July 21, 2025
The community claims it’s canceling The Every day Present for monetary causes, however the actual backside line right here is Trump appeasement.
Advert Coverage
Stephen Colbert on the set of “The Late Present” final week
(Picture by Scott Kowalchyk/CBS by way of Getty Photographs)
Final Thursday, President Trump, determined for the nation to cease speaking about his shut private buddy and frequent journey companion Jeffrey Epstein, obtained a momentary reprieve. He scored a pair of main victories over his critics, actual and imagined, and additional reshaped the mainstream media panorama alongside the strains of his private vendettas. In Washington, Congress lastly lower federal funding for the Company for Public Broadcasting (PBS) and Nationwide Public Radio (NPR), a objective of the best for many years. The president’s loathing for PBS and NPR is such that he threatened to main any Republican who pushed again towards it. “Any Republican that votes to permit this monstrosity to proceed broadcasting won’t have my help or Endorsement,” Trump introduced.
To nobody’s shock, congressional Republicans did as informed. They did so even their rural constituents would be the hardest hit—individuals who rely upon these stations for earthquake and flood warnings, versus the elite coastal socialists the president imagines because the community’s sole demographic. That very same day in New York, Trump obtained a big bonus. The Late Present’s Stephen Colbert, Trump’s most extremely rated late-night comedy critic, was fired. Simply three days earlier, Colbert had roasted his company bosses, CBS and its dad or mum firm, Paramount. Paramount had paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump filed towards 60 Minutes whereas a deal for the Ellison household’s Skydance to purchase Paramount hung within the stability at Trump’s Federal Communications Fee (FCC). Colbert quipped, “I consider this type of difficult monetary settlement with a sitting authorities official has a technical identify in authorized circles: It’s ‘large fats bribe!’ ”
Days later, Colbert obtained the phrase he was getting the axe: on the finish of his current contract in Could 2026, CBS will let him go. What’s extra, community executives mentioned that The Late Present itself, which David Letterman based in 1993, would stop to exist. Final March, Invoice Maher, a generally harsh critic of the president, flew out to Mar-a-Lago on the behest of Child Rock to have dinner with Trump and bend the knee. Notably, Trump supporter David Zaslav’s WB Discovery properties, together with CNN, have gotten off comparatively calmly in comparison with ABC, CBS, NPR, and CPB in Trump’s media vendettas. Invoice Maher nonetheless has a present. Stephen Colbert, who didn’t bend the knee, doesn’t.
We nonetheless don’t know if CBS was pressured into firing Colbert or just provided him up as a sacrifice to appease Trump’s FCC. Regardless of the timing, and the billion-dollar stakes across the Skydance deal, CBS government George Cheeks denied the transfer was political and insisted the cancellation was “purely a monetary determination.” Taking CBS at its phrase for the second, Cheeks isn’t incorrect. Late night time discuss exhibits have struggled to show a revenue for his or her company house owners for years. They continue to be costly relics of an extended gone three-network broadcast world. When James Corden left The Late Late Present in 2023, which aired after Colbert’s, CBS canceled it, too. The community changed it with a rebooted, cheaply produced comedy sport present, After Midnight. Colbert’s rankings nonetheless run far forward of his two chief rivals, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and NBC’s Jimmy Fallon, however late night time’s advert revenues have steadily dropped for years. Seven years in the past, late night time cleared $439 million; final yr, that whole was lower in half, to $220 million. In the meantime, over at Fox Information, Greg Gutfeld’s late-night entry Gutfeld!, which fits on an hour earlier, manages aggressive numbers with nothing however 5 individuals sitting on chairs guffawing at its host’s makes an attempt to make the phrase “Nazi” enjoyable.
However whereas the monetary freefall of late-night is actual, so is the exact political timing of the Colbert determination. CBS went to nice lengths to keep away from apologizing or admitting wrongdoing on behalf of 60 Minutes when it paid Trump his $16 million. If CBS needs to keep away from embarrassing staff who did nothing incorrect, why hearth Colbert simply days after his broadly quoted remark? By calling his firing a “purely monetary determination,” CBS executives wish to distance themselves from the impression that they have been solely following the stability sheets. They needed to know their timing would seem like extra groveling. They may have waited one other week. Why announce three days after Colbert attacked them and Trump? What’s the hurry?
The hurry is that Colbert known as the payoff “a giant fats bribe” on Monday, and Skydance’s David Ellison met with the FCC’s Brendan Carr on Tuesday. On the assembly, an FCC submitting states that Ellison and his lawyer “mentioned Skydance’s dedication to unbiased journalism and its embrace of various viewpoints, ideas that can guarantee CBS’s editorial decision-making displays the various ideological views of American viewers.”
