CBS canceling Stephen Colbert's late night show -- ten months from now -- has been treated like the "dismantling" of the Constitution, and democracy itself. Liberals act like they alone represent the First Amendment and democracy, and whenever someone cancels a TV show, it must be a craven attempt to curry favor with a "fascist." Socialists fuss that "corporate masters" don't have the courage to rip Trump 24/7 as they wish.
NewsBusters media analyst and comedy researcher Alex Christy joins the show to discuss all things Colbert.
On The View, co-host Sunny Hostin proclaimed that if this decision wasn't financial (as CBS claimed), “This is the dismantling of our democracy. This is the the dismantling of our Constitution.” She broke out that old saw about liberals "speaking truth to power."
They never seem to "speak truth" within their own party, like talking Biden out of running for a second term.
Sunny Hostin somehow thinks the entire fate of the United States rests on continuing a late-night show that’s best known for crudely suggesting President Trump’s mouth was a “holster” for Vladimir Putin’s sex organ.
CNN's Jake Tapper also stood on a soapbox about corporate chieftains fearing Trump's whims, that "the First Amendment protecting the free speech rights of comedians and journalists when they joke or cover powerful people, an amendment that our corporate masters will not fight for, that's ultimately just words on parchment." You don't have a First Amendment right to an expensive national television show.
Less than two million people watch Colbert on an average weeknight. Fox News Channel's Gutfeld! is actually the most-watched late-night program on television and has outdrawn Colbert for 21 straight months. Yes, Gutfeld airs at 10 p.m. Eastern, while Colbert's begins at 11:35 p.m. Eastern. But in 2025, Gutfeld's show averaged 3.1 million viewers through July 20, compared to 1.9 million for Colbert.
The men of late night reacted to Colbert's bad news with varying degrees of intelligence on their Monday shows. On the dumb end of the spectrum was fellow Paramount employee Jon Stewart, who reacted on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show by telling CBS to “go fuck” itself and dropping over 40 F-bombs.
On CBS Mornings, co-host Vladimir Duthiers -- whose wife works for John Oliver's Last Week Tonight show on HBO -- said "I know they’re expensive to produce, but they are part of the cultural zeitgeist." His colleague Tony Dokoupil was the odd man out, suggesting late-night talk shows are becoming outdated, "like a Blockbuster [Video] kiosk inside a Tower Records."
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