The cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert by CBS has hit the Left hard. 

Many are convinced that CBS sacrificed Colbert to President Donald Trump over its parent company Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance, which will require approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Protesters outside the Ed Sullivan Theater accused the station of “collaboration with fascism.”  

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“They’re trying to silence people, but that won’t work. It won’t work. We will just get louder,” Jamie Lee Curtis protested.

“I want to explain to you what a censorship state looks like — where a corrupt government gives favors to media that suppresses criticism of the regime,” the always melodramatic Chris Murphy said.

The entire episode reeks of entitlement, one of the defining characteristics of the modern Left. There’s little shared culture anymore. One reason is that the Left seems to be under the impression that all things exist to serve its ideological needs. And when consumers inevitably stop watching, listening, or reading, it demands others pay for its opinions. 

Do you want to know what “silencing” and “suppressing criticism” really look like? Imagine every legacy news organization in the country, along with every major social media platform and every big tech company, suppressing an inconvenient story about a presidential family’s involvement in a corrupt influence-peddling scheme. That’s silencing. This is capitalism.  

“Not really an overstatement to say that the test of a free society is whether or not comedians can make fun of the country’s leader on TV without repercussions,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes warned. He’s right, of course. Or rather, he would be if the state penalized entertainers for mocking politicians. Of course, the idea that comedians risk their careers by ridiculing Trump doesn’t really mesh with reality. Colbert made $15 million a year for a decade doing it. It’s difficult to think of any public figure in American history, save perhaps Richard Nixon, who was the focus of more jokes and anger. 

Then again, maybe another test of a free society is that its culture doesn’t spare anyone in power? I don’t remember late-night hosts spending years skewering former President Barack Obama on television. Would such a show survive on legacy networks? Celebrities and rock stars certainly wouldn’t be guests on such a show.   

Another defining characteristic of modern liberalism is faux bravery. Late-night celebrity talk show hosts aren’t merely here to entertain. They are at the forefront in the fight for preservation of democracy. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), who appeared on Colbert in 2023 (obviously there is a national clamoring to see interviews with obscure House members on late night) says that freedom of expression “is fundamental to any democracy, and America deserves more hosts like Stephen, who ask the tough questions. Edward R. Murrow is rolling in his grave.” 

Wait, so now Colbert is a truth-seeking journalist? Did he ask Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who appeared on The Late Show only days after she described Sept. 11 as “some people did something,” tough questions about her tone deafness? Stacey Abrams appeared on Colbert for four cloying interviews. Did the host ever ask her to explain her “election denialism?” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), another four-time guest, was never grilled about his blatant lies in the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. The fluff interviews Colbert conducted with Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) or former Vice President Kamala Harris did nothing to educate voters. 

Colbert is a propagandist. And that’s fine. It’s not an attack on democracy for an outlet to produce a liberal talk show. It’s certainly the prerogative of viewers to tune out and for companies to stop advertising. 

That said, there would be nothing wrong or authoritarian about CBS booting Colbert to create a more inclusive place for viewers. Maybe his inane brand of predictable humor wasn’t profitable. Intimating that Donald Trump is in a gay romance with Vladimir Putin isn’t the cutting-edge comedy the Left would have you believe. 

“Late-night shows mean a lot to me, not just because I work in them, because even growing up in England, I would watch (David) Letterman‘s show, which of course was Stephen’s show, and think about what a glamorous world that was,” HBO’s John Oliver said of the cancellation. 

It wasn’t David’s show, not in spirit. Now, obviously, taste in comedy is subjective. But Colbert had transformed from an entertaining satirical conservative blowhard on Comedy Central to a real-life didactic liberal on CBS. I’m sure there were good moments on Colbert’s Late Show, but no one watched Letterman, Leno, or Carson and felt excluded because of politics. There is very little shared culture anymore. 

Colbert wasn’t very funny, but he also wasn’t very welcoming. Which is odd positioning for a host of a national late-night talk show, especially when you consider the state of late-night network television. Colbert’s audience has fallen around 30% over the past five years, pulling in around 2 million viewers nightly — fewer than 200,000 in the sought-after 18 to 49-year-old demographic. The Late Show opened with an 8 million audience in 2015. Colbert has marginally better ratings than the other two major network late-night shows hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon, but he was reportedly losing major advertisers. Colbert reportedly loses around $40 million a year (on pace to lose $50 million next year) with a $100 million per-season budget. Late-night shows on major networks reportedly earned $439M in ad revenue in 2018 but only $220M in 2024.

Anyway, you don’t have to be a network executive to understand that it’s not a sustainable business model. It would be one thing if Colbert were prestige viewing, brandishing the reputation of the network. But it’s the opposite. If anything’s weird about this situation, it’s that CBS is giving Colbert until next May to keep losing the company money. 

The age of the average Late Show watcher is now 68 years old, which does not bode well for the future. I’m certainly no celebrity watcher, but when I do want to hear from someone whose work I admire, I’d rather listen to a long-form podcast and get a sense of the person. The cost of such shows is minimal. 

That said, “Gutfeld!,” Fox News’s late-night show, which almost surely costs a lot less to produce, draws about a million more viewers on an average night than The Late Show. It does so without leaning on movie and rock stars, and with access to half as many people. One key difference is that Greg Gutfeld is funny and doesn’t take himself very seriously. Colbert acts like the moral conscience of the nation. Yet, Gutfeld is always bashed by critics as a specialty show aimed at a conservative audience. Is he any more political than Colbert? Unlikely. 

TRUMP HAS CBS OVER A BARREL, AND CBS PAYS TRUMP

Still, according to many on the Left, CBS stockholders have a solemn responsibility to keep money-losing shows on the air to defend democracy, in the same way taxpayers have a solemn responsibility to subsidize money-making institutions such as NPR. Democrats spent years compelling citizens to fund massive in-kind contributions to left-wing radio and television. That certainly doesn’t sound like something we should be doing in a free society, either. NPR’s radio shows average around 26 million listeners on over 1,000 stations across the country. Its podcasts get around 17 million users. NPR is one of the top radio and podcast networks in the country.  

Maybe NPR should give Colbert his own podcast — and then have listeners pay for it. Because entertainment is a business, not a charity.