Present Situation
Maybe it’s simply one other unbelievable scheduling coincidence, however that promise of unbiased journalism got here days after Ellison sat down on the Allen and Co. retreat in Solar Valley for early acquisition talks with Bari Weiss for her arch conservative website, The Free Press. Because the media business e-newsletter Puck requested: “Is it sound enterprise or simply savvy advantage signaling in a Trump 2.0 world?” One can ask the identical query about firing Colbert. With solely tea leaves to learn for now, it positive seems to be just like the Skydance media behemoth we’re about to get—with Larry Ellison, a longtime Trump supporter and Elon Musk Twitter investor hovering over it—will take a decidedly far-right tilt. And if it seems something in any respect like Ellison’s Twitter funding, it can even be a very ugly tilt.
If Paramount thinks caving, paying up, and Trump-focused MAGA advantage signaling will assist grease the wheels to place Skydance’s deal via, then Colbert’s firing produced an on the spot return on funding. Trump took to Reality Social Friday morning to crow his delight about CBS’ purely monetary determination. “I completely love that Colbert’ obtained fired. His expertise was even lower than his rankings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is subsequent. Has even much less expertise than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is healthier than all of them mixed, together with the Moron on NBC who ruined the as soon as nice Tonight Present.”
CBS—lengthy identified amongst business watchers as “the Tiffany community”—has an extended historical past of silencing expertise with loud, liberal opinions. With Colbert’s firing, it was as if the community’s late founder William S. Paley had risen from the grave to hang-out his previous dwelling. The very best identified instance stays Paley cancelling The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour not onlyfor its anti-Vietnam Conflict and religiously themed satire, but in addition for reserving leftists like Harry Belafonte and Joan Baez. However CBS’s historical past of suppressing dissident views goes again additional than that. In June 1939, one other top-rated CBS comedian, Eddie Cantor, appeared on the New York World’s Truthful to handle a Hadassah assembly of hundreds. He used the second to lash out towards the rise of home fascism and antisemitism in the US after 900 Jewish refugees from Hitler on the SS St. Louis have been despatched again to Europe by our immigration authorities. “Except we’re terribly cautious, until we combat for all times and liberty, the entire enterprise now happening over there will be transferred over right here,” Cantor mentioned. “Some individuals informed me I appear to be getting fairly panicky. They don’t know what vital industrialists are behind this enterprise, behind Senator Reynolds and Father Coughlin and Common Moseley and George Deatherage. These males are the enemies of not solely the Jews however of all America.” Democratic Senator Robert Rice Reynolds got here from North Carolina, as did Cantor’s sponsor at CBS, RJR Reynolds Tobacco. Cantor misplaced his present inside two weeks.
George Clooney lately reprised his function as CBS Information correspondent Edward R. Murrow for Broadway in Good Evening, and Good Luck. After scoring a physique blow towards Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954, the polarizing Murrow was exiled by Paley out of CBS’s primetime lineup to sporadic appearances on Sunday afternoons. Clooney’s play tells the story of Murrow’s public demise as a lot as McCarthy’s.
In February 1982Display screen Actors Guild president and star of CBS’ Lou Grant, Ed Asner, appeared on the steps of the State Dept. in Washington, DC. Asner stood alongside actors and filmmakers Howard Hesseman, Lee Grant, Penny Marshall, Bert Schneider, and Ralph “Pa Walton” Waite. He offered a test for $25,000 to “Medical Assist for El Salvador,” which went to the rebels who opposed the right-wing authorities backed by the Reagan administration. They hoped to boost $1 million sooner or later. A reporter requested Asner if he would help a communist authorities in El Salvador. He mentioned sure, as long as that authorities was democratically elected. Lou Grant sponsors like Kimberly-Clark quickly pulled out of the present. CBS canceled it in Could. The corporate pointed to a drop in rankings, or a “purely a monetary determination,” as we are saying now. Simply more unusual timing? As Asner mentioned again then“It permits the Jerry Falwells, the Kleenex individuals and the Caucus of Conservative shoppers to suppose they’ll curb freedom of speech at will.”
Advert Coverage
Common
“swipe left beneath to view extra authors”Swipe →
And so it did, and they also nonetheless do at this time. Stephen Colbert now joins that record. It’s uncertain Colbert will disappear. The Late Present might not make the community all the cash it could like, however Colbert nonetheless instructions an viewers of thousands and thousands. As the trail to the White Home goes more and more via podcasts and YouTubers and non-network exhibits, Colbert can nonetheless stay a loud critic of Trump if he needs.
Ben Schwartz
Ben Schwartz is an Emmy-nominated author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vainness Truthful, The New Republic, The New York Instances, and plenty of different publications. His Bluesky handle is @benschwartz.bluesky.social.
Extra from The Nation
Working New York Metropolis is brutal. But when he wins in November, there are key classes from previous mayors that Mamdani ought to be taught from.
Waleed Shahid
By placating Home Republicans throughout a listening to on antisemitism, CUNY’s Chancellor left college students and school to fend for themselves.
StudentNation
/
Luca GoldMansour
Progressive Caucus chair Greg Casar warns {that a} transfer to redraw Texas congressional districts will undermine democracy within the Lone Star State and past.
John Nichols
Partisan politics is making a travesty of justice.
Jeet Lord
