Said Matt Walsh, on his podcast yesterday, trashing a Jimmy Fallon "Tonight Show" sketch:
And I liked this — at 00:30:32 in the link above — about cancellation of Stephen Colbert's show: "There's a lot of speculation that Colbert got canned by CBS for criticizing Trump too much, which is, I mean, total nonsense.... If you're firing somebody because you don't like what they're saying... you're not gonna give them another year on the air... to, you know, with nothing to lose... to continue criticizing Trump. It doesn't make a lot of sense."
Giving Colbert 10 more months to speak seems to mean that CBS is not trying to silence him and probably is cancelling him for the reason it's giving: money. I would add that it also seems to mean that it wants even more speech from Colbert — much harsher, more aggressive attacks on Trump. CBS lit a fire under Colbert and turned him loose to express himself without the need to preserve the show.
That prompted me to prompt Grok like this: What are some movies where a character finds out he has only a short time left to live and because of the awareness of his compressed life span, he finds far greater meaning tha[n] had been available to him when he was rolling along living life as if death was only vaguely hovering about in the fog of the seemingly distant future? Obviously, there's "Ikiru." There's "Dark Victory." But there must be a thousand. Help me expand this list. (Grok's answer.)
In short — in jort — I think CBS wants the opposite of silence from Colbert. It wants bigger, broader, more stabbingly painful satire... even as it also must stop hemorrhaging money.
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This should be suitably ambiguous.
Rolling Stones - You Can't Always Get What You Want
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krxU5Y9lCS8&ab_channel=ABKCOVEVO
Why watch Colbert trying to be cute when you can enjoy videos of Jew hating campus riots or Antifa shooting at cops, if one sadistically gets off on this?
he's still getting paid for nearly a year, oh the huge manatee,
Ah yes, the deeply homophobic Stephen Colbert just stopped hemohrraging money for his employers. I suppose that will be the miracle cited when, in his words, he becomes a martyr -- for whom? Late night talk show hosts who lose phenomenal money for their employers while biting the hand that feeds them?
He is sounding more and more like Megan Markle. God bless Netflix.
They may GET "bigger, broader, more stabbingly painful satire," but it's not what they want. What they want is to not have the Trump Administration at Paramount's throat for the next three and a half years.
Bulworth might fit.
I think they should run some of those overnight programs like silk stalking that are probably now on pluto,
Does it just have to be one character? On the Beach involves the whole world contemplating imminent death.
"You're fired!" In a year.
and the left whine. Good points there, including "the safest thing for the [leftwing] media to do it to criticize Trump."
CBS has become the parody of itself, that Network prophesied,
no one as sharp as Faye Dunaway's Diana Christiansen though
He'll probably get a bounce in the ratings, and, until May, some viewers will feel it their patriotic duty to tune in and watch his show......Maybe CBS is doing their own art of the deal. They can revamp his show and contract. A leaner, meaner Stephen Colbert will not need 100 million to produce his show. Maybe on the new Colbert show, he can deliver some light, anti-Trump invective before introducing a Popeye cartoon. He doesn't need all those writers. Maybe co-host with Hunter Biden.
I think you meant Colbert here: "CBS lit a fire under Trump and turned him loose to express himself without the need to preserve the show."
Needs more Vax-Scene. His show has a disease, and the only cure is more Vax-Scene.
they should do an audit, the place is probably as rife with fraud as npr,
Colbert is a television evangelist working up his congregation by telling them the Gospel Hour and Revival Show will go off the air because the devil is scheming to harm all believers and slap the face of God himself by breaking Colbert's rice bowl.
I suppose they have Colbert contracted through next May, and it would have cost more to fire him immediately than the $40M it costs to air the show for the year.
@kylos
Wow! Thanks! Fixed.
he could drop anvils on himself, ala python, that might be entertaining, but you can only do that once
A simple answer to Walsh's Fallon skit question is that the Boomers who watch want to still feel hip and with it.
..."a womanly version of Rachel Maddow.."
Haw. I bet Colbert takes his remaining on-air time to stretch the limits of what is allowed on broadcast TV, but without poking the lion and provoking yet another libel suit from Trump. He'll be every bit as funny as he has been, so far.
