Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Tonight!
Chapter 2: Who are the notable figures saying goodbye to Stephen Colbert?
Like Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Arsenio Hall, Whoopi Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Conor O'Brien, Craig Kilbourne, Craig Ferguson, Keen Ivory Wayans, Wanda Sykes, Carson Daly, Chelsea Handler, George Lopez, James Corden, Larry Wilmore, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Amber Ruffin, and many more before him, Stephen Colbert will say goodbye to late night television.
He's going out with a little help from his friends, Amy Sedaris, Billy Crystal, Weird Al, Mark Hamill, Tiffany Haddish, Jeff Daniels, Martha Stewart, Ben Stiller, Josh Brolin, James Taylor, Aubrey Plaza, and Robert De Niro, and that was just last night. None of them spoke about the highly unusual circumstances in which Steven's leaving CBS, but last night's musical guest took a swing at it.
I'm here in support tonight for Steven because you're the first guy in America who's lost his show because we got a president who can't take a joke.
We're going to say goodbye to Stephen and Late Night TV on Today Explained from Vox.
Anyway, Stephen, these are small-minded people. They got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about. This is for you.
What's up, y'all? I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WNBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is AmMom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us.
For years, if you ran a media company, you obsessed about Google because Google could send a fire hose of traffic your way. But now things are changing fast.
So last year, I told all of our teams, you need to plan your businesses around there being no search. And if you don't have a plan for that, you may not have a business. I think it was very effective.
That's Roger Lynch, the CEO of Condé Nast, the home of fabled magazines like The New Yorker and Vogue. And if you want to hear how Lynch is thinking about Google and AI companies and who's going to replace his most famous editors, good news. You can hear all of that on Channels with Peter Kafka. That's out now everywhere. It's Today Explained! And now, your host, Sean Ramosford! Wow.
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Chapter 3: What unusual circumstances surround Colbert's departure from CBS?
Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg News is here to remind us what happened to Stephen. Colbert is the highest rated on television of the late night shows. But when he debuted that show, I think got eight million viewers. It's now averages more like two. And the amount of money advertising dollars pumping into late night has dropped by more than 50 percent.
So it's just it's a it's a declining part of the business. So it wasn't Colbert's fault, necessarily. It was more just a sign of the times kind of situation? I'd say both. So broadcast networks have been looking for ways to cut costs, right? You know, they re-air shows from streaming. CBS has shown Yellowstone. Brand isn't something you earn, it's something you live up to.
NBC is putting on Traders. Are you faithful or a traitor? And especially as these networks spend more money on sports every year, they're having to pull back on things like entertainment. UFC has struck a deal with Paramount. Paramount is paying some big bucks here, an average of $1.1 billion a year.
It has come out now that the NFL has signed an 11-year, $110 billion media rights deal.
But I would say that Colbert, as successful as he's been on linear television, which is where a lot of the money is made, he's also sort of the least web forward of the late night shows. So he has the smallest footprint online of any of the hosts. And then there's the White House-shaped elephant in the room. Trump has called on the companies to basically fire all the late-night hosts.
The timing certainly didn't look good for Paramount. You know, CBS announced it was killing the show while Paramount was in the middle of negotiating or finalizing its merger with Skydance. The FCC had been dragging its feet to approve that deal. Trump was suing CBS over the editing of the 60 Minutes interview. Trump said that those facts were unrelated. Nobody really believed them.
You know, the Ellison family is super tight with Trump. So there's been this perception that Donald Trump and politics had a big role in the firing of Stephen Colbert. Have we found a smoking gun or anything of the sort that suggests that this was just a hit job? No. And that's part of the problem with the political argument is that we haven't seen anyone make a direct tie.
Now, that being said, it's always or often very hard to find that smoking gun with President Trump. One of the things he's really good at is sort of acting a little bit like a mob boss where there's always one level of deniability so that he can say out loud what he wants to happen, but there's not going to be like that email that people unearth that lays it bare.
So no, we have not seen any smoking gun. Okay. And since the cancellation of Colbert in July of 2025, which is being realized this week in May of 2026, Have we seen any indication that this is going to be a trend, that Seth Meyers is shaking in his shorts, that Kimmel, who's under threat again from this administration, is ready to throw in the towel and give up the fight?
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Chapter 4: How has the late night television landscape changed over the years?
Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. And that's something I'm embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Steven off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates to take my show off the air. That's not legal. That's not American. That is un-American. And it's so bad.
