We seem to be in an era of endings. The end of ethical norms, of the rule of law, of science, of democracy, of Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, possibly the world and the just-announced end of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” when the host’s contract runs out in 10 months — which may presage the end of late-night television, at least on CBS, which says it has no plans to replace him or keep the show.
“This is all just going away,” Colbert said in a statement taped Thursday.
Coincidentally, or not, Paramount Global, which owns CBS, is seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration to sell itself to the Hollywood studio Skydance Media. (I’d never heard of it either.) An official statement, claiming that the “Late Show” cancellation represents “a purely financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night … not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount” (italics mine) is — however true it might be — just the sort of thing to make one say, “Pull the other one.”
“Other matters” would seem to refer to the merger and to Paramount’s recent payment of $16 million to settle a frivolous Trump lawsuit over the perfectly routine editing of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview that was somehow supposed to give Harris an unfair advantage in the 2024 election and to have caused her opponent “mental anguish” — a payment Colbert characterized in a monologue just a few days ago as a “big fat bribe”: “As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended. And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16 million would help.”
Though he responded to his studio audience’s supportive boos saying, “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he was only kind to the network: “I do want to say that the folks at CBS have been great partners,” Colbert said. “I’m so grateful to the Tiffany network for giving me this chair and this beautiful theater to call home.”
But there have been plenty of surrogates to draw connections, provide context and bite harder, especially in light of the departure of “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens and CBS News President Wendy McMahon. “Love you Stephen,” ABC host Jimmy Kimmel, posted on Instagram, “adding “F— you CBS and all your Sheldons.” (In January, ABC also settled a Trump suit for $16 million, over George Stephanopoulos erroneously saying that Trump had been found civilly liable of “rape.”)
Of the remaining late-night hosts, we may say that each is special in their own way. Colbert, 61, who has been at “The Late Show” for 10 years, is the most mature, professorial and philosophical — gentle, a gentleman, and at times a mock-gentleman, addressing his audience as “My fellow Americans,” or echoing Walter Winchell, “Mr. and Mrs. America and All the Ships at Sea,” or as “Ladies and Gentlemen.” He slaps himself in the face twice before every show to “be in the moment … [to] only do this for the next hour.” Though he may still kick up his heels during a monologue, as an interviewer he is composed and thoughtful and curious — and funny, to be sure — to the degree each conversation demands. A committed (liberal) Catholic, he co-narrated the English-language audiobook of Pope Francis’ “Life: My Story Through History,” with Franciscan Father John Quigley, at the same time, he’s a first-generation Dungeons & Dragons devotee, a lifelong reader of science fiction and a man of whom director Peter Jackson said, “I have never met a bigger Tolkien geek in my life.” (Jackson cast him as “Laketown spy” in “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”) He’s a person who will quote Gandalf in a conversation on grief and loss with Anderson Cooper, or, on “The Friendship Onion” podcast with Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, a.k.a. Merry and Pippin, declare that after reading “The Lord of the Rings” after college, “I realized that Aragorn is the Apollonian model of manhood … The Hobbits are us. And we should love life as much as they do.”
And he knows a thing or two about Ronnie James Dio. And grew up on Mad magazine, where young minds were taught to recognize the deceptions and hypocrisies of politics, business and media.
Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” which he hosted from 2005 through 2014, had a huge cultural effect beyond the reach of any late-night host now, Colbert included. Because it ran on basic cable and not network television, and because Colbert hid within the character of a pompous conservative pundit, the show could take wild swings; to the extent it looked respectable, it was only a matter of irony. Colbert and Jon Stewart, on whose “The Daily Show,” where Colbert had earlier worked, staged a “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, which drew a crowd of more than 200,000; he ran for president twice and created a PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, “100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.”
During its run, he (or his writers) gave the world “truthiness,” named 2006’s Word of the Year by Merriam-Webster, which defined it as “a truthful or seemingly truthful quality that is claimed for something not because of supporting facts or evidence but because of a feeling that it is true or a desire for it to be true.” Colbert was twice named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. Ben & Jerry’s created an ice cream flavor, Stephen Colbert’s AmeriCone Dream, in his honor, and NASA dubbed a piece of exercise equipment for use on the International Space Station the “Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,” or COLBERT.
Testifying in character in 2010, before a House Judiciary subcommittee on legal status for immigrant farmworkers, he said, as if looking into 2025, “This is America,” he said, “I don’t want my tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American, then sliced by a Guatemalan and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian … My great grandfather did not travel over 4,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean to see the country overrun by immigrants. He did it because he killed a man back in Ireland. That’s the rumor, I don’t know if that’s true. I’d like to have that stricken from the record.”
The signature segment of “The Late Show” is the “Colbert Questionert” in which the host poses 15 questions “ergonomically designed to penetrate straight to the soul of one of my guests and reveal their true being to the world.” (It’s “a scientifically verified survey; I’ve asked several scientists and they assured me — yeah, it’s a survey.”) Designed to create comic and/or sincere responses, they range from “What’s the best sandwich?” (Will Ferrell: “Salami and grapefruit on rye, with a light sheen of mayonnaise.”) to “Apples or oranges?” (Colbert considers apples the correct answer, because you can put peanut butter on them.) to “The rest of your life in five words.” (Tom Hanks: “A magnificent cavalcade of color.”) Cate Blanchett took it lying on Colbert’s desk, as if in therapy. “What do you think happens when we die?” he asked. “You turn into a soup,” she replied. “A human soup.”
But it’s Colbert’s extended interviews and discussions, from “The Late Show” and elsewhere, posted online, that dig the deepest and reveal the most about him in the bargain: a much circulated conversation with Nick Cave from last year; a long talk with Anderson Cooper, after the death of his mother, both about grief and gratitude; an episode of “The Spiritual Life With Fr. James Martin, S.J.,” from a couple of weeks ago. (Colbert describes himself as “publicly Catholic,” not “a public Catholic.”) Such discussions perhaps point the way to a post-”Late Show” practice for Colbert, much as it became one for David Letterman, who passed the seat on to him. (He’s only the second host since the show’s premiere in 1993.)
As to the field he’ll be leaving next May, who can say? Taylor Tomlinson‘s “After Midnight” game show, which followed “The Late Show,” expired this week. Kimmel and Seth Meyers, who go as hard against Trump as does Colbert, and the milder Jimmy Fallon, seem for the moment safely fixed at their desks. Though new platforms and viewing habits have changed the way, and how much, it’s consumed, late-night television by its temporal nature remains a special province, out at the edge of things, where edgy things may be said and tried. (Don’t expect Colbert to go quietly into that goodnight.) Yet even as the No. 1 show in late night, “The Late Show” reportedly loses money. There’s something to that “financial decision,” I’m sure; it’s the “purely” that smells. We’ll see.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted on his vanity social media site, going on to say that he “hears” that “Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert.” Trump and Colbert could not be farther apart as humans. The president sells fear; he uses it as a club. But the TV host is sanguine.
“You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time,” Colbert is fond of saying, sometimes adding, “and the Devil cannot stand mockery.”
