JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Stephen Colbert said farewell last night on the finale of the "Late Night" show he hosted for nearly 11 years. Colbert's departure marks a pivotal moment for late-night TV. CBS and its parent company Paramount have said the decision to cancel the program was purely financial. Colbert's champions, however, say it's all due to politics in the Trump era. Joining us to talk about all of this are culture correspondent Mandalit del Barco in Los Angeles and media correspondent David Folkenflik in New York. Hi to both of you.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Hello.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: Mandalit, I want to start with you. I didn't get to see the finale last night. What happened?
DEL BARCO: Ah, you didn't see it. Well, Colbert ended his show on a really joyful and whimsical note. During his finale, he was visited by some of his famous friends, including his mentor, Jon Stewart, the host of "The Daily Show," and also by his TV friends, also known as Strike Force Five - John Oliver, Seth Meyers, and the two Jimmys - Fallon and Kimmel.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
JIMMY KIMMEL: We came to say, we're going to miss you. "Late Night" is not going to be the same without you.
SETH MEYERS: Yeah. Without you, where will Americans turn to see a middle-aged white man make jokes about the news?
DEL BARCO: On his last show, Colbert also sang with his surprise guest, former Beatle Paul McCartney.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
PAUL MCCARTNEY: (Singing) You say goodbye, and I say hello.
STEPHEN COLBERT, LOUIS CATO, JON BATISTE AND ELVIS COSTELLO: (Singing) Hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye.
MCCARTNEY: (Singing) Hello, hello.
DEL BARCO: They performed with Elvis Costello, as well as Louis Cato and Jon Batiste, who were both bandleaders for Colbert's show. The audience was invited to dance with them onstage. And in the end, Colbert and McCartney symbolically switched off the lights of the Ed Sullivan Theater. That's where the Beatles debuted in America in 1964 and where the "Late Show" franchise was broadcast for nearly 33 years. And finally, through visual effects, Colbert's show and the entire theater were sucked into a giant green interdimensional wormhole.
(SOUNDBITE OF WORMHOLE OPENING)
DEL BARCO: Yeah, it was really a metaphor, as guest Neil deGrasse Tyson warned.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Your cancellation has created a rift in the comedy variety talk continuum. And if it grows, all of late-night television could be destroyed, destroyed.
DEL BARCO: Very ominous.
SUMMERS: Indeed. I mean, Colbert's was the highest-rated late-night show, Mandalit. So what were some of the factors at play that led it to its cancellation?
DEL BARCO: Well, let's set the context. During the long run of his show, Colbert never stopped roasting Donald Trump. He didn't mention the president in his final monologue, and he never directly blamed Trump for getting canceled, but many others did. And on one of Colbert's last shows, musical guest Bruce Springsteen laid it all out.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT")
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: You're the first guy in America who's lost his show because we got a president who can't take a joke.
(CHEERING)
DEL BARCO: Springsteen went on to say the Ellisons - billionaire Larry and his son David, who owns CBS - were kissing up to Trump. In fact, Trump posted about Colbert on Truth Social overnight. Thank goodness he's finally gone, he wrote, and later he warned that the other hosts are soon to follow.
SUMMERS: David, over to you now. The network let it be known they were losing tens of millions of dollars on "The Late Show." How fair is Springsteen's charge?
FOLKENFLIK: Well, let's take their claim on its face. Finances of "Late Night" are tough. They're under duress because of the pressures and competition from streamers, which are real and affecting all of television. "Late Night" is no exception. And this was an expensive show. It was a marquee show for CBS, but they never did anything to mitigate the cost. You never saw them - prior to essentially saying his show would stop this month, about a year ago - or less than a year ago. They never did anything like cut his band, like they did to the "Seth Meyers" show over on NBC. They never said, you know what? - the Ed Sullivan Theater is wonderful, and it's really expensive. So let's get you in a studio. They didn't do the moves like that that would say they were worried about holding costs into effect.
