CBS says their decision to shut down The Late Show with Stephen Colbert next May is a financial one. It is, but perhaps not for the reasons they suggest.
True, late night talk shows are not the oil wells they were back when Johnny Carson and David Letterman ended the night for millions of viewers. Few of us watch them live anymore, narrowing ad revenues for same day broadcasts. Sure, millions more watch clips on-line over breakfast or whenever. Colbert, in fact, just had his best watch time this year on YouTube and other digital platforms.
That revenue adds up. The on-line platform The Measure released figures Friday showing that Colbert is still a major driver of ad reach for CBS. They claim his show delivered the most reach of any broadcast program during the late-night window (11 p.m.-2 a.m.). Brands, they calculate, have spent an estimated $32.2 million in advertising on Colbert so far this year, making it CBS’s No. 16 program by outlay.
Paramount/CBS, however, just gave half of that to Trump to settle what many saw as a meritless, nuisance claim related to a 60 Minutes report. Colbert saw it as a bribe and said so on the air this week; 48 hours later he was announcing that The Late Show was being cancelled.
A far bigger financial matter at play here is Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydancer. Billions are at stake and Paramount needs the Federal Communications Commission to approve the $8 billion deal. Trump has threatened to pull TV licenses in the past to get what he wants. The billionaire at Skydancer is apparently pro-Trump. That Colbert wound up as political cannon fodder in the middle of all this is a reasonable assumption.
Besides, Trump has nothing but contempt for most late night talk show hosts. He had already called for CBS to “terminate” Colbert’s contract. He routinely refers to Colbert, Kimmel and others as “total losers.” He threw even Jimmy Fallon under the bus yesterday, calling him a “Moron” who “ruined the once great Tonight Show.”
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Trump aside, are nightly network talks shows simply no longer economically viable? Even NBC has cut The Tonight Show back to four nights a week. Jimmy Kimmel’s contract runs out at the end of next season, and that’s when Colbert’s was also due to expire. The late night landscape may have changed just as much if Trump was never re-elected. More at issue, however, is what kind of a lasting chill will this administration have on free speech in general and especially on the age-old practice of political criticism? Who will hold powerful feet to the fire if the comedians are as muzzled as the lawmakers and judges?
These were some of the questions I was asked today after speaking with more than a dozen CBC radio hosts across Canada as well with private network radio interviewers in Toronto, Ottawa and the Niagara region. I also appeared briefly with Roger Petersen on CTV News Channel. You can link to that video report here.
