CBS to Cancel ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Citing ‘Financial Decision’

Bitmap Frogs said:
By definition they are comedians. The fact they intermix their comedy with their political views does not change that.

A lot of posters in this thread are happy because a famous person with a mighty high pulpit that bats for the other team lost that pulpit. It's not like they're trying to hide it or anything, it's a gloating thread.
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Oh yea I'm definitely gloating. Fuck this guy, he sucks. That said this is a trick that a lot of these guys pulled. Stewart did it in the early 2000s. They are political activists when people like what they want to hear, and just stupid funnyman clowns when people call them out on it. And I say this as someone who really likes Stewart. And even Stewart said a bunch of stuff that made Colbert shit his pants a few years ago:



Now why would this bother a comedian, Stewart was saying some hilarious and right-on-target shit, well it's because Colbert was doing the work of the Democrat party and was ordered to push the vaccine.
 
diffusionx said:
Oh yea I'm definitely gloating. Fuck this guy, he sucks. That said this is a trick that a lot of these guys pulled. Stewart did it in the early 2000s. They are political activists when people like what they want to hear, and just stupid funnyman clowns when people call them out on it. And I say this as someone who really likes Stewart. And even Stewart said a bunch of stuff that made Colbert shit his pants a few years ago:



Now why would this bother a comedian, Stewart was saying some hilarious and right-on-target shit, well it's because Colbert was doing the work of the Democrat party and was ordered to push the vaccine.
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kruis said:
Colbert hasn't been funny since he started hosting The Late Show. In "The Colbert Report" he parodied right wing pundits the entire show, but there the show was actually funny and even Republicans could enjoy it because it made fun of the fringe elements at the right, not 50% of the country. His Late Show monologues were so much worse, it felt like political propaganda all of the time. Never did you feel he was taking aims at both sides of the aisle. Such a let down after the terrific "Colbert Report".

That political one-sidedness made Colbert absolutely insufferable. Bill Maher is a lifelong Democrat, his TDS is off the chart, but he's so much better at trying to find a middle ground where both sides can enjoy or get mad at his takes (although often not always at the same time).
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Thank you for validating my opinion that this is just about politics and that you've reached a point that you cannot process comedy that's not ideologically compatible with you.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
Thank you for validating my opinion that this is just about politics and that you've reached a point that you cannot process comedy that's not ideologically compatible with you.
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It's not comedy. That's the point. Watch the clip I posted. Colbert is clearly uncomfortable with Stewart working on comedy because it goes against Democrat dogma.

A guy like Jay Leno, say what you will about him, could crack a joke about Clinton just as easily as he could about Bush. Colbert can't do that because he was running a Democrat propaganda operation.
 
Bill Maher has a successful one a week late night, and he does have a political panel, and he still make fun of both sides.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
By definition they are comedians. The fact they intermix their comedy with their political views does not change that.

A lot of posters in this thread are happy because a famous person with a mighty high pulpit that bats for the other team lost that pulpit. It's not like they're trying to hide it or anything, it's a gloating thread.
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The problem I have with these shows is that many people use them as their news outlets but don't hold them accountable when they make a mistake, unlike the actual news. "They're comedians/they're just making jokes" is used to shield them from criticism. It dumbs down the political discourse into taking cheap shots at whoever's on the other side and I think it sucks regardless of which partisan viewpoint the comedian is taking.
 
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ADiTAR said:
Bill Maher has a successful one a week late night, and he does have a political panel, and he still make fun of both sides.
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Maher has great moments, although he has a real small audience... I guess he has blackmail material on the HBO higher ups, otherwise I can't imagine how he's still got a show.
 
diffusionx said:
It's not comedy. That's the point. Watch the clip I posted. Colbert is clearly uncomfortable with Stewart working on comedy because it goes against Democrat dogma.

A guy like Jay Leno, say what you will about him, could crack a joke about Clinton just as easily as he could about Bush. Colbert can't do that because he was running a Democrat propaganda operation.
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But that's irrelevant, they're still comedians and most of their output is comedy, that they decide to bat for a team or another is their choosing.

Rran said:
The problem I have with these shows is that many people use them as their news outlets but don't hold them accountable when they make a mistake, unlike the actual news. "They're comedians/they're just making jokes" is used to shield them from criticism. It dumbs down the political discourse into taking cheap shots at whoever's on the other side and I think it sucks regardless of which partisan viewpoint the comedian is taking.
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Yeah, but actual news is a thing that barely exists anymore since they've been superseded by entertainment-news and opinion broadcasting. By most accounts BBC News is the most ideologically neutral news site out there at this time, so there you go.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
Maher has great moments, although he has a real small audience... I guess he has blackmail material on the HBO higher ups, otherwise I can't imagine how he's still got a show.
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Since you're so focused on the political aspect, maybe the only reason Maher currently has a show was political posturing. Saturate late night with left leaning programming in an attempt to make the audience feel that is how everyone feels. Maher is obviously left leaning, along with Kimmel and Colbert. Strangely all 3 of them were able to get new contracts late in the Biden presidency that all expire in 2026. None of them had exceptional ratings when the contracts were signed yet they were paid way more than should have based on income from their shows. Looks like paid propaganda against Trump not only didn't work, it lost them a ton of money.