Sweet November, Anthony Newley shacks up with a broad at the beginning of the month. They pork for a few weeks before she tells him that she is terminally ill and is spending her remaining time running through dudes one month at a time. Newley got November. On December 1st, she kicks his ass out and gets some other shmoe in to rail her until the New Year.
which is only unintentionally funny, again he could go back to straight celebrity interviews, like he did with Gary Oldman,
What Colbert does with his remaining time at CBS depends on what he wants to do next and what his options are.
Maybe he's heartily sick of his current schtick and ready for something different. Can he even do something different?
Colbert is Maddow - without the humor.
Look, Stephen Colbert is on the air because of his producer and the Network Exec in charge of Late Night programming. Norm MacDonald was fired from SNL because the Network exec in charge of NBC entertainment didn't like him. That's how much these guys micro manage.
Yes, Colbert was hired to get more of the 18-49 demo, but he was also hired by the leftwing Network Execs to push Leftwing politics. And that's what he's been doing for the last 10 years. The idea he got cancelled for doing what they wanted is ridiculous.
The next host will be browner and younger. And will hate Trump just as much as Colbert did. And sad to say, he won't be any funnier.
Joe vs the Volcano is a perfect example of that kind of movie. People tend to love it or hate it because it is kind of absurd and absurdist in that theme. Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in their first movie together
"The next host will be browner and younger."
...and will probably wear a keffiyeh AND have tattoos.
Stupid AI missed "Joe vs the Volcano" with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
"When a hypochondriac learns that he is dying, he accepts an offer to throw himself in a volcano at a tropical island, and along the way there, learns to truly live."
75-80 percent of the people who watch Late Night Talk shows are over 60. Its boomers. And they're dying off. Whats happened in the last 20 years, is the same people kept watching the late night talk shows and very few new, younger, people STARTED watching it. Their audience has gotten older and older. And more and more leftwig wing.
I'm always shocked at this, because I stopped watching late nite shows in my 40s, I didn't want to stay up late. Or if I did, I had better things to do than watch TV. That's the pattern with most people, as you get older, you wake up sooner and sooner in the AM, and go to bed earlier.
Anyway, the demo they want is under 50 and consists of a lot of "people of color" - so Colbert had to go. Kimmel will probably follow.
CBS wants Colbert to provoke a libel suit? What's the endgame here?
Why did CBS keep Colbert on the air for the last four years as it lost $40 million each year?
Also, how did Colbert's show cost a $100 million per year and a staff of 200 people to produce?
Per AofSHQ a few days ago, after Colbert was hired 10 years ago the average age of The Late Show viewers has gone from 60 to .... 68.
Like RCOCEAN II said, I also find it weird that the average audience for Colbert is so OLD. Besides the fact that I don't find him funny and am fairly conservative and wouldn't watch him anyway .....What oldies can stay up that late to watch him????
I used to watch SNL, but as it went away, staying up late to watch TV was not that interesting. Go to bed early and rise early is our (me and husband) natural bio clock.
The best one of these movies that I've seen starred a young Alec Guinness, called Last Holiday" (1950). It was very funny, a black comedy. I guess they re-made it with Queen Latifah, but I don't' have any interest in that one.
BTW, does Matt dye his hair? Its so deeply black, its weird looking.
they make up for it in volume,
We were visiting my older sister for a couple days about 10 years ago, and she announced at 9 PM that they were going to bed. I said "what?!" but that was their standard bedtime. They were up at 430AM the next day. Now, we're in bed at 9-10 PM. LOL.
Aging demographics is simply wiping out late night TV. If you were in charge of a company losing $40 million annually like this, what would you do? The DNC is no longer getting what it's paying for either.
once upon a time, there was charlie rose, that fancied himself the solon of choice (whatever happened to him)
Progressives suck, and try to blame it all on MAGA, when it is them that do the sucking.
Interesting take by Althouse. Watching Colbert turn into Howard Beale before our very eyes could be rating gold, but does CBS have the stomach for negotiating ancillary rights with the Antifa and kaffiah-wearing types? Hunter's probably eager to audition as side-kick, which is nice. And Colbert's too dim to see the bang-up end coming.
