There appear to be extra questions than solutions following The Late Present with Stephen Colbert‘s cancellation by CBS. Whereas we get a couple of extra months of episodes, the long-running late evening franchise will probably be coming to an entire halt, with the host clearly disillusioned when he shared the information along with his viewers a couple of weeks in the past. Now, staffers at CBS are confessing their true emotions in regards to the present being axed, and why they consider there’s extra to the image than the community is saying.
An unnamed staffer at CBS spoke with Fox Information not too long ago and shared what they consider might have led to the present being axed. The community has been agency the Colbert resolution was purely monetary, and is consultant of the viewership decline throughout late evening all collectively.
Nevertheless, this staffer thinks that there’s extra to it, and that Colbert’s outspoken viewpoint on the present presidency might have one thing to do with it. They instructed Fox:
I’m having a tough time believing it. I’ve misplaced curiosity in excessive POVs on both finish, however I see this as a chilling of free speech and the timing appears to ship a powerful message that that is trigger and impact for what he stated in regards to the settlement.
For context, Paramount and Skydance have been making an attempt to push a merger via with the FCC. For this to be efficient, they want authorities approval to make sure the merger doesn’t classify as an unlawful monopoly. Concurrently, the Trump administration has been anti-Stephen Colbert, attributable to his sturdy political commentary typically in opposition of the federal government.
Clearly the CBS staffer and others consider this was a contributing issue to CBS axing the present, particularly after Colbert went after Paramount for settling a lawsuit with the president that resulted within the dad or mum firm paying $16 million to Donald Trump. This explicit staffer believes that interesting to the present administration is crucial to the merger being permitted, and eliminating Colbert’s platform would garner presidential help. They stated:
The CBS management might have cloaked it one way or the other, however decided to not. This one motion in opposition to Colbert will change a number of peoples’ willingness to offer their opinions or views – that’s how I see it.
Beforehand, a producer for David Letterman asserted that this all had rather a lot to do with Colbert being a risk to a company merger, and the WGA have known as an investigation into impact to find out if cancelling the present needed to do with limiting free speech. However, there have been mass stories of monetary points plaguing CBS and Paramount, therefore the merger. It has been famous The Late Present is allegedly shedding $40 million {dollars} a yr, regardless of being primary within the rankings in opposition to different conventional discuss exhibits, which is the road CBS appears to be towing.
Choices like these are difficult, and regardless of the true motive is (or causes are), one factor is for positive: It is a main shake up within the late evening panorama. What was as soon as a simple path to sturdy rankings and profitable commercials is shortly changing into much less sustainable, and we should see how this impacts the look of late evening tv going ahead.
The Late Present with Stephen Colbert will stay on the 2025 TV schedule till Might, so you’ll be able to nonetheless see the present weeknights at 11:30pm on CBS. Or, you can even revisit previous episodes now with a Paramount+ subscription.