When Trump tried to come after him again because of a recent joke, it just didn't go anywhere. Now, Kimmel re-upped his deal for one year. His contract is up next year. I would not be surprised if this were the end. I don't think Kimmel wants to go. I think he's probably now reached a point where he would like to stay until Trump is gone so that he can essentially declare victory.
have the last word but if you're disney and if you're the new ceo josh tomorrow do you want your late night show to constantly be causing you problems with the president especially if it's a show that doesn't really make much money so i think there's a very interesting chemical negotiation to come seth meyers i assume that shows on borrowed time i don't have any reporting to say when it's going to end my gut tells me that fallon is the last to go but that's just a hunch
We'll all be dead and gone and Jimmy Fallon will still be there looking like he's 35, throwing to Questlove, playing games. We are about to play Box of Lies. True Confessions. Lip Sync Battles. The Whisper Challenge.
A Water War.
But the games are the thing, right? Is that late night became all about formats. It became about how can you get something that's going to go viral on YouTube, on Instagram, online, that people are going to share with their friends. Because the number of people who are actually watching the shows live kept going down and down and down.
I mean, I think the hosts have been pretty open about the fact that a lot of what they do now is just geared towards virality online, which is great for the customer. Not so good for the networks because you make a lot less money from a YouTube clip than you do from, you know, a 30 second spot on CBS.
Which I think is the justification on some level for what the network is replacing Colbert with. Can you help people understand what they might see if they turn on the TV at 1130 on CBS? Well, how familiar are you with the name Byron Allen? Every time it comes up, I have to look him up to figure out who he is again, because not really. But he's a very powerful, rich man.
Yeah, he's got one of the more unusual careers, CVs you'll find in media. He was a stand-up comedian out of never really an A-lister, but, you know, a comedian that people knew throughout the 80s and 90s.
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Chapter 5: What financial challenges is late night television currently facing?
to put his show on the air. Huh. So the spot that used to be James Corden, which was the late, late show, or I think that's what it's called, he put in a show called Comics Unleashed, which is a comedy show.
It's a comedic institution. It's a round table of comics on couches, and they, you know, you pitch your jokes, and you get to run your bits.
Like, I was thinking the other day that I want to start my own emergency rescue service called Rescue 9-1, and our motto would be, you really can't help but call us first.
LAUGHTER
That now moves up to 1135 and another Byron Allen show called Funny You Should Ask. The show where every question has a funny answer. Slots into that James Corden slot. Wow. So Byron Allen just owns, what, two hours of late night on CBS now? Late night and late, late night. And he's paying tens of millions of dollars for the rights.
And he's betting that he can make enough money from the advertising sales that it'll be worth it. I mean, what does it tell us that CBS is leasing this once illustrious time slot to, I guess, kind of like a freelancer, essentially? That late-night comedy is a dying act and that these broadcast networks are in somewhat precarious financial situations, right? And CBS executives, I think...
said anonymously that they were losing like $40 million a year on Colbert. Now, some people don't believe that number. Jimmy Kimmel in particular has come out and said he doesn't. But if you can go from losing $40 million a year to potentially making tens of millions of dollars a year from Byron Allen, why wouldn't you do that trade?
I was going to ask you what we lose when we no longer have these traditional late night shows, but I feel like all the hosts have been on a sort of publicity tour recently. I think late night is one of those things that's been around our whole lives. It's part of our lives. I never thought it was a job when I was growing up. I just thought Johnny Carson came with the television set.
I didn't know. Look at the figures. And the fact of the matter is, more people are watching late night television now. And people watch us on YouTube now. And people have a lot of different options. And yet, they keep coming to us. On the one hand, what you see with the loss of late night is the decline of monoculture, right?
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Chapter 6: How does Trump's influence play a role in Colbert's cancellation?
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As we all understand, you can take a man's show, you can't take a man's... Today Explained. So that's the good news of today.
Larry, you worked at The Daily Show. You hosted The Nightly Show, which replaced Colbert when he left Comedy Central for his now canceled Late Show. Have a lot of people been asking you how you feel about what's going on with Steven right now? You are the only one, Sean. For me, it's a little different because I look at television very soberly, I guess, Sean.
I go, well, you know, a lot of trends come and go on TV. The Variety Show had an amazing run on television, you know. Even the sitcom has changed a little bit. It's come in and out of favor. And this particular late night format, if you think about it, this started in the mid 50s with Steve Allen. That's a long run.
That's a really long run to have that particular form stick around for that long, you know. So. I think it's probably past its due date, to be honest with you. And that's got nothing to do with the hosts so much as the format. Well, let me ask you about the hosts.
You know, one of my favorite things from your show, The Nightly Show, was a segment called Keep It 100, in which you challenge your guests to be completely honest about something. Can I ask you to keep it 100 about something? I always keep it 100. Are you kidding me? My man. Okay. You can talk about keeping it above, dude. Why doesn't Z-Way have Seth Slott after Fallon?
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