Ah Peter Finch you were a prophet but there is no William Holden willing to restrain them
I used to watch SNL because it was SN, but there was no way I could watch the weeknight late shows--I had to be at work at 8AM for most of my worklife, and need my 8-9 hour snooze.
My wife stays up late, working the smartphone. Comes to bed between 1AM and 3AM most nights--earlier only when she has a commitment in the morning. She stayed up late studying when she was a scholarship girl in high school (not that the good grades did her much good . . . )
It used to be that late night TV was funny and more even handed - and not overly obsessed with politics. After a hard day of work - it was nice to be graced with actual humor before bed.
now it's just Jimmy Kimmel crying and colbert- scolding.
The entire business model is built on the fact that there is nothing else on. That "fact" changed 10-15 years ago with the advent of streaming. Now the late-night audience is on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and YouTube. The comedians are desperate but not that talented, whereas I used to watch Carson and Cavett for the guests, no one in Hollywood know how to tell a story anymore.
bagoh20 said, "Aging demographics is simply wiping out late night TV."
Worse yet the market is completely fractured. The coveted male 18-34 demo advertisers have long tried snaring are gone. Not only are they not coming back, they are totally jaded and rightly so. The large holding corps know the traditional playbook is trash, and that youtube and podcasts will never make up on lost volume or have the metrics they've relied on to motivate.
They're relying on the sources themselves to advertise within their platforms, which is instantaneously suspicious to 95% of male audiences and can only be done for so long until you know you're being 'pitched' and tune out or fast-forward.
Maybe they're planning to rely on the female demo that will continue to watch commercials dolled up as entertainment.
who doesn't want to see Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schitt scold and whine to you before bed? It's a mystery.
The other day I was parked next to a car with an "8647" bumper sticker. (pro-murder of a president)
I waited a bit to see who drove the car. I thought for sure it would be a typical angry white older female. It was an older man. I'd guess 70+ something.
in the 90s, Roger Ailes tried to bring back some of these talk titans, were Tom Schneider, and Dick Cavett, but like Rip van Winkle their era had past, Charles Grodin wasn't just acting, he was an insufferable scold,
Gutfeld is at least authentic. imo - Gutfeld's success is rooted in a desire for many who are sick of leftist lectures on MSM, sick of being scolded, and sick of democratic party lectures and lies.
Gutfeld does not feel like it is following orders from above. It's a reflection/reaction of masses of people who are fed up.
Colbert - with his dancing syringes full of forced jabs - nighty parade of democrats - feels like a paid infomercial for whatever narratives the mob left are pushing.
This is why we love him (From Twitter news):
"CBS may have killed his show, but Colbert came out swinging Monday night. After reading Trump's gleeful Truth Social post, he turned to the "Eloquence Cam" with a two-word message.
Stephen Colbert: "Go fuck yourself"
Audience erupted. Then Colbert declared himself a "martyr" with "the best view from up here" on his cross."
haha. Wit, thy name is Colbert.
BTW, per Grok - Since 2015, Colbert's show had the following number of guest appearances by Politicians:
Democrats -511
Republicans - 14 (who all hate Trump).
"in the 90s, Roger Ailes tried to bring back some of these talk titans, were Tom Schneider, and Dick Cavett, but like Rip van Winkle their era had past, Charles Grodin wasn't just acting, he was an insufferable scold,"
Yep, i remember that. At one point, Cavett went on strike for more $$, and ailes just fired him the next day. LOL!
There's also the 1950 "No Sad Songs for Me." It was Margaret Sullavan's last movie and Natalie Woods' 12th. I just discovered and watched it yesterday.
Isn't that a 'three' word message?
Does Colbert last the 10 months? I say no.
"Then Colbert declared himself a 'martyr' with the best view from up here" on his cross.'"
That's awfully blasphemous for a devout Catholic like Colbert. Maybe that was part of his act as well...
