Colbert heads into his final ‘Late Show’ week with gratitude — and plenty of CBS jokes
By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — Stephen Colbert is going out with a smile — and with many jokes at CBS and its parent company Paramount’s expense.
Colbert is signing off “The Late Show” this week as CBS ends the iconic late-night TV franchise.
Many “Late Show” fans are disappointed, even angry, about the cancellation, doubting CBS’s rationale for the decision and believing that appeasement politics toward President Trump are at play.
“I have every right to be pissed off,” Colbert’s predecessor, David Letterman, said during a farewell visit to the show last week.
But while others are outraged on his behalf, and the audience continues to litigate the show’s end, Colbert remains positive and radiates gratitude.
“I’ve really liked working with CBS,” he recently told The New York Times. “They’ve been great partners. And I’d like to end it that way… I feel so much better to be ‘grateful for’ than to be ‘mad about.’”
Colbert’s primary concern, as he has indicated in other interviews, is about the “Late Show” staff, who will be out of work after Thursday night’s finale.
The promotional listings for the final week contain some clues about the show’s plans.
Monday’s episode will be “the worst of ‘The Late Show’ with Stephen Colbert,” according to the CBS press release, which notes that it is “not a clip show,” meaning Colbert has some new material in store.
Tuesday’s episode will feature two A-list stars, Jon Stewart and Steven Spielberg, plus a “special performance by David Byrne and Stephen Colbert.” Spielberg is starting a press tour for his new movie “Disclosure Day,” and Stewart is a longtime friend and producing partner of Colbert’s.
Wednesday’s episode will include a performance by Bruce Springsteen and a special edition of “The Colbert Questionert,” a recurring Q&A segment on the show.
And Thursday’s finale will be a surprise: no guests or segments are being promoted in advance.
Colbert’s chief rivals, ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,” will both run reruns on Thursday night.
In a podcast taping with Kimmel, Fallon, Seth Meyers and John Oliver last week, Colbert alternated between sentimental and sarcastic about the end of his show.
He also shared that “my son graduates college on the 18th; my show ends on the 21st; my brother gets married on the 23rd. So, I’m kind of sandwiched between things that are, like, a little more important — like, you know, a little perspective.”
Colbert, 62, has said little about his public-facing plans after “The Late Show,” though he is attached to be a writer on a new “Lord of the Rings” movie, a dream gig for one of TV’s biggest Tolkien fans.
‘Two things can be true’
As for the whodunit aspect of his show’s cancellation, Colbert told The Times, “It’s possible that two things can be true.”
When CBS announced last July that this season of “The Late Show” would be the last, the network said it was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”
But the timing raised plenty of eyebrows. At the time, Paramount was trying to win Trump administration approval for its merger with Skydance Media, and the company had just settled President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News, even though legal experts deemed the suit frivolous. On the air, Colbert likened the settlement to a “big fat bribe.”
Then came news of the cancellation, though it had apparently been in the works internally for weeks. Numerous Democratic officeholders raised questions about whether Colbert was axed for political reasons. After all, it’s nearly impossible to separate Colbert the comedian from Colbert the Trump critic.
Trump, of course, celebrated Colbert’s cancellation and hoped Kimmel would be fired next, though ABC has ignored the president’s many pleas to sever ties with Kimmel.
When asked about Trump, Colbert told The Times, “Authoritarians don’t like anybody who doesn’t give them undue dignity. Comedians are anti-authoritarian by nature. And authoritarians are never going to like anybody to laugh at them.”
What comes after Colbert
“The Late Show” will be replaced right away: Starting Friday, the time slot will be filled by “Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen,” a comedy talk show that bears little resemblance to Colbert’s production.
“Comics Unleashed” abstains from topical humor because the episodes are designed to be replayed later. This means the show lacks the political commentary that Colbert fans love.
It also lacks a band, a desk or the other trappings of classic late-night TV shows. Instead, the show features Allen and a rotating panel of comedians who tell jokes and riff on more universal topics.
Comedians sometimes treat “Comics Unleashed” like a punchline. But it already airs after “The Late Show” on CBS stations, and now it will move to the 11:35 p.m. time slot through a “time buy,” in which a producer leases a time slot from a network and recoups costs by selling ad time during the show.
Allen hasn’t said how much he is paying CBS for the time slot, but he has depicted it as a win-win. He told TheWrap that CBS will save “approximately $150 million+ per year just on production and marketing” by replacing “The Late Show” with “Comics Unleashed.”
In an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, Allen positively cast the evergreen nature of his show, saying, “We don’t need the politics. I don’t care who you vote for. I don’t care. I’m here to make people laugh.”
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