Stephen Colbert's Late Show wraps up on May 21, and I know you don’t care because it’s Stephen Colbert and good riddance to his show that nobody even watches anymore. Nobody in their right mind should mourn his demise. Colbert trashed late-night TV's core mission: to entertain. His venomous partisanship sealed the deal, turning off viewers who just wanted laughs, not lectures.
And he didn’t just torpedo his own career; he dragged the whole format down with him. Ad revenue across the big shows has cratered by more than 50% from its heyday, as they all leaned into the idea that alienating half their audience was a solid business strategy.
Pretty much the only thing that gives Colbert any cachet anymore is the perpetuation of the myth that he’s the victim of some Trump administration scheme to get him off the air. Democrats wailed about "political persecution" after the network's announcement last, but the fact is that the show cannibalized its audience and became too expensive to justify continuing. Past reports put the annual production cost at $100 million, with Colbert getting $15 million of it. It was costing the network $40 million annually for CBS, even though technically it was the top-rated late-night show, at least when you don’t count Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show Gutfeld!
Knowing that he’ll be out of the late-night business soon, I can’t help but think about the one moment that truly crystallizes the rot that has become of late-night television. It was not even two years after Colbert took over as host from David Letterman. The day that President Donald Trump canned FBI Director James Comey.
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This came months into Trump's first term, long after Comey spared Hillary Clinton despite her email mess — a probe many lefties blamed for her 2016 wipeout. Colbert broke the news to his audience live. “Huge story that broke little, just minutes ago, like less than 10 minutes ago. FBI Director James Comey has just been fired by Donald Trump.”
The crowd erupts in cheers. Why? In their minds, Comey tanked Hillary’s campaign. But Colbert was stunned by the response. He had a different narrative entirely to sell. Despite all the blame Comey got from the left over Hillary, Colbert didn’t want the public to see Comey’s firing as much-deserved accountability, but as proof of Trump’s corruption.
“Huge, huge Donald Trump fans here tonight,” he said. “That shows no gratitude at all. I mean, what, did Trump forget about the Hillary emails that Comey talked about? I mean, ‘Uh, thanks for the presidency.’”
This is the new best TV moment ever: Colbert announces Comey is fired, expecting crowd to boo... they're clueless and start cheering wildly pic.twitter.com/JOllpEA9tt
— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) May 11, 2017
Watch that clip. The audience’s genuine reaction was positive, and Colbert scolded them for getting it wrong. They saw it as a win. Colbert wanted them to see it as an abuse of power. He insisted they flip to outrage. Pure media puppeteering in real time, force-feeding the approved script. That was the most clear moment proving that Colbert saw his job as a manipulator, not an entertainer.
And the rest is history… just like his show.
