This may seem strange, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show.” I say it may seem strange, because he and I are closely aligned politically, and whenever I watched his monologues, I found myself agreeing with him virtually all the time.
And that was actually the problem. I wasn’t laughing. The jokes weren’t surprising me or challenging me. More often than not, he was just reciting a list of outrages and abuses by people in charge, and it made me angry, not happy.
But I obviously was in the minority — during President Trump’s first term, Colbert became one of his sharpest and most perceptive critics, and his ratings soared. For most of the past 10 years, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has dominated late-night TV; over the same period, I’ve also enjoyed watching the evolution of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” — parenthood has turned the former radio shock-jock into a real mensch. (The less I say about “The Tonight Show,” in my opinion, the better; every so often, I remember that Jimmy Fallon holds that historic job previously held by such legends as Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, and I think, “Oh, something has gone terribly wrong; there must have been some kind of accident.”)
Anyway, like most people, I’ve been watching Colbert the past few weeks, and again the show has made me angry, but this time, I’ve been angry on his behalf.
Colbert is an immensely talented, smart, funny guy, and by every account I’ve seen or read, he’s more or less beloved by his staff. He’s got the Number 1 rated network late night show. He interviewed amazing guests — people at the tops of their fields in entertainment, the arts, science and politics.
There was a time, not long ago, that all of this would have spelled nothing but success. That time is past. The craven clowns who run CBS Television have kicked him to the curb. It’s enough to gag a buzzard.
CBS claims the decision is strictly financial; most observers think CBS is cowering to pressure from the Trump Administration, and especially the Trump lap-dog who chairs the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. As I’ve noted before, Carr wears a lapel pin not in the shape of the American flag, but in the shape of President Trump’s face.
Although the FCC does not regulate television networks directly, it does regulate television station licenses, and CBS owns nearly 30 TV stations — including KDKA and WPKD in Pittsburgh. Carr has openly threatened to use the FCC to challenge the broadcast licenses of any networks that criticize the President. David Letterman called it mobster-style behavior and it should embarrass and outrage any American, conservative or liberal.
Colbert himself has noted that CBS paid the President $16 million to drop a frivolous lawsuit he filed against “60 Minutes.” Practically every lawyer — including CBS’s — thought the lawsuit would be laughed out of court. But CBS was in the process of merging with a company called Skydance Media, and it needed federal government approval, so the company paid a “settlement.” Less kind people than me might call it a “bribe.”
Literally days later, Colbert was informed that his show would not be renewed.
But I suspect CBS is not entirely lying when it says that cancelling “The Late Show” was a business decision. The program will be replaced by paid programming — essentially, an infomercial. In this case, the “paid programs” are Byron Allen’s “Comics Unleashed,” a syndicated panel talk-show about comedians, and another show called “Funny You Should Ask.”
Allen will pay CBS for the use of their network; Allen then will sell his own commercials during the shows.
This is the same model, incidentally, used on suburban Pittsburgh radio stations when you hear polkas or other ethnic programming. It’s also called “brokered content.” The host pays for the time and then sells their own commercials. The station cashes the checks and has very little risk or expense.
In other words, the CBS Television Network — many years ago, called the “Tiffany Network” for the quality of its programming — has fallen to the level of doing business like “Slappy and Happy’s Polka Jamboree” on a 1,000-watt AM radio station in Potter County, and that’s pretty damn depressing.
Over the weekend, a friend asked me, “Who the hell is going to watch Byron Allen and ‘Comics Unleashed’?”
I said, “Compared to Stephen Colbert? No one.”
He said, “Then why are they doing it?”
Here’s what I told him:
CBS claims that “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was losing $40 million per year. Colbert and his team dispute that.
“The Late Show” averaged 2.7 million viewers per night.
Let’s say Byron Allen’s shows will only get 200,000 viewers. (“ABC World News Now,” the all-night news service carried by some ABC TV stations, gets 200,000 to 400,000 viewers, so I feel safe saying “Comics Unleashed” will get at least that many people tuning in.)
My friend said, “So they’re losing 90 percent of their audience.”
That’s correct.
Now, Byron Allen claims he’s going to pay “tens of millions of dollars” to CBS to use the time slot.
For the sake of an argument, we’ll say Allen is only paying $1 million per year, and that the “The Late Show” wasn’t losing $40 million per year, it was breaking even.
Under that scenario, CBS is suddenly turning a $1 million profit with no effort at all.
But what if “The Late Show” was actually losing money? Just to keep the math easy, we’ll say “The Late Show” was losing $1 million per year.
Suddenly, using my math, CBS’s income has gone up $2 million. You see my point; the actual numbers are likely much higher. CBS has turned a break-even proposition into a tidy profit.
