“I found out just last night,” Colbert told his audience. “Yeah, I share your feelings,” he continued as they booed. “It’s not just the end of our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”
If you’re thinking that sounds like complete bullshit, you’re right.
The real story starts with an $8 billion merger, a right-wing billionaire, and a president who just successfully shook down CBS for $16 million. The Late Show isn’t dying because people stopped watching late-night TV. It’s being murdered because Stephen Colbert spent the last decade being one of Trump’s most persistent critics on network television, and the billionaires about to take over CBS need Trump’s approval for their merger.
To understand why The Late Show is really ending, you need to know about Larry Ellison. The Oracle founder is worth $180 billion, making him the fifth richest person on earth. He’s also a Trump supporter.
But here’s the thing about buying a major broadcast network: you need approval from the Federal Communications Commission to transfer the broadcast licenses. And guess who controls the FCC? Trump’s hand-picked chairman, Brendan Carr, who wears a gold pin of Trump’s face on his lapel and has made it clear he sees his job as doing the president’s bidding.
So why did Paramount settle for $16 million? Because they needed Trump’s FCC to approve the Ellison merger. Democratic senators called it what it was: extortion. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden was even more blunt, posting that “Paramount just paid Trump a bribe for merger approval.”
Weiss, who started The Free Press in 2021 with her wife Nellie Bowles and sister Suzy, has built a publication that New York magazine described as wanting to “excoriate liberals but not fold fully into the MAGA wing.”
This is the same CBS News that has already seen a wave of resignations over editorial independence. 60 Minutes showrunner Bill Owens quit earlier this year, saying he no longer had the ability “to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.” CBS News president Wendy McMahon followed soon after for similar reasons.
First came the lawsuit. Trump demanded CBS release the full transcript and raw footage of the Harris interview. The network initially refused, calling it an intrusion on First Amendment rights. But when FCC Chairman Carr opened a formal investigation and demanded the materials, CBS folded immediately.
The Post’s reporting makes clear what was happening: “The network of Edward R. Murrow, which stood against McCarthyism and once defined American broadcast journalism, was capitulating to White House pressure as its corporate owner sought approval for a lucrative merger.”
Now Colbert is gone too. The host who called Trump a “Big Fat Bribe” payer on Monday was told his show was canceled by Thursday.
Think about what Colbert represented. Every weeknight, in front of millions of viewers, he delivered sharp political commentary that treated Trump not as a normal president but as the threat to democracy he represents. While other media outlets twisted themselves into pretzels trying to appear “balanced,” Colbert called bullshit. Night after night.
“Some of the TV typers out there are blogging that once Skydance gets CBS, the new owner’s desire to please Trump could put pressure on late night host and frequent Trump critic Stephen Colbert,” he said Monday night. Then, with his trademark deflection: “But how are they going to put pressure on Stephen Colbert if they can’t find him?”
The message to everyone else in media is crystal clear: criticize Trump at your own risk. Even if you work for a major network. Even if you host a successful show. Even if you’re Stephen Colbert.
Jimmy Kimmel remains Trump’s most vocal critic, but ABC already folded once to Trump pressure, settling a defamation lawsuit with their own payment. How long before Disney decides Kimmel is more trouble than he’s worth?
Jimmy Fallon? He already apologized for “humanizing” Trump by tousling his hair back in 2016. Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show, but only once a week on Comedy Central (also owned by Paramount, so who knows how long that’ll last), not a major network.
Colbert understood this. In his final weeks, he wasn’t just doing comedy; he was bearing witness. When Trump manufactured crises or pushed authoritarian policies, Colbert was there to say “this isn’t normal.” Night after night, in homes across America.
Think about where Stephen Colbert started. At Comedy Central, he played a character who parodied right-wing media manipulation. His whole schtick was pretending to be a Fox News-style propagandist who twisted facts, attacked critics, and defended power at all costs.
The writers who created The Colbert Report couldn’t have scripted it better. Except this isn’t satire. It’s just what happens now when media companies need government approval for their deals.
And Stephen Colbert? He gets ten more months to make jokes before the lights go out for good.
When billionaires need favors from authoritarian presidents, you’re expendable.
The Ellisons aren’t unique. Jeff Bezos killed The Washington Post’s presidential endorsement and is currently skewing the opinion section hard to the right. Elon Musk turned Twitter into his personal propaganda machine. Now Larry Ellison is buying CBS, and one of his first moves is silencing Trump’s loudest critic on network TV.
In his cancellation announcement, Colbert took time to thank “the 200 people who work here.” That wasn’t just politeness. Those are 200 real jobs that will vanish when The Late Show ends. Camera operators, writers, producers, musicians, makeup artists, all the people who make television happen.
This is the human cost of media capitulation. Not just the famous faces we see on screen, but hundreds of workers who thought they had stable careers at a successful show. Now they’ll be scrambling for work in an industry that’s already hemorrhaging jobs.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has ten months left. Ten months of monologues and celebrity interviews and musical guests, all while everyone knows the show is already dead.
As for CBS under the Ellisons, all signs point to a rightward shift. When you’re courting Bari Weiss to shape your news division’s “editorial sensibilities,” you’re not exactly committing to fearless journalism. Expect more “both sides” coverage, more platform for “anti-woke” voices, more deference to power.
But here’s what they can’t kill: the knowledge that this happened. That a major television network canceled its most successful late-night show to appease a president. That billionaires bought a news organization and immediately silenced their critics. That this is what “free press” looks like when authoritarians and oligarchs make the rules.
The show must go on, they say. But sometimes, the show just ends.
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