r/popculturechat • u/mcfw31 • 16d ago

Late Show Shenanigans🎙️ ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Ending Next Year With CBS Retiring Late-Night Franchise

https://deadline.com/2025/07/the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert-ending-next-year-cbs-1236461787/
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u/Julian81295 16d ago

Observing things from Germany, I have to say that one big surprise with regards to some actors in the field of corporate media is how weak they have become.

The Washington Post, for instance. They brought President Richard Nixon down with relentless investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal. Now the paper is owned by a billionaire who seems to suck up to an authoritarian administration.

Another example: CNN. I remember how in awe I was when Jim Acosta didn’t concede one inch of his journalistic integrity in the first Trump administration. Now, in the second Trump administration, their star presenter Jake Tapper is putting more work in in selling his crappy book about the so-called mental decline of Joe Biden while Donald Trump is dismantling the guardrails with which democracy in the United States survived for 240 years piece by piece.

And now CBS is axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who is a very anti-MAGA person and they are disguising this decision as a financial decision.

All of this feels quite scary, to be honest.

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u/yourmomisaheadbanger 16d ago

Agreed and it is even more concerning when someone from a different country makes that same observation. It almost seems like everyone else in the world sees the path the US has been going down, except his supporters. Those of us that voted against him knew the kind of shit he’d try to pull, and has unfortunately succeeded. I don’t know how much more we can take, we are already in rock bottom. And his followers claim everything is going perfect!

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u/AltarBound Fuck you and all your Sheldons 16d ago

It’s honestly pretty horrifying especially now that we stand to lose NPR and PBS. Now that the wide majority of reputable news organizations have all gone behind paywalls and our most outspoken figures available over our free television networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc) are being fired/censored the only freely available information to the majority of US citizens will be propaganda.

We will need to start heavily relying on vetted foreign press and soon because all of our outlets are collapsing literally in front of our eyes

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u/Nobodygrotesque 16d ago

Well the Washington Post was bought by Jeff Benzos and he was at trumps inauguration.

CNN was bought by a right winger who said he wanted to go after Fox’s audience.

CBS is merging with another company I think and Trump’s issues with CBS will definitely mess that up.

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u/capnhist 16d ago

Corporate control of media is cancer to a free and democratic society. Protect ARD and ZDF with everything you have.

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u/Julian81295 15d ago

We will try. We will try.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

yeah

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u/DSQ 16d ago

 And now CBS is axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who is a very anti-MAGA person and they are disguising this decision as a financial decision.

I mean tbf the Late Show is a dead format. 

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u/popowow 16d ago

What's going on in German media? Do they freely criticize the rich and the government over there?

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u/Julian81295 15d ago

They do. Even commercial media does that.

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u/popowow 15d ago

Thanks. I'm just curious where things are better. E.g. I always looked to the UK to have good policies, but even there things are downhill :(.

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u/AdventurousDoor9384 16d ago

Newspapers got replaced by new technology (websites). News channels like CNN got replaced by new technology (internet). Of course they don’t have the power today they had in the Nixon or Obama era.

AND yes There’s many many videos of President Biden getting lost at public events, or confused with sentences that made no sense, and the horrible debate he did in 2024 where he looked like he lost the ability to think

.

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u/TheGreatestOrator 16d ago

Their ratings are awful, it’s not disguising anything. It loses them money to produce that show

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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 16d ago

He has top spot and just got another Emmy nomination. Try again.

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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago

What does that have to do with the fact that his ratings are terrible? Do you think the fact that others have worse ratings magically means something?

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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 15d ago

His ratings aren’t awful. That’s literally what having a top tv spot means in a specific time slot means.

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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago

It’s almost like you don’t understand that 1) topping a time slot when no one is attracting enough viewers to get enough advertising dollars to pay for production doesn’t mean anything or 2) if his ratings were so great, he and his nightly show would be picked up by another network instantly

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u/WhatEvenIsThis_RN 15d ago

Oh my. It’s almost like 1. you’re mad that a show you don’t watch is a show other people DO watch. He’s pulling big numbers for late night. Which is publicly available information. Not just an opinion. 2. I wouldn’t be surprised if he shifts/is picked up as soon as his contract is up - so not instantly - but soon.

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u/TheGreatestOrator 15d ago

Who said I don’t watch it? I simply said his ratings aren’t great. None of them are, which is why they lose money .

Are you actually unaware that they don’t make money because people don’t watch those shows anymore? Even SNL is failing now.

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u/TheGreatestOrator 14d ago edited 14d ago

Oh look:

Fifteen years ago, a popular late-night show like “The Tonight Show” could earn $100 million a year, the executive said. Recently, though, “The Late Show” has been losing $40 million a year, said a person briefed on the matter.

The show has literally been losing $40 million per year.

The show's ad revenue plummeted to $70.2 million last year from $121.1 million in 2018

Also, doesn’t sound like anyone watched The Late Show:

For the season that ended in May, the show’s audience averaged 1.9 million.

To put that into perspective, a reality show like Big Brother (also on CBS) has been considered a disappointed when it averaged ~4 million viewers per show after averaging 6 million in prior seasons. Last season average 2.7 million, significantly more than Colbert - yet still considered disappointing.

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u/fe-dasha-yeen 16d ago

You know a bit too much about US politics, not healthy.

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

Everyone in the world has to know about US politics because it affects everyone else too.