Calling oneself a martyr is the kind of thing Trump does. 🤣
Colbert is a toolbox just like Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/11/trump-jesus-why-he-casts-himself-martyr-why-fans-go-along/
"I think CBS wants the opposite of silence from Colbert. It wants bigger, broader, more stabbingly painful satire"
Too bad nobody's watching.
CBS announces that Colbert is a waste of money. The left loves it…. Go figure.
inag - that your party had to shut everything down , and drag out Soviet counting for days on end - and Biden's vote totals accomplished mathematically impossible jumps - = Leftist cultists like you demand everyone shut up!
and yet you still buy the Steele Dosier and the Russia Hoax.
Althouse said… “death was only vaguely hovering about in the fog of the seemingly distant future”
In Pennsylvania, it was within earshot.
DD Driver - Did anyone ever try to shoot at Colbert?
In short — in jort — I think CBS wants the opposite of silence from Colbert. It wants bigger, broader, more stabbingly painful satire...
That’s one interpretation. Another is that under the Redstones CBS gave Colbert a contract that was so costly to cancel that the only rational thing to do is to let him continue his money-losing show. Ah law professors have heard of bad contracts, right?
"DD Driver - Did anyone ever try to shoot at Colbert?"
Are you saying Trump **is** a martyr? LOL.
You know I love it when you get culty. 😘Why do you flirt with me like this?
I’m tempted to include ‘The Last Temptation of Christ”. I went with friends from work. It was denounced by some Catholics.
The movie Jesus: “You're here to trick me.”
No - I asked you a question. DD.
you sexy beast.
Breaking Bad!
Why did CBS keep Colbert on the air for the last four years as it lost $40 million each year?
...their goal was political- to help Democrats get elected. It didn't work. The show lost a lot of money to fail. So, failure, meet axe...
...meanwhile, The View is still worth the investment, apparently...
"...meanwhile, The View is still worth the investment, apparently..."
Women are totally safe for advertisers. For them the day the female demo becomes threatening is the apocalypse.
how much does ABC spend on the Spew,
He wasn't funny in "Strangers with Candy". He never got it.
2 days ago I made the point about not giving Colbert another year on the air if they were trying to shut him up.
Walsh must be reading this blog. Or he's just a keen observer of the obvious.
"Sweet November" was remade with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron. "Autumn in New York" with Winona Ryder and Richard Gere also had a dying chick plot. The critics hated it. "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" put the dying chick plot into the teen world. Earl, the black sidekick, was just there for diversity's sake and to say "dem titties" a few times. But these a movies focused more on what the (non-dying) male character learns, not what the (dying) female character learns or experiences.
*
Long established corporations start to act like government bureaucracies, especially if the corporations have legendary pasts. They let everyone rule their little fiefdoms, and don't cut costs until they have to -- often until it's too late. That "Tiffany Network" nonsense made CBS think it was NPR or PBS.
The network execs were in kind of a fog. Apparently, they thought Colbert's leftism would win over a younger, hipper audience that had already rejected network television. But in spite of that, I think "the suits" looked a Colbert and saw another "suit." Someone superficially like themselves and not strange or threatening or especially creative.
Look at Letterman's CBS 11:30 show compared to his 12:30 NBC show. You could be zany after midnight, but not before. CBS execs saw Colbert as conventional and non-threatening and like themselves and gave him the job over the much less conventional and much funnier Craig Ferguson.
The other day I was parked next to a car with an "8647" bumper sticker. (pro-murder of a president)
I waited a bit to see who drove the car. I thought for sure it would be a typical angry white older female. It was an older man. I'd guess 70+ something.
Testosterone loss can be heartbreaking for older men.
Maybe CBS recognizes that the game is up and that they're a dying medium or that late night talk show comedy is a dying genre. News staff may be having PTSD and crying jags, but "corporate" realizes that "satire is what closes on Saturday night."
Is Trump "satired out"? Hasn't there been so much satire and parody that at this point he's satire-proof and parody-proof? Isn't he personally funnier that what SNL or Colbert says about him? Maybe not, but for the time being parody is born and lives on social media and the internet and dies when Big Media touches it.
"This is the product of a bunch of hacky bad millennial writers sitting around in a room trying to think of something quirky that two Gen X past their prime comedians can do to appeal to Zoomers on TikTok, even though their actual audience is baby boomers."