I went back this morning with colleagues. We looked up the precise timing. Colbert's show was - the announcement that it would be dropped was made exactly one week before President Trump's regulators approved the sale of the company by Shari Redstone and other controlling owners of Paramount, CBS's parent company, to his allies - to Trump's allies Larry and David Ellison, whom Mandalit just mentioned. And as she said, Colbert is one of the president's most outspoken critics. I don't think it's possible to see that decision without taking these facts into account...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
FOLKENFLIK: ...And the fact that the Ellisons have become intertwined with the president and his actions. Early last year, for example, President Trump moved to ensure that TikTok's U.S. venture would be essentially under the control of Larry Ellison.
SUMMERS: And I mean, David, "Late Night" hosts change, times change, shows change. These are things that just happen. Tell us why this one matters so much.
FOLKENFLIK: Well, in part in there's the history of Stephen Colbert. What he did with his earlier show - also for Paramount on Comedy Central called "The Colbert Report" - he essentially was playing the role of an incendiary, incensed right-wing cable news host, Stephen Colbert, and it was a role that he played to a T. It was an extraordinary inversion of the cable model, and it unraveled a lot of the arguments and a lot of ways in which cable news works nowadays.
Also Colbert showed grace on the air. He showed compassion on the air. He showed humanity on the air. It moved a lot of people, even beyond those who agree with his political critique. And let's not forget that political critique. The nature of satire, I think, is endemic to the American political experiment and the idea of free speech. It's not just for politicians and journalists. And if you are seeing satirists being squeezed, as, you know, Colbert's champions would have you believe, as certainly Jon Stewart said. You know, it seems as though there's a squeezing on free speech.
Now, FCC chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly celebrated Colbert's departure as a win for Trump and the Trump administration. He's also urged the firing of Jimmy Kimmel over on ABC. This is an involvement of the FCC in a way we haven't seen before, in the programming choices to this degree. Carr, I must say, I've repeatedly asked for comment and not gotten anywhere with, on that question.
SUMMERS: David, as Mandalit mentioned, Colbert brought on Jon Stewart and his late-night TV host buddies. What's the climate they're facing now?
FOLKENFLIK: Interesting question. Jon Stewart is continuing on on "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, but that's owned by Paramount, as well. So that's a TBD in some ways. Seth Meyers appears to be sticking around. You've got Jimmy Kimmel - after he made remarks after Charlie Kirk's assassination, you know, Disney took him off the air for several days, but there was a backlash. They put him back on.
Right now, Disney is actually defending itself as the FCC, under Brendan Carr, has forced it to apply early for the renewal of the licenses of its eight local ABC stations that it owns. That's a pressure point, as well, although the FCC says for different reasons. And lastly, I'll say John Oliver - he's over on HBO. That's owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Right now, Paramount is seeking Trump's regulators' approval to take over that giant media conglomerate, as well.
SUMMERS: Do you have any details about what's next for Stephen Colbert, as well as his new replacement?
DEL BARCO: Well, Colbert says most immediately, he plans to go to his brother's wedding this weekend, and he's been working on his passion project, a script for an upcoming "Lord Of The Rings" movie which he co-wrote with his son, Peter McGee. This week, Colbert started a new personal TikTok account, and actually, many of us watch online clips of these late-night comedians rather than tuning into television.
But as for Colbert's time slot, CBS is replacing "The Late Show" with "Comics Unleashed," a show from media mogul Byron Allen. Allen is paying CBS for the time slot, and he says the comedy on his show will not be newsy or political at all. He asks guests questions like, are you a morning person, and how's your dating life? Nothing about Trump.
SUMMERS: And I'll just note that my co-host Ailsa Chang sat down with Byron Allen himself. You can hear their conversation elsewhere in the show. NPR's Mandalit del Barco and David Folkenflik, thanks to both of you.
DEL BARCO: Thank you.
FOLKENFLIK: You bet.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELLO, GOODBYE")
THE BEATLES: (Singing) You say goodbye, and I say hello. Hello, hello. I don't know why you say goodbye. I say hello. Hello, hello. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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