I’ll note that Colbert has the highest viewership (and therefore ad revenue) in his time slot. This is almost surely about the Ellison family, which now controls CBS, wanting to silence him.
It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,
a purely financial decision.
Well, which is it?
Paramount is in the midst of closing a multibillion-dollar merger with the movie studio Skydance, a deal that requires approval from the Trump administration.
There it is…
The millions in bribe, erh I mean in a weak ass settlement, weren’t enough?
Got to kiss the ring, pay the king and shoot the jester too?
I can’t wait for the Lèse-Majestée laws to come next. /s
a purely financial decision
🤨 … riiiiiiiiight …
Remember: even in the most repressive autocracies, the leaders realised that jesters serve a purpose. Because if people can’t joke about how shitty things are at the present, they might see that as a sign that things are pretty bad, actually.
If the comedy is mucked with, that’s a sure sign that the politicians are getting a tad bit touchy.
They should just go crazy with Trump jokes now. If networks cancels the show earlier it will prove it was not for financial reasons. If it doesn’t they will have a great last season.
To be fair, I don’t know how much crazier they can go with Trump jokes than they were already…
I don’t get why you all are upset. The folks who are pointing out that the format is dying are correct, no matter how many down votes they get. I haven’t watched it in years, except for the occasional clip on the Internet, because I am an old man and can’t stay up that late.
But I think this might be mutual (or at least not as bad to Colbert as you all think.) They did Colbert a favor by simply letting his contract run out vs. finding a way to fire him:
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He can take the gloves off and really lean into the Trump bashing, because what are they gonna do, fire him early?
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He will have no problem finding something else to do. He might not even have to make a functioning business out of it, he has the money to go into semi-retirement and do some independent schtick. It’s a lot harder for the government to exert pressure on your boss to fire you if you don’t have one.
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They can both hype the final month/week/ episode. Remember that this show was originally Letterman’s baby, I am looking forward to him coming back once or twice and seeing the two of them skewer Trump (and CBS!) together. Those last episodes might send Trump’s ticker into the abyss. And CBS will make bank on it, all while technically being compliant to Trump’s conditions on that merger.
Colbert will continue to be outraged on camera, because that’s what his viewers want. And maybe he is pissed about being forced out. But I think he sees an opportunity here, and will take it.
It’s not about Colbert getting paid. That part is about the 200 people working for him.
And yeah, one should be outraged. He’s fired for political speech. That’s pretty damning for our country. Nobody is allowed to criticize dear leader.
Carson would like a word.
The point is, it is a fact that those late night shows are an anachronism. It is plausible that they would still be doing this even if Trump didn’t win, and wasn’t in a position to extort them. Heck, I think it would be more likely, because Colbert would have had less political material if our politics weren’t so bonkers.
It seems a plausible concern with Colbert, but doesn’t explain Conan or Corden.
So I think there’s some ambiguity here and some potential to look silly declaring this with absolute certainty and then Colbert ends up explaining he wanted to retire or move on to other projects while handing the show off to some other host, but the network decided not to bother with that show after the current host goes.
Meanwhile more unambiguously Trump has been restricting access to news media he doesn’t like and we can keep talking about that and other unambiguous things and even saying there’s a solid chance that appeasing Trump is to some extent causing this event, but certainty needs more information from authotive sources.
then Colbert ends up explaining
If he were gonna do that, it would have been yesterday when he made the announcement.
Colbert is rich, he’ll be alright. He’ll continue his comedy shtick in another format; there are enough media startups looking for content.
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Paramount is in the midst of closing a multibillion-dollar merger with the movie studio Skydance, a deal that requires approval from the Trump administration.
hmmmm….
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Trump can be part of the reason without being the entire reason, can’t he?
Also, Trump has made it clear in the past that he thinks it’s strange to do something for free, even if it’s a normal part of your job, like appointing somebody to an office. If the deal requires approval from Trump, then it’s completely on-brand for him to try to milk it for all it’s worth. And I am sure that he’s petty enough that he’d nix a deal for a personal squabble, as long as he wasn’t going to lose anything huge.