Colbert will be just the first to announce the end of their late night shows. It sounds like when Kimmel signed his contract, he knew it would be his last. The ratings don't justify the cost.
 
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It's kind of funny to realize that despite the politicization of this decision by everyone with an agenda on every imaginable side, the cold hard reality is that it was a money-losing boondoggle and CBS really did make a financial decision here
 
It's nice to see the breakdown for this shitshow.

It costs 100 MILLION dollars a year to have a guy sit behind a desk and read lines from a teleprompter. Why? Because they have 20 writers [what the fuck] and 200 [TWO HUNDRED] people on staff.

Absolutely insane.
 
I'm from Europe and I never found this guy funny or the others. There is nothing comic about him. You need to have that comic body mechanism, manierism in your DNA that glow around, to make people burst into laughter. These kind of shows need hosts/writers like Leslie Nielsen, Mel Brooks, Jim Carrey, Louis de Funès, etc. 🤷🏻🙃
 
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Bitmap Frogs said:
Your definition of actual comedy is comedy that puts forward a conservative view. Babylon Bee much eh?
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No it's not. But nice try. I prefer comedy that is inherently apolitical and/or equally rags on both sides. Or quite frankly, leaves politics out of it. Jay Leno was mentioned as someone I've enjoyed quite a bit in the past because of his willingness to take jabs at everyone. Bill Maher, also mentioned, does the same these days and I enjoy Bill lot. I've also enjoyed plenty of comedy at the expense of conservatives. But there's a difference between what guys like Colbert, Kimmel, and Oliver peddle versus actual comedians and/or comedy using someone in the political arena as a punchline.

Regardless of politics, my disdain for a guy like Oliver is that he is a smarmy twat who's entire schtick is largely based on lies to try and boost his ratings and convince his audience that he's some arbiter of truth that dumb people (according to him) just haven't been able to grasp. I haven't seen his show a lot, but when I have and he's covered topics I am quite knowledgeable on, it's clear to anyone who knows anything about the topics he's discussing that his arguments and "humor" ignore facts, take clips out of context and/or use outdated material to try and make a point at someone else's expense all while trying to position what's arguing as "factual" and anyone disagreeing with him is a complete moron. Despite the fact, the actual arguments he is presenting to claim moral and intellectual superiority are largely inaccurate, factually incorrect, and dishonest. Meanwhile, the audience laps it up and treats it as gospel. All of these clowns like Oliver and Colbert are doing the same thing.

That's not comedy. Sorry it's not. It's propaganda. I know you'll disagree and claim I only want "conservative" comedy, whatever that means. You'd be wrong, but you're entitled to your wrong opinion.
 
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Bitmap Frogs said:
so don't go complaining about politics when this whole thread is a stealth politics "someone who's not on my political side is getting sacked and we are laughing about it"
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Did I specify which political side I was mentioning "bro"? No, I did not. I said that people were bringing politics into it. THAT MEANS BOTH SIDES.

Perhaps if you bothered reading beyond the first line of my post you would have realized I was pointing out that politics, left or right, had nothing to do with it. That it is, in fact, financial and changes in media tastes.

SJRB said:
Absolutely insane.
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What's truly insane is that Colbert's salary alone was 15% of their entire annual budget.

I also can't help but wonder how much it costs them per year to maintain the Ed Sullivan Theater.
 
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Bitmap Frogs said:
But that's irrelevant, they're still comedians and most of their output is comedy, that they decide to bat for a team or another is their choosing.
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No, the propaganda is the point of the exercise. The 'comedy' is to sweeten the pill.

This is why they have subsidised these unprofitable shows and 'news' channels for so long, and why that may be harder to maintain now that their slush fund (one of them at least) has been shut down.

Also, the idea that there can be a thread about a political operative like Colbert losing his platform without the thread being political in nature is somewhat optimistic. Having to pretend he is not first and foremost a professional propagandist would be just as political.
 
What some of y'all gloating aren't getting is that they're not firing Colbert. They're cancelling the SHOW ... There won't be a "Late Night with" anyone next year. The entire show is going bye bye. No replacement.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
But that's irrelevant, they're still comedians and most of their output is comedy, that they decide to bat for a team or another is their choosing.



Yeah, but actual news is a thing that barely exists anymore since they've been superseded by entertainment-news and opinion broadcasting. By most accounts BBC News is the most ideologically neutral news site out there at this time, so there you go.
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BBC is definitely not neutral.
 
DeafTourette said:
What some of y'all gloating aren't getting is that they're not firing Colbert. They're cancelling the SHOW ... There won't be a "Late Night with" anyone next year. The entire show is going bye bye. No replacement.
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Literally going out with a whimper. The Tonight Show isn't far behind. SNL will be dead within a decade. Once Lorne kicks the bucket or at least retires, it's gone.

