Much of the news last week surrounding the occupation government of Viceroy Trump centered on his sharpest critic on late-night TV, Stephen Colbert. July 18, the CBS network announced that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert would not be renewed in May and nothing would be replacing it in the time slot. And this led to a great deal of outrage, given that Paramount/CBS had also announced that it just agreed to pay Viceroy Trump $16 million “for his presidential library” in order to not only avoid a lawsuit but to facilitate a corporate merger that requires FCC approval.
I like Stephen Colbert. But he is often full of himself, and like many stand-up comedians (such as Jerry Seinfeld, or Donald Trump) he is openly neurotic in his need for an audience, which was a big deal for him during COVID lockdown. And yet, one of the things I like about the show is that he will actually have low-key bits in which he and guests talk about genuinely interesting subjects, like when he had singer Dua Lipa on and they had a fairly serious discussion of religion. Or when he had William Shatner on at the same time as Neil DeGrasse Tyson and it was all Tyson could do to get a word in edgewise.
And the first time Keith Olbermann talked about this, he, as is his wont, made the whole thing about himself and about how Colbert was mean to him when Olbermann appeared on his show, then eventually acknowledged that Colbert has been useful in the last year in being consistently anti-fascist.
Everyone else was united in the opinion that CBS’ protestation that there was no politics involved was BS, especially given the timing of the cancellation, three days after Colbert announced the finalized agreement as a “big fat bribe” to Trump.
It is actually not implausible that the cancellation was a financial decision. This certainly wouldn’t be the first time CBS cancelled something popular for logistical reasons. The time slot after Colbert, formerly under Craig Ferguson and James Corden, is After Midnight with Taylor Tomlinson, which will not be renewed after this season. More famously, CBS ended the wildly popular and long-running cop drama Blue Bloods with Tom Selleck, because star salaries and filming on location in New York made it too much for them. (Blue Bloods co-star Donnie Wahlberg is doing a spinoff in the fall.)
And even though Colbert remained the top rated network show in the 11:35 pm time slot, “Guideline, an ad data firm, estimates that the networks’ late-night shows earned $439 million in ad revenue in 2018 and only $220 million in 2024 — a decline of 50 percent.” Also, talk show episodes hosted by stand-up comics with topical humor and celebrities promoting new movies and TV shows have a limited shelf life. The shows get much of their audience from streaming, but networks don’t control those platforms.
Allegedly CBS lost $40 million just last year from revenues on The Late Show. This was based on an article in The New York Post. “Snopes reached out to a CBS representative for “The Late Show” for comment on the losses and did not receive a response.”
But when CBS cancelled Blue Bloods, they had other stuff in the pipeline to replace it. In their announcement, CBS said that they were not just cancelling Colbert’s show, they were cancelling the time slot altogether. So rather than have an 11:35 show that wasn’t making as much money as it had, they decided to quit making money from it altogether.
But this was a financial decision.
Ultimately it was, given that Paramount (which owns CBS and other media such as Comedy Central) was in the midst of a merger with the media company Skydance that was valued at 8 billion dollars. And that merger was being held up by the Sun King and his personal pique with CBS, specifically with 60 Minutes agreeing to interview Kamala Harris and then editing part of the interview which was not broadcast and only posted online. (As anyone who has seen his social media posts can attest, Trump is not a big fan of editing.) He at first sought no less than $20 billion in damages. While CBS did not comply, the producer of 60 Minutes recently decided to resign.
Not only that, Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle owner Keith Ellison. Both men are open Trump supporters. So this might not be so much a case of intimidation as that Paramount chairwoman Shari Redstone was facilitating what she wanted to do anyway. The merger was just approved by the FCC Thursday, and Skydance has promised to end the network’s initiatives in DEI, which I believe stands for Democracy, Education and Intelligence.
On Wednesday, Colbert himself undermined the claim of financial need when he deduced that the amount of money CBS is paying to pacify Trump is equal to the 40 million dollars his show lost last year:
Not to mention the fact that the same megacorp gave Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the producers of South Park, $1.5 billion dollars to renew distribution through Paramount over five years, which apparently means they feel even less need to censor themselves than Colbert does.
Now THAT’s a savvy investment, Ms. Redstone!
But that’s the problem with catering to Donald Trump, not only are you going along with blackmail, you’re taking your financial lead from a guy who bankrupted six casinos. Casinos – which are based on the premise that you take other people’s money and are under no obligation to give anything back.
And speaking of Donald Trump’s past…
Let’s talk about the EPSTEIN FILES! (TM)
In which the big story Wednesday was the Wall Street Journal following up its previous hit, when they confirmed Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi told him that he was in fact mentioned several times in the Epstein Files.
You know, the files that don’t exist, and were also created by Obama, which is why we need to try and execute him for treason against Our President, even though Trump wasn’t president at the time President Obama (allegedly) interfered with the 2016 election, in which his party lost.
I have no idea how serious Trump is about charging Obama with treason, but he’s going to run up against a little obstacle called Trump v. United States, in which Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts decreed that the president cannot be prosecuted for acts when acting in an official capacity, and such alleged crimes cannot even be investigated. Now, Roberts also stated that this presumptive immunity applied to all presidents. I imagine he would have preferred to phrase it as “this doesn’t apply to Democrats” or “this only applies to Donald Trump”, but that would have given the game away. Now given that our Dollar Store Dictator apparently has Roberts on speed dial, I’m sure Roberts will try to find some bullshit rationale for why the ruling he says applies to all presidents somehow doesn’t apply to Obama, but that would break a precedent established all of one year ago. I’m sure Alito and Thomas would love to go along, but this might be too implausible for Trump’s own appointees, especially Amy Coney Barrett, who has bucked the hivemind in the past.
And since I was talking about Keith Olbermann, he said on Thursday that Obama ought to respond to this harassment and defamation appropriately, with a civil suit. And this being a civil suit as opposed to a criminal case, discovery would apply, as it will apply in the defense of Rupert Murdoch and the Journal against Trump’s lawsuit. And Keith suggested an even more ridiculous damage amount than Trump did, 500 billion dollars. Nah, I’d settle for estimating all the money that Trump has gotten from his various shakedowns and crypto scams since retaking office, totaling that up, then doubling it. Hey, Trump’s a billionaire. He’s good for it – RIGHT?
Hey! I know what would be a great settlement! 500 billion dollars AND Trump has to make CBS keep Colbert!