Stephen Colbert isn’t willing to say his show was cut because his network bent the knee to Trump—but he’s still suspicious about the timing.
The Late Show host, 61, told the New York Times that before his show was suddenly axed, just days after calling out CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for the “big fat bribe” he called its $16 million settlement to the president over its 60 Minutes interview with a political opponent, the network had tried to lock him into a contract as long as five years.
Paramount called ending The Late Show a “purely financial decision” at the time, as it awaited approval from Donald Trump’s administration to merge with Skydance.
“Less than two years before they called to say it’s over, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed,” told the Times. The host ultimately opted for a three-year contract instead, which will end with his show on May 21.
“It’s possible that two things can be true,” Colbert said. “Broadcast can be in trouble. They cannot monetize because of things like YouTube, because of the competition of streaming. They’ve got the books, and I do not have any desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work for them anymore,” he continued.
Days after Paramount announced that The Late Show was ending, an “insider” report claimed the show was costing Paramount $40 million a year. Jimmy Kimmel slammed those numbers, telling Variety, “There’s just not a snowball’s chance in hell that that’s anywhere near accurate.”
Since Trump took office last January, Colbert became one of his major late-night targets, along with Kimmel—the latter of whom is facing renewed calls from the White House for his show’s cancellation, after he joked about Trump’s age days before the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Trump has been pushing for a crackdown on his TV critics across the board, with the FCC launching a probe into The View earlier this year. Colbert said the move to silence critics, particularly comedians, is to be expected from Trump.
“Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity,” he said. “Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them. The number of newspeople who have said to me or Jon Stewart or any of the guys who do this, ‘God, I wish I could say what you say on air.’ And we can.”
He concluded on the topic, “I think that upsets them. I think it might be upsetting that we really do not live in their world of principalities and powers.”