I hate what the show became under Colbert but it's also a little sad to see how far it fell post-Letterman. But even a 40-something Letterman in his prime wouldn't be able to keep it afloat these days. People just don't watch that stuff anymore. Everyone is scrolling social media on their phones in the evenings now.

The entire legacy media is dying and it's weird to think about. Once the boomers are completely gone, TV as we know it, with channels and scheduled programming, may no longer exist at all. There just won't be an audience anymore. The only thing that can keep it afloat is sports, and even that is declining pretty much everywhere outside of the NFL.
 
I haven't seen the show in a few years, but I found it funny enough once upon a time.

Shame that it's going away for what looks like political convenience rather than profit.
 
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Let's face it, talk shows like this is a relic of the past catering to shrinking viewers and most have moved on to shows they find more align to their taste, from podcasters like Joe Rogan to IRL streamers.
 
The funny thing about talk shows too is that their viewership ratings are likely skewed shallow.

As some streamers would bring up (it makes sense), you probably got a bunch of people tuned into a talk show at midnight and not even watching it. They leave the TV on after 11 pm news and doze off to sleep while the TV is on.

On the other hand, there' likely going to be more serious eyeballs following a prime time TV show or Sunday afternoon NFL as people are awake.
 
DeafTourette said:
Right. Oliver and his team actually DO research! Calling what they present as lies is ... Otherworldly.
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Yeah. I may not like his political leanings but his show is usually well researched. As someone who grew up in a mobile home park (albeit a very posh one compared to what the name "trailer park" conjures up [we all had big yards, a massive community pool, and a huge playground for example]), Oliver's episode years ago about the pitfalls of buying mobile homes was spot on.

In fact, his part about investment groups buying up parks is painfully accurate because the park I grew up in was bought from the family who owned it back in 2005 by an investment group and since then they've: closed all the amenities, restructured the entire park to cut yards in half so to add more homes, sold a third of it off displacing dozens of families so it could be developed for commercial property, and raised rent 8 times in 20 years. The place I grew up is unrecognizable.

 
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Aesius said:
Literally going out with a whimper. The Tonight Show isn't far behind. SNL will be dead within a decade. Once Lorne kicks the bucket or at least retires, it's gone.

I hate what the show became under Colbert but it's also a little sad to see how far it fell post-Letterman. But even a 40-something Letterman in his prime wouldn't be able to keep it afloat these days. People just don't watch that stuff anymore. Everyone is scrolling social media on their phones in the evenings now.

The entire legacy media is dying and it's weird to think about. Once the boomers are completely gone, TV as we know it, with channels and scheduled programming, may no longer exist at all. There just won't be an audience anymore. The only thing that can keep it afloat is sports, and even that is declining pretty much everywhere outside of the NFL.
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I feel like if we still had this sort of thing during prime years Letterman people would still watch



Too bad the media completely nerfed itself in order to fulfill the mandates of DEI, they literally destroyed themselves
 
Unknown Soldier said:
I feel like if we still had this sort of thing during prime years Letterman people would still watch



Too bad the media completely nerfed itself in order to fulfill the mandates of DEI, they literally destroyed themselves
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How far the show has fallen since Letterman. Colbert was only funny when he was pretending to be a conservative. They used to do comedy, not politics. Late night seemed to have peaked during the Letterman and Leno days. These idiots now just push left politics and cry and bitch.
 
MayauMiao said:
Let's face it, talk shows like this is a relic of the past catering to shrinking viewers and most have moved on to shows they find more align to their taste, from podcasters like Joe Rogan to IRL streamers.
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Not only that, but the Hollywood system isn't even what it used to be to create the guest pipeline that the shows needed to stay relevant. Who the hell would they even book these days, Pedro Pascal 5 nights a week to shill everything he is in?
 
The only thing worse than Colbert is Kimmel and Fallon. These shows are all remarkably unwatchable and if you do watch them I don't want to know you.
 
a multicultural team of v said:
Not only that, but the Hollywood system isn't even what it used to be to create the guest pipeline that the shows needed to stay relevant. Who the hell would they even book these days, Pedro Pascal 5 nights a week to shill everything he is in?
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I never thought of that. I've heard people say there's no celebrities anymore and it's probably true since no one recognizes anybody at the Oscars now. I think I only know who Pedro Pascal is because he's pushed so much... No idea why. Not one.

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diffusionx said:
Oliver and Colbert are not comedians in any sense of the word
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Colbert was doing sketches on Comedy Central (and had a satirical show where he was playing a Conservative), and Oliver is an actor who had a recurring role in Community, so I'm pretty sure they are in line with the definition of comedians.
 
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Baemono said:
They basically cancelled the whole show that was running since the early '90s, not even only about replacing Colbert
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I think they know it's dead. I do think a different format with a young host can help, stopping with celecs and politics and just having something fun to watch.
 
Unknown Soldier said:
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Pretty sure nobody watching CBS is what caused this in the first place. These people are just completely vacuous on how the world works. This show has a net negative of 40 million dollars. Every year.

Imagine sitting at home minding your own business and this lunatic calls you and orders you to stop watching CBS, lmao.
 
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