Once upon a time there was Johnny Carson.
Or, as the host of NBC’s Tonight show was then known, “The King of Late Night.”
Carson won that title for one reason. After being picked by NBC brass to host the late night show that aired Monday through Friday from 11:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.- succeeding then-much better known hosts like Steve Allen or Jack Paar - Carson proceeded to put his own stamp on the show. He was, first and foremost, funny. Sometimes uproariously funny, sometimes slyly funny.
But it quickly became obvious that even though he had famous politicians on as occasional guests - California Governor Ronald Reagan was one - Carson was not there to lecture Americans on politics every night. In fact, to the nightly viewer it was impossible to pigeonhole Carson’s politics. He was, so it seemed, apolitical. To the extent he would needle a politician or a political party he did so to Republicans and Democrats. He stuck it to both Reagan and the Kennedy of the moment, to President Lyndon Johnson or President Richard Nixon in his monologues.
Or in other words, Stephen Colbert - Johnny Carson was not.
Now comes this, as reported by the Associated Press. The headline:
Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ is canceled by CBS and will end in May 2026
The story reports:
CBS is canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May, shuttering a decades-old TV institution in a changing media landscape and removing from air one of President Donald Trump’s most prominent and persistent late-night critics.
Stop.
First, see my NewsBusters colleague Jorge Bonilla over here.
Then think about that paragraph from the AP story. Then hop in the time travel capsule and travel back to Carson’s day, and re-write the paragraph above to say:
NBC is canceling “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” next May, shuttering a decades-old TV institution in a changing media landscape and removing from the air one of (fill in the blank) “President (John F. Kennedy’s, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan’s) most prominent and persistent late-night critics.
That scenario above never happened. Carson would never, -ever!- have gone down the road of making himself into a nightly political critic of a President - any President - knowing full well that perhaps as much as half of his audience had voted for his target. He just didn’t see it as his job to harangue a President he didn’t agree with - or cheer on a President he did agree with. Their foibles? Sure? But that was always done in a way that made his audience laugh uproariously. He could and did occasionally send a hilarious zinger a President’s way - and with a sly smile he made everyone on all sides laugh.
That wasn’t Colbert’s thing. Colbert was about carrying the flag for an unapologetic far left-wingism. And if his potential audience didn’t like it? In short? Tough.
The all-so-obvious problem with this approach, if not to those living inside the left-wing bubble, was that a potential audience, once catching on to Colbert’s left-wing game, simply wouldn’t watch him. And the potential CBS advertising revenues for Colbert’s show would melt away like a blizzard in Miami.
The meltdown has now arrived.
Bravely, the story quotes CBS execs as saying this:
Three top Paramount and CBS executives praised Colbert’s show as 'a staple of the nation’s zeitgeist' in a statement that said the cancellation 'is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.'
Obviously the CBS execs don’t get the reality either. Think of what is said there. This:
…in a statement that said the cancellation 'is purely a financial decision.'
Not mentioned? What drove the “purely financial decision”? There would be, obviously to those outside the liberal bubble, a lack of advertising support caused by Americans who simply refused to watch a left-wing comedian attack not only President Trump but conservatism in general. And, by extension, themselves.
Good comedy, by definition, is about making people laugh. All kinds of people. In this case that would mean Trump supporters and Trump haters. It would get laughter from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, adults and coming of age late teenagers.
But that’s not what Colbert was about. And when that was understood, his audience of Americans staying up late enough looking for laughter and relief from a long working day either went elsewhere or simply turned off the TV.
Which, in turn, has now cost CBS a considerably pretty penny.
If you live inside the liberal CBS bubble or the liberal media bubble? Shocking.
If you live in the real world?
Not shocking. Not shocking at all.
