Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Later tonight, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert comes to an end amid a lot of changes in the business and in the country.
Chapter 2: What significant changes are affecting late night television?
Among the sources of tension, the economics of late night in an age of clips and streaming, the approaching merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers, and President Donald Trump's constant criticism of late night hosts, which has sometimes been backed by pronouncements from the FCC. But for Colbert's fans, the end of a friendly, funny, candid show.
I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about Stephen Colbert on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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Thankfully, over at Pop Culture Happy Hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see that? You can say, yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
Joining me today, of course, is Eric Deggans. He's a critic at large at NPR and also the night chair of journalism and media ethics at Washington and Lee University. Hello, Eric.
I believe this is the first time I've been on the show since I've become a full professor. So I am now officially a An absent-minded professor. I just want to note that here starting out.
That is awesome. I am excited to hear it. I am always proud to know you, but even more now that you are fully an absent-minded professor. And I will also say, you know, you and I have spoken about late night quite a number of times, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How has Stephen Colbert's role evolved throughout his career?
He played a fictional version of himself, a conservative firebrand talk show host. On the late show, Colbert was just himself, a warm and affable presence in interviews and more and more as time went on, a critic of Donald Trump. In July, CBS announced that the current season would be the last, citing the difficult economics of late night shows.
But this also happened while CBS was seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for a multibillion dollar merger with Skydance Media. It also closely followed Colbert's criticism of CBS's decision to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump had filed over a 60-minute interview he claimed was unfairly edited.
Colbert himself has said essentially that he thinks two things can be true. The economics of late night have indeed become difficult, but also perhaps it was particularly appealing to end the show at this particular political and corporate moment. Eric, I want to ask you first, when you think about Stephen Colbert's career, what do you think sets him apart as a host?
What sets him apart as a host right now is I think that he has become fully this figure who embodies a lot of really interesting and wonderful qualities. He's super smart. He's passionate about a lot of subjects, including The Lord of the Rings, which anybody who watches the show knows.
That's right.
He loves his wife, who he's been married to for ages. He's deeply religious. He's Catholic. And he seems to be a good-hearted guy. And he's brought that to hosting The Late Show. And he was succeeding somebody, David Letterman, who didn't connect with his guests and really distinguished his show by provoking them on camera in very real ways. Letterman enjoyed...
both making fun of the conventions of television and also provoking his guests to show genuine anger and genuine sort of negative feelings on camera to kind of puncture the false picture that these talk shows can often present. And Colbert returned to a more collegial, you know, let's have fun. It'll be unpredictable, and I'm going to try and get some real reactions out of you.
But it's not going to be negative. I'm not going to be attacking you. I'm not going to be provoking you. And I'm not going to be bringing on people who hate me. So it was kind of a very different show. And I spoke to Roy Wood Jr., for example, who'd been a guest on the show many times, the comic. And he said, you could never predict
where the conversation was gonna go when you went on Colbert because he might have a list of questions in front of him, but if something happened that he was interested in, he was gonna pursue that. And so Colbert's legacy is kind of directing the show towards what he's passionate about, what he's interested in, and using that to entertain the audience.
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Chapter 4: What challenges are late night shows facing in today's media landscape?
And that led him to where we are now, where the bulk of his monologues now are jokes about Trump.
Yeah. And one of the things that I have always thought was interesting about him is that he is not afraid at all of really earnest conversations with guests, like earnest, deeply felt conversations with guests about grief. He's talked a lot about loss and how he deals with loss and
You know, you mentioned his faith, which is a huge part of his personality and a huge part of, I think, his worldview. And when he talks to guests about faith and grief and God and things like that, it is just something that, you know, you occasionally, especially I would say late in his career, got lost. Right, right.
his relationship with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and Seth Meyers. And those guys made the Strike Force 5 podcast during the writing and acting strike, which you and I also talked about at the time that that was going on.
But those guys all came around also, you know, during the closing days of Colbert's show and all appeared together, which is something that like you and I know in the olden days of late night, that was not a thing. Like that was just not a thing you would have seen.
