When Stephen Colbert became a financial disaster for CBS, its execs fired him. For good measure, they also killed the “The Late Show,” the network’s failing 33-year-old flag-ship late-night program.
CBS could have axed Colbert and replaced him with a cheaper host from Hollywood’s limitless stable of professional Trump haters. They still might do just that if Colbert continues to use his show for the next 10 months to deliver F-bombs to President Trump.
But for now, the network is keeping the insufferable Colbert at his desk until next May. Colbert, who for years has hated on Trump every night, is now being held up by his deranged fans as a brave First Amendment warrior and victim of Trump’s “dictatorship.”
According to some Colbert fans, the bosses at Paramount, which owns CBS, fired Colbert because Paramount needed the Trump administration’s approval for its plan to merge with Skydance Media (which the FCC has granted).
Other fans are signing “Save Colbert” petitions and mourning his firing like he was a living saint. Some of his talk show competitors, including Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart, have even appeared on TV to show their brotherly support.
And a liberal journalist in love with Colbert at the left-wing Guardian newspaper really lost it. She praised him as “the reverend father of late-night TV: principled, authoritative but hardly ever self-righteous, deeply faithful to the American project, steadfastly believing in the decency of others.”
She and Colbert’s other 1.9 million nightly idolaters are pathetic. They have no idea how poorly their hero compares to great late-night stars like Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman.
Those giants didn’t spew their own politics every night – or at all. They weren’t predictable partisans whose opening monologues were nasty political attacks.
No one knew for sure how Carson, Leno or Letterman voted or what their politics were. Their guests were liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, Gore Vidal to William F. Buckley Jr., and they were treated with equal respect – and gentle humor.
And let’s face it. The only reason Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon are allowed to bash Trump every night with their lousy jokes is because that is what their corporate bosses want to hear. CBS was willing to lose $40 million a year on Colbert’s “I Hate Trump Hour.”
The obsolete late-night format has been in a death spiral for almost a decade. Ratings have fallen through the floor, which is why their ad revenues are reportedly down 50 percent since 2018.
TV needs to attract eyeballs, specifically eyeballs between the advertising-coveted ages of 25 and 54. But late-night ratings are in the toilet.
Colbert has the highest late-night ratings on the broadcast networks, but all of them are blown away by Fox News’ “Gutfeld” and its 3.1 million nightly viewers. “Gutfeld’s” top ratings are partly due to the show’s conservative-libertarian politics and partly because it comes on at 10 p.m.
But what makes Greg Gutfeld’s show so entertaining and profitable is that it specializes in conservative merriment and fun, not anger. Yes, it is a non-stop hour of mocking liberals. But it is not non-stop hate – and it’s more interested in entertaining people than delivering propaganda or throwing childish F-bombs at politicians.
Carson, Leno and Letterman made you laugh, not mad. They had fun every night – and it showed.
They and their bosses knew it was bad business to hate one party or politician because it would quickly drive away half of their audience.
They didn’t want a Red audience or a Blue audience. They wanted the biggest audience they could get. And unlike Colbert, they wanted to make people laugh, not angry.
Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation.
