CBS Is About to Have a Big, Expensive Stephen Colbert Problem — and Howard Stern Is the Precedent

There’s precedent for this: Twenty years ago this year, Howard Stern left terrestrial radio, opting for the Sirius Satellite (later Sirius XM) moneybag. Twenty years later, Howard Stern has gone from an A-list superstar to a has-been; the natural consequence of hiding behind a paywall for so long.

Without the feeder system of terrestrial radio to onboard new fans, eventually, his older fans lost interest and left, and nobody new took their place. And now Howard Stern — a man whose audience was once 20 million strong — has become a complete and total nobody.

Consider: Stern’s 1993 “Private Parts” book sold over 1.1 million copies. It was the fastest-selling title in Simon & Schuster history.

A few decades later, he released the book “Howard Stern Comes Again” (2019) with the exact same publisher, Simon & Schuster. While accurate book stats are tricky to track, in one listing, Stern’s 2019 book was credited with just 265,295 sales, finishing about 2,500 units behind Mark Levin’s seventh-ranked book title, “Unfreedom of the Press.” (There were even anecdotal reports of Stern’s book being sold at the dollar store, the tragic fate of so many over-published and under-demanded book titles.) Stern’s audience is a pitiful sliver of what it once was.

And eventually, that’ll be Stephen Colbert’s fate, too. But don’t focus on that yet: The important part is what happened after Stern announced he’d be leaving terrestrial radio (Oct. 6, 2004) but before he actually left on Dec. 16, 2005.

Stern spent much of his final months on terrestrial radio hyping up how awesome his new satellite radio show was gonna be (often by throwing shade at traditional radio). It led to a 43-page CBS lawsuit for “[misappropriating] millions of dollars’ worth of CBS Radio air time for his own financial benefit.” (The lawsuit was later settled, with Sirius paying CBS Radio a few million bucks, while also receiving rights to rebroadcast Stern’s old radio tapes.)

In retrospect, nobody at CBS should’ve been surprised: Of course Stern was gonna hype up his move to satellite! His new financial model depended on it! (Indeed, Stern later sued Sirius XM — and lost — when he demanded a payment of $300 million for the new subscribers gained via the Sirius-XM merger.)

Here we are, twenty years later, and CBS is in the same exact situation as before.

When Fox News fired Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, they didn’t keep ‘em on the air for another 10 months. There was no “farewell tour” or star-studded sendoff; out of sight, out of mind. That sucked for the Fox News viewer, but it made sense for News Corp: Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly weren’t gonna enter the Phantom Zone and vanish into nothingness. Either on another network or on alternative media, eventually, they were gonna be competing with Fox News for eyeballs!

So why give ‘em the gift of free publicity?

Cable news, network TV, and terrestrial radio ain’t what they once were, but their airtime is still valuable. Political pundits — and let’s be honest, that’s what Colbert actually is — are in the business of monetizing public interest. It’s their job to say and do things that generate attention.

Left to their own devices, they’re gonna keep pushing the envelope as far as they can, simply because it’s good for business to do so.

Most of the time, their corporate bosses can keep ‘em in line with the threat of being fired and/or the reward of a big, fat paycheck. It helps companies like News Corp keep the Tucker Carlsons of the world under their thumb.

But once the corporate carrot-and-stick risk/reward is removed? It’s Thunderdome, baby! The political pundit is free to let his freakiest id run wild — and Exhibit A is Tucker’s X feed (eww).

Question for CBS: What the hell do you THINK is gonna happen with Stephen Colbert, who’ll be on your airwaves for another 10 months?!

If you still can’t figure it out, I’ll break it down for you:

His audience consists of liberals;
He needs these liberals to follow him to YouTube (or wherever he goes) when his show ends;
The easiest way to be “must-see” news/entertainment for liberals is to attack Trump/conservatives in increasingly “newsworthy” ways; and
Since Colbert knows he’ll be off the air anyway, you’re not gonna be able to control him.

As my colleague Matt Margolis noted, on his first night back since his firing was announced, Colbert attacked the president with a profanity-laced tirade.

Question for CBS, Part II: You do realize Colbert’s profane attacks will only escalate, right? Is that something you REALLY want on your airwaves for the next 10 months?

Look, CBS had every right to yank Colbert off the air. It’s bad business to pay a guy $15 million to be the public face of an entertainment brand that’s losing $40 million annually. So, even before, the CBS economic model and the Stephen Colbert economic model were no longer on the same page.

But now? You’ve just given Colbert a 10-month window to build and grow a leftwing audience that he intends to take with him!

Monday’s F-bombs are a sign of what’s to come.

Prediction: Stephen Colbert will be removed from the airwaves well before May 2026, and Stern-esque litigation will likely follow.

At this point, I think it’s inevitable.

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