While taping his Thursday show, host Stephen Colbert made the surprising announcement that CBS is ending his late night show in May.

The live audience at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater booed when he delivered the news that this would be the show’s final season.

“Yeah, I share your feelings,” he told the audience. “It’s not just the end our our show, but it’s the end of The Late Show on CBS. I’m not being replaced. This is all just going away.”

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    21 hours ago

    Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California … “If Paramount and CBS ended The Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know,” he posted on [twitter].

    Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts … also weighed in, expressing skepticism about the timing of the decision to end the show [also posted on twitter]

    is there any clearer sign of what’s happening than some of the most prominent left leaning members of the “opposition” party posting their concerns on a right-wing platform?

    President Trump celebrated the news. “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” he posted on Truth Social. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

    only a matter of time …

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      21 hours ago

      President Trump celebrated the news. “I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired,” he posted on Truth Social. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.”

      Whether overtly coordinated or not, this was the signal for Brendan Carr to approve the Skydance merger.

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        19 hours ago

        Honestly I seriously wish he’d say no anyway and twist the knife.

        I know they can’t though, a bribe doesn’t work again if others know you don’t follow through… :(

        • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          Have you been paying attention lately?

          Trump has repeatedly shown he can go back on his word and make more demands, and companies like CBS will gladly suck him off again. How many businesses, law firms, universities, and even countries (Looking at you, Canada) have done the exact same thing already? Countless.

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      20 hours ago

      is there any clearer sign of what’s happening than some of the most prominent left leaning members of the “opposition” party posting their concerns on a right-wing platform?

      Adam Schiff is “left leaning” in the same way that Elon Musk is a socialist.

      But yes, it is abundantly clear that the Ellisons are buying out Sumner Redstone and the Viacom shareholders in order to impose a more modern Silicon Valley tech sector politics on a network that’s long been a thorn in the side of the Republican Party. Just like when Murdoch bought up National Geographic and the Moonies took control of the Washington Times and Bezos seized the Washington Post. Hell, just like when William Randolph Hearst bought up the San Fransisco Examiner and the New York Journal.

      only a matter of time …

      Back under the Bush Admin, Phil Donahue got axed for opposing the Iraq War and Dan Rather was forced out at CBS for revealing Bush’s embarrassing Texas air national guard service. Or just the massive exodus of professional journalists following media consolidation during the 80s and 90s.

      We’ve always been living in this moment. Now we’re just at the point where a late night comedian is the last vestige of broadcast media still critical of a sitting President.

      Just look at the list of journalists shit-canned in 2024 alone.

      This wave of journalism layoffs shows no signs of receding. Since we first published this list, The Intercept, Vice, BDG, WAMU, Engadget, NowThis, and Law360 have let more than a hundred media workers go. With the help of former staff at each, we’ve managed to gather 119 new names. We also heard from many readers that we’d been too conservative in placing the start date of this wave on January 1. The pre-holiday cuts at Wired, The New Yorker, PopSugar, The Washington Post (where former employees hastened to point out that they’d taken buyouts rather than suffering layoffs), Vox, Vice (in a separate wave from this latest one), and Popular Science were too brutal to ignore. So we’ve moved the start date of this list back to November 1 — which is closer to right but is, nevertheless, somewhat arbitrary, given how often media layoff waves tend to crash.

      Since we first published, we’ve added more than 250 new names to the list of 354 we had before. We’re under no illusions that this represents everyone affected by mass layoffs in media.

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        20 hours ago

        Dan Rather was forced out at CBS for revealing Bush’s embarrassing Texas air national guard service.

        I’m no fan of Bush, but Rather used documents that turned out to be false. I don’t think Rather knew that at the time, but you’re omitting a hugely important piece of those events.

        To quote Omar from The Wire: “If you come for the king, you best not miss”.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          Rather used documents that turned out to be false.

          Rather used copies of real documents that had their kerning adjusted to appear false.

          you’re omitting a hugely important piece of those events.

          It was a strategic ratfuck by the administration and one Karl Rove was celebrated for in the White House.

          But CBS execs went along with it, because they were more concerned with next quarter’s ad revenue than their broader reputation or their duty to the public as a broadcaster.

          Twenty years later, the company has been fully picked apart. Their best journalists are gone and replaced with hacks. They’ve fully lost the youth audience and the public trust. The Ellisons are picking the last meat off the bones.

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            16 hours ago

            Rather used copies of real documents that had their kerning adjusted to appear false.

            Can you cite a source on that? I remember back then seeing an interview with the person that made up the docs and they admitted they did it because they wanted to discredit Bush.

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              16 hours ago

              Can you cite a source on that?

              With a bunch of time spent digging around in old Internet archives maybe.

              they admitted they did it because they wanted to discredit Bush.

              He sounds trustworthy so I guess we’ll take that at face value

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                16 hours ago

                they admitted they did it because they wanted to discredit Bush.

                He sounds trustworthy so I guess we’ll take that at face value

                Detective #1: “We have the murderer. He admitted to killing the victim.”

                Detective #2: “What kind of fool are you to believed that?!”

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                    16 hours ago

                    Your own source cited numbers even suggest the majority of people admitting to murder are the one that did the murder, and you’re trying to use that as a defense to your point?

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        20 hours ago

        schiff is as far left as the majority of this country is willing to go (despite clearly needing actual leftism) and i don’t doubt that this shift has been a decades long effort; my point was to make another splash in the (ignored) bucket of warnings to my fellow americans since it’s really hard to ignore tv in this culture.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          schiff is as far left as the majority of this country is willing to go

          He’s not even the most left leaning in his city. LA has four different DSA city councilors