained hers in 2015. Hasan Minhaj obtained his in 2018. The 2010s noticed The Day by day Present mannequin of news-focused political comedy unfold throughout the panorama of tv, now not a scrappy upstart, however an establishment, what we understood as what late-night tv was imagined to appear to be.
They couldn’t critique hidebound media establishments for failing to do their jobs anymore, as a result of now they had been media establishments.
There have been two huge issues with all that success. The primary was that the Bush years had been over. In 2008, Barack Obama grew to become president, and whereas his administration had loads of foibles for liberal comics to skewer, the central joke of the hypocrisy of neoconservatism was now not accessible to them. The urgency of their comedy, the sense that they had been assembly a second as nobody else might, started to fade away.
The second downside was that success meant that The Day by day Present model of comedy was now not punching solely up. They couldn’t critique hidebound media establishments for failing to do their jobs anymore, as a result of now they had been media establishments. What else might it imply when, in 2015, Colbert took over The Late Present and have become the face of CBS’s late-night lineup?
How late-night tv misplaced its chew
When Trump gained the presidential election in 2016, a part of the obtained knowledge was that this is able to be nice for comedy. Trump, in any case, was a joke. He would supply all these Day by day Present graduates loads of fodder for his or her routines.
As an alternative, liberal comedy faltered. The ability set they’d developed for the Bush years, the ripping away of pious lies to disclose the violent reality beneath, had no explicit impact on a determine as shameless and easy as Trump.
One after the other, the exhibits of the Day by day Present alums started to topple. Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj went in 2020. Full Frontal With Samantha Bee left in 2022. On The Day by day Present itself, hosted from 2015 to 2022 by Trevor Noah, rankings toppled.
Colbert dropped his character to host The Late Present, however he criticized Trump typically and vociferously as himself. All the identical, his work didn’t really feel significantly biting or pressing anymore. Younger individuals, significantly younger males, had been extra prone to discover right-wing comedy to be edgy and transgressive.
But in some way, with a president this thin-skinned, and a company management this obsequious, Stephen Colbert has been rendered threatening as soon as once more.
“If one thing was the peak of style 20 years in the past, that just about inversely makes it much less prone to appear hip and funky in the intervening time,” the media critic Matt Sienkiewicz advised me in 2022. “There’s a rebelliousness in the way in which individuals consider this right-wing comedy, proper? Even when it truly is regressive and pointing again to outdated dominant concepts. However it may be branded as being the alternative of Stephen Colbert crying about January 6 throughout his monologue, which may be very a lot not cool to the kids.”
That’s a part of what’s so putting about Paramount’s choice to cancel Colbert’s present in an obvious try to curry favor with Trump: Colbert’s work hasn’t felt harmful in a very long time. We’re a great distance from that 2006 White Home Correspondent’s Dinner, when Colbert delivered his jokes to a tense and scandalized crowd and Bush walked away livid. Colbert is the definition of a mainstream comic now, and it doesn’t appear as if anybody has any illusions that the jokes he cracks in between celeb glad-handing and crowd work are culturally elementary.
But in some way, with a president this thin-skinned, and a company management this obsequious, Stephen Colbert has been rendered threatening as soon as once more. The person who’s too uncool for youngsters is, beneath this administration, simply harmful sufficient to fireside.