This doesn’t have the ring of a conspiracy theory. It’s literally all out in the open. It’s a prediction based on how Trump usually acts. Colbert might have been on the ropes and Trump’s team did the knockout blow. I guess we’ll know for sure if Trump did do it, because then he’d inevitably brag about it publicly. Or CBS maybe did this preemptively, expecting Trump to act like he always acts.
Bro watched Qatar gift Trump a $400m jet and host a $1.5m per plate dinner, then was like “corruption in order to appease Trump??? ReDdIt CoNsPiRaCy!!! I must reach for a much less plausible explanation!!!” 🤡
We both know this is the Ellison family killing a show to appease Trump, a show that they also don’t politically agree with, in order to complete the merger that Trump’s administration must approve. In this poltical climate, you’re just playing dumb.
Well yeah, some people cannot handle their opinions being challenged, but you are also guilty of insisting on a hardline that seems unlikely to be the only explanation. If media companies are looking to axe people, it makes perfect sense they would pick someone who is not growing while also deplatforming someone who speaks against their ideals. So Colbert lost almost 1/4 of viewership over 5 years, but how does that compare to Kimmel or Fallon viewership? Without a baseline for comparison, your statistics are just arbitrary. The Times even said that ad revenue is about half for all Late Night shows compared to 2018, but if there are also half as many shows, then the profit/loss should be similar.
Overall, I don’t believe anyone would cancel a show that still draws over 1mill viewers for “financial reasons”. Redo the budget, sure, but not cut the entire program.
Edit: well written and reasoned though. The comment was a good conversation contribution. It’s unfortunate downvotes always represent agree/disagree instead of productive/counterproductive.
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I wonder how many people are shifting to watching that content in clips instead of the whole show. The monologue, little bits, individual interviews. People may prefer to just watch the sort of clip and skip the rest, which is easier to do in YouTube instead of loading the episode up and seeking around.
If that were significant, it would suggest a different production approach, since there’s not much point in producing it in a continuous bit. Also the best person for a monologue may not be the best person to conduct an interview.
Of course it’s worth wondering why the most successful would be the next to fall, rather than the least. The other cancelled shows were generally the low performers. Maybe because it’s more expensive, or maybe because of appeasing Trump. The decline might have made it an easier decision, but they may have wanted to grease the wheels if the deal a bit
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Recap and redundant content, oh look a musical guest… but I can hear any of those and way more on demand. An interview with a celebrity, who if I cared I could watch a ton of elsewhere. Of course some interview better than others, and seeing a Jon Stewart interview is worthwhile, but not sure if I’m in the mood to watch a monologue at the same time I’m in the mood to watch an interview. Which is really the big thing about these shows is that it’s a long set of not really connected content that used to make sense with broadcast television but makes less and less sense with on-demand video dominating.
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That was some good rounding out of the data, thank you. I see better where you are coming from. Colbert being 15M per year is beyond crazy. I had no expectation of his salary being that high. Unless they were using him to pull more subscribers for other shows there is definitely no reason to have that salary on top of the production costs.
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Tell your friends
That doesn’t solve the demonetization problem that is facing almost all commercial left-of-center speech in the US. Unless people can make a living at it, there won’t be much of it.
He can. 10 million YouTube subscribers if comedy central or apple don’t pick it up. Linustechtips has a similar sub count and staffing
Similar staffing? 200 people work on Colbert’s show. I agree he can downsize and move to an online only model, but it will definitely negatively impact the quality of the show.
Weird right. Linus has labs and well over 100 employees now
explains the recent pump in my old BTC and ETH assets from 2021, lol.
I’m really confused how these things are related?
Has to be a reply to the wrong thread. There’s no earthly way those two things are connected.
Colbert getting cancelled is good for Bitcoin. /s
Somehow replied to wrong post, oops!
Well now I’m really curious what you were originally replying to, that could be affecting prices, haha
Shut up spammer