CBS also can now, if they want to, liquidate the Ed Sullivan Theater and the attached office building. New York City assesses the property at $17 million; the real value is obviously more. Another asset to be monetized!
And because Stephen Colbert is no longer making jokes about people in the news, CBS has drastically lowered its legal risk of being sued. Standards & Practices no longer needs to closely review each show before broadcast. CBS’s corporate parent also no longer has to worry about the Tweeter-in-Chief becoming offended by one of Colbert’s jokes and attacking the company (possibly hurting its stock price) or sending the FCC out to challenge one of its owned-and-operated TV stations. Byron Allen isn’t going to offend anyone.
If you’re in charge of late-night programming, by cancelling Stephen Colbert, not only have you turned a small deficit into a modest profit, you’ve wiped a lot of other potential expenses off of your books.
Are you tanking your audience? Yes.
Are you hurting the network’s reputation? Yes.
Do you care about your audience or your reputation? No. You care about profits and share prices for the next quarter. In all fairness, network television is already in decline in the United States; you’re just accelerating the process in order to maximize your own revenue before CBS collapses and is worthless.
It’s as if you bought a historic building. You could fix it up and charge your tenants more rent. Or, you could wait until a tenant moves out, and then rip the copper and fixtures out and sell them for scrap. Eventually, all of the tenants will be gone and the building will be ruined, but you’re banking on the fact that you can cause a little bit of a damage over time and still make a profit without spending any of your own money. When the building is worthless, you can walk away, and it will be someone else’s problem. Probably your investors, the city taxpayers, and any banks that loaned you money.
At the same time that CBS is pulling the plug on its late-night show, it’s also killing the CBS Radio Network. Years ago, CBS Radio still had some talk shows and sports coverage; for the last few years, CBS Radio has only been a news service providing hourly updates. Still, the decision affects more than 700 radio stations, including KDKA in Pittsburgh and WMBS in Uniontown, which has been a CBS affiliate since 1941.
In announcing the decision to close the radio network, CBS cited “a shift in radio station programming strategies, coupled with challenging economic realities.” Does that mean CBS News was actually losing money on providing hourly newscasts (that seems doubtful, given that they were mostly repackaging audio already gathered by CBS News TV correspondents) or they simply don’t care?
I think it’s the latter; it’s just some more copper wiring in the walls that they can sell off. Reportedly, 26 unionized news reporters are being laid off. Just like eliminating Colbert’s show, that looks good in the quarterly and annual reports. If killing the CBS Radio Network makes the CBS News brand even less prominent, that’s too bad, but it’s not a current problem; it’s going to be someone else’s problem several years from now.
I mentioned the FCC. There was a time when radio and TV stations were required to run a certain minimum amount of news and public-service programming. There also was a time when radio and TV stations could only program a certain number of commercials per hour.
The federal government’s position was that the airwaves belonged to the American people, not to private companies. That’s why companies get a license to broadcast on AM, FM or TV; it’s like when you get a license to drive — you get permission to use the road, but you don’t own the road. Because the airwaves were owned by everyone, stations were required to broadcast in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”
With broadcast deregulation in the 1990s under President Clinton, public-service and news requirements were scrapped and radio and TV stations were told “anything goes” as far as advertising content. That led directly to hour-long commercials and stations that broadcast nothing but paid programming, all day long.
Is anyone listening or watching? Not really, but there are always suckers willing to write a check to hear or see their message. Byron Allen will no doubt find more than enough advertisers willing to take a flyer on reaching 200,000 or 300,000 viewers in Colbert’s old time slot.
(In the Pittsburgh area, the worst offender may be WWCS Radio in Canonsburg, which currently runs 24-hour programming from “The Overcomer Ministry,” which was headed for decades by a preacher named Brother Stair. Brother Stair was a convicted rapist who died in 2021. I don’t know who is still donating to Brother Stair and who is paying the radio station, but he continues to drone into the atmosphere every day on 540 AM. And it’s all perfectly legal.)
All this is so much venting, and what’s the point? Nothing is going to change any time soon.
But I hope it goes some way toward explaining why Colbert is being replaced and the CBS Radio Network is being murdered after 99 years. It’s the usual suspects — a federal government that has given up on regulation and rapacious capitalism run amok. These are the same forces that have ruined your favorite stores and restaurants for the past two decades. A bunch of greasy weasels buy something and strip it down for parts, and then let the bankruptcy courts clean up the messes.
As Sal Tessio says to Tom Hagen in “The Godfather,” it’s just business. But the Corleones had a lot more dignity and self-respect than anyone in charge at CBS these days.
