Just a quick follow-up to yesterday’s discussion about CBS announcing the impending end of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert…

You can be like Chris Hayes, Brian Stelter, Vox, The New Republic, Adam Schiff, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other progressives, and choose to believe you live in a world where the ending of The Late Show is a sinister plot by spineless, cowardly corporate executives who are terrified of irking President Trump and who desperately want the Federal Communications Commission to approve the merger of CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, with Skydance Media. (And, it should be noted, Colbert’s choice to  turn the show into a four-nights-a-week version of the speaker list at the quadrennial Democratic National Convention.)  That is a dramatic world, with noble heroes and dastardly villains, plotting against the interests of the public, punishing a brave comedian, smashing dissent, and bending the knee in obedience to a ruthless, vindictive, power-mad president.

Or you choose to believe you live in a world where the ending of the show is a reflection of the fact that CBS was losing $40 million each year on the show, as the Wall Street Journal reports today. And as much fun as it would be to blame Colbert for being greedy and making the show unprofitable with his $20 million per year salary, with numbers like that, the show would still be unprofitable even if he worked for free.

Reuters adds, “the show’s ad revenue plummeted to $70.2 million last year from $121.1 million in 2018, according to ad tracking firm Guideline.” If a show’s ad revenue gets nearly cut in half over a six-year period, that is a serious and worsening problem, and an indication that it isn’t a reflection of a one-year blip or temporary economic pressures.

That is a much less exciting world. In that world, Colbert’s nightly denunciation of Trump was not much of a factor in the show’s fate, other than maybe alienating roughly half the potential audience for the show. In that world, the end of the show is primarily a reflection that viewers’ habits have changed, not as many people watch late-night network television as a few years ago, and there’s no sign that the trend will reverse:

YouTube became the most-watched video provider on televisions in the U.S. earlier this year, and its lead has only grown, according to Nielsen data. People now watch YouTube on TV sets more than on their phones or any other device—an average of more than one billion hours each day. That is more viewing than Disney gets from its broadcast network, dozen-plus cable channels and three streaming services combined.

In that world, the fate of The Late Show doesn’t look so sudden or cruel. (The Wall Street Journal article says that “Network executives had been considering ending The Late Show for some time, and discussions heated up earlier this summer.”) How many consecutive years did the makers of The Late Show think that CBS could sustain losing $40 million making the show? Even if Colbert’s $20 million per year salary wasn’t the only cost keeping the show in the red, how much longer did he think CBS could continue paying him like a best-in-the-league NFL player if his show’s advertising revenue kept declining?