There is much Schadenfreude to the right, and even more regret to the left, about the cancellation of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”.
Donald Trump leads the Schadenfreude caucus. “I love Colbert was fired. His talent was even less than his qualifications,” Trump beat social networks. “I heard that Jimmy Kimmel is the following. He has less talent than Colbert!” (It is remarkable that a president who campaigned with a vote to end with “canceling the culture” is so uninhibited in his celebration of the cancellation culture when he is in his terms).
The regrets of the left are equally lush, from the other direction. They greet Colbert as a heroic martyr free expression and speak Truth to power. “It is not really an exaggeration to say that the proof of a free society is whether comedians can make fun of the country's leader on television without repercussions,” Chris Hayes de MSNBC of MSNBC declared.
In a sense, both parties essentially agree that Colbert was canceled due to its policy. The argument of the left is that this was unfair and even illegitimate. The illegitimate claim is based on the fact that the CBS Paramount company has been trying to cure the administration to obtain the approval of the sale of the network to Skydance Media. Shari Redstone, owner of Paramount, approved an agreement of Trump's doubtful demand against “60 minutes” (that Colbert had criticized days before as a “Large bribery“). Colbert's scalp was a sweetener, critics claim.
I think the theory is plausible, given the moment of the decision and the way it was announced. If this was the plan all the time, why not announce the decision? In 2025 upfronts And sell ads together with the sanding? This has done this kind of thing in the past.
But Colbert critics on the right have an equally plausible point. Colbert made the very political and partisan show, consenting to Trump's “resistance” to the point that he basically reduced the potential national audience in half. He strongly leaned down in conventionally liberal politicians (In revealing, the night announced the news of his cancellation, his first guest was the Senator of California Adam Schiff, a man who could not laugh if you hit him on the face with a cake).
But both left and right interpretations have some holes. The theory that this was purely a political movement overlooks the fact that CBS did not simply fired Colbert, the iconic “late show” is completely ending and returning the air time to local affiliates. If they only wanted to cure Trump, they could have given the program to more friendly comedians for Trump (more fun and popular among Young'ns) like Shane Gillis or Andrew Schulz. The show was As reported, lose about $ 40 million One year. Even if they hired someone for a quarter of Colbert's Salary of $ 15 millionI would still be losing money.
To the right, many – Triumph Including, I have indicated the fact that Fox Not-Quito-Late-Night Night of Greg Gutfeld has better grades than its competitors in the three inherited networks. That is true, but it is not as if Gutfeld was less partisan than Colbert, Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon.
It is also true that the Titans of previous times: Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, tended to avoid strident partisanship. But the idea fed by the nostalgia that a more conventional apolitical host would generate similar audiences again recedes causality.
These hosts were products of a different era, when a large number of Americans from the entire political spectrum consumed the same cultural products. The hosts, like news networks and newspapers, had a powerful commercial incentive to play it in the middle and avoid alienating great stripes of their audiences and advertisers. That time is over, forever.
Now media platforms seek to obtain small “adhesive” audiences that can monetize by exactly what they want. There is an audience for Colbert, and for Gutfeld, but which makes approximately 2 million to 3 million night viewers who love that tuning things make the other 330 million potential spectators tune in something else. The “late show” model, and the budget, simply does not work with those numbers.
The cable news, led by Fox, marked the beginning of political polarization in news consumption, but the cable itself fed the Balcanization of popular culture. The transmission and podcast platforms, directed by YouTube, are turbocharger of that trend to the point where media consumption is now a letter (artificial intelligence can soon do it almost to measure).
The night model was built around a culture in which there was little more to see. That culture will never return.
X: @jonahdispch