Not at all. The other thing I would say is that I think times have changed. And one of the things that is easy to miss is that the public now wants authenticity. They would not tolerate, I don't think, a host like Carson who would come on and be like, hey, I'm this smooth, charismatic guy. And then privately... you know I'm a jerk.
TMZ and Radar Online would go crazy talking about the hidden side of Carson. So these hosts have to be authentic. They have to reveal themselves. And I think that was what Colbert learned when he transitioned from, you know, he hosted the Colbert Report as a character. He was playing a parody of a Fox News style conservative host. He comes to the late show.
He has to figure out, you know, who am I going to be on camera? And he decides he's going to try to not talk about topical things and he's going to maybe shy away from politics. But there was a sense that when he leaned into politics and stopped doing bits so much, People were seeing him, which is what they wanted. They wanted to see him. And I think that's just where we are with these shows.
That's what the whole influencer trend is about. You know, seeing authentic people.
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Chapter 5: How does Colbert's criticism of Trump impact his show?
I think that has shifted somewhat as he's gotten older and stepped back from doing it every single day. But I think Colbert much more was like, yeah, I am willing to tell people that I'm really upset. You know, not tell them in terms of doing a polemic, but like making jokes that make it clear.
that he's really bothered by things and that he thinks things are really wrong or that he thinks things are really troubling and or dishonest or stuff like that. And on that point, I want to go back to something that you wrote about for NPR this week, which is the sort of truthiness concept that he developed on the Colbert report. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of that to you?
Yeah. So I think this is emblematic of how times change. So the very first show that he did... So the background is that Stephen Colbert was a correspondent on The Daily Show, and he sort of developed this character of a know-it-all. He called it, quote, a high-status idiot. So this guy... is an anchor, a conservative anchor, cable TV news pundit, who is hosting his own show.
They created a show called The Colbert Rapport. And in the very first episode, he coined this term truthiness. Now, what's interesting about that is that he kind of alludes to what it means during that segment. He doesn't actually sort of totally spell out what that means. But later, Colbert did define it more definitively, which is this idea that believing passionately that
Because you believe something is true, it must be true, regardless of the facts. And, of course, we were seeing this across all kinds of punditry on cable TV news and even on talk radio. People like Rush Limbaugh, people like Bill O'Reilly, people like Sean Hannity.
constantly insisting that because they believe something was true, that it must be true, regardless of what the facts might actually say. The ultimate expression of what they call confirmation bias. Sorry to put my professional's hat on for a minute. Of course. So then he sort of embodies that as a character. for nine years on the Colbert Report.
And then he comes over to The Late Show, and he's living in a world that is constructed, a political world that is constructed by truthiness. Donald Trump's and MAGA Republicans' secret weapon is truthiness. And so now he has to navigate that as an actual person, as himself. And it's just been fascinating to watch how he coined exactly what we would be struggling with for the next 20 years.
And in the end, his show was, you could argue, if you doubt CBS and you think one reason his show got canceled was because he was a consistent Trump critic, his show was felled by truthiness.
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What qualities set Stephen Colbert apart from other late night hosts?
Well, I think part of what's going to happen is a lot of that audience is going to go to Kimmel. Maybe some of it will go to Fallon, but I think- Mostly Kimmel, I bet. A lot of Colbert fans are dissatisfied with Fallon because they think he's soft on Trump. So I think we're going to have late night shows for at least two or three more years.
Yeah.
Because, you know, the available audience is going to flow to Kimmel and everyone who likes what he's doing in criticizing Trump is going to support him more because they're angry about what happened to Colbert.
Yeah, I get that. Well, it is always good to talk late night with you, Eric. That does bring us to the end of our show. Thank you so much for being here.
I'm such a late night nerd. I've actually been to Colbert's Late Show twice. So hey, anytime you want to talk late night, please just pick up the phone. I'll be there.
Absolutely. All right. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Kasif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.
New shows, new music, new movies. Keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully, over at Pop Culture Happy Hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see that? You can say, yeah, obviously.
Follow NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
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