Just wanted to say I love this quote. Exactly right.
And isn't it the case that younger generations are getting more conservative? And Xers were a significant source of Trump support. The writers and executives still have this image of the 1970s youth culture, and those are the boomers they are attracting. As well as the narrow amount of wealthy ivy league grads that make up the writer's social circles.
I'd watch a Nate Bargatze late night show. Well, not late at night, but I'd watch the recorded streams on youtube...
Seinfeld did a series called "Comics in Cars" or something. He would drive around in a really nice vintage car and pick up a comedian and go to lunch. It was mildly entertaining (during Covid).
The one "comic" who was entirely humorless was...Steven Colbert.
I just watched the Matt Walsh clip. I can tell you what the Zoomers are interested in right now: K Pop Demon Hunters. My teenagers are obsessed with it. As my 19 year old said, "It's the movie of the summer."
I can actually guess why the Fallon people did that dumb jort song: The Minecraft Movie and the lava chicken song. But my teenagers think it's dumb. My 11 and 9 year old sing Lava Chicken. They've never seen the movie either.
I mean The Minecraft Movie made a ton of money featuring two Gen X'ers past their prime who appealed to the younger set with a completely bonkers movie. Who knows why these things blow up....
Jon Stewart saying the same thing as Colbert.
https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/07/22/keith-olbermann-has-shocking-moment-of-clarity-on-colbert-n2415929
Pretty sure the censorship spin is being pushed by mainstream media types who are terrified to admit that the “all Trump bashing all the time” format” that carried them through the last Trump administration no longer has a audience beyond a few aging liberals.
The indications are, to me, that the Democratic Party is getting smaller, and not just because Progressive Boomers are dying off. The Progressives are losing parts of their voting base. Pew Research put out their analysis of the 2024 election, and it shows minorities leaving the blue tent and moving to the red one.
Every crossover is a two-vote shift, in a political race, i.e. a loss for one and a gain for the other. The media is a profit-driven enterprise, and for a long time it's been heavily biased. When you start to see signs that the bias is being dialed back, that treatment of news stories or popular culture is becoming less strident, more even-handed, then that is a clear indication that the profit motive is asserting itself. They could get away with heavy bias and psy-ops type news coverage for a while, but not forever. It's a luxury belief when people wise up to the con and start deciding differently.
Little Women has a plot revolving around one dying daughter, but she starts out perfect. The Seventh Seal, maybe? Definitely Cries and Whispers. The Swedes have odd ideas about what constitutes lust for life. I can't think of others outside of death row movies, which I find too irritating and dishonest.
Boatbuilder, that was a great series for all kinds of reasons, but a big one really was it showed who was genuinely witty, who was regularly funny but crafted, and who weren't actually funny at all but had an act. Colbert is an act who apparently needed 20 writers to put together a show for him.
That kind of person isn't always bad, though. Lucille Ball was an act, who could pull off zany humor. Bob Hope seems like he was like that too. But Colbert is bad because he's an act with a dwindling audience depending on writers who have been sheltered and aren't funny themselves.
Colbert
"giving the machine what it wants"
also - giving the hive-cult what it wants.
Yeah, Colbert is early X, and Fallon is mid-late X (68-72 are the prime years) but they both reflect a very Boomer mindset shown through a Millenial mirror.
Probably one of the conditions for the purchase of CBS was that the present management be the one to cut the money-losing shows. Given the viewership numbers and Colbert's reported contract, I doubt they ever made any money after the first 2 to 3 years he was the host.
All television shows get more expensive the longer they are on the air since the actors and writers who make one successful gain leverage over time. As a result, the shows eventually become unprofitable especially if there is no real syndication value.
This movie sort of works: “One Way Passage” (1932) with William Powell and Kay Francis.
Two people meet on a transatlantic sailing and fall for each other. Only problem: she’s terminally ill and he’s a convicted murderer now going back to NY to face the gallows. Neither of them lets the other know the truth.
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/2593/one-way-passage/#overview
The next host will be browner and younger.
There will be no next host. They're killing off the franchise.
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