Economics played a role. Politics might have, too. But mainstream liberal comedy has struggled between the death of mass culture and the rise of Trump.
I like the way Jeff Maier puts it: “In TV, if you’re making money, you could wave your genitals at the Pope while high on crack and the network will loudly defend your right to free expression. But if you’re losing money, it’s like A Quiet Place: Make any noise at all, and you will be whisked away to instant death.”
While I can understand that many people believe this is political, the dispassionate facts indicate otherwise, and Colbert is just the first of MANY dominos soon to fall. To wit:
Colbert averages 2.4 million viewers — less than 1% of the country. It’s a TINY FRACTION of Carson, Leno and Letterman’s previous audiences. For example, Johnny Carson averaged 15 million nightly viewers, with Jay Leno and David Letterman averaging 6-7 million viewers each.
Furthermore The Late Show’s audience has fallen more than 30% in the past five years, and has declined even more among the critical 18- to 49-year-old demographic prized by advertisers, who have shifted to streaming, You Tube and Podcasts in huge numbers. Colbert’s operation reportedly costs north of $100 million annually, and hemorrhaged $40 million last year, nearly half of the loss being the host’s salary.
And CNN is planning significant layoffs as part of a broad restructuring aimed at adapting to the challenges of this rapidly changing media landscape. CNN CEO Mark Thompson announced in January 2025 that it would lay off roughly 200 jobs on the television side of the business alone, with company-wide layoffs of roughly 6%, and that a number of big name ‘CNN Personalities’ along with their accompanying huge salaries, would not have their contracts renewed (although these people will remain on the air until the contract expirations). These layoffs are responding to continued declines in traditional cable viewers and plummeting advertising revenue as viewership shifts to You Tube, Streaming and Podcasts.
Other major networks including NBC News and ABC News have also announced they are planning major staff cuts in response to similar financial pressures, and Comcast, the corporate parent of both NBC and MSNBC is planning on spinning-off MSNBC, and in the future it will no longer have automatic access to shared reporting, studios, and administrative resources from NBC News.
The entire media landscape is undergoing seismic changes as the viewerships (and revenues) of traditional shows are in free-fall.
MONEY not Politics is the PRIMARY driver of all these changes.
I'm sure if someone pro, in the media, really cares they can go through quarterly statements, how CBS accounting structures shared costs and costs like owning the Ed Sullivan Theater to have a Late Night Show there etc... and get a decent estimate of what the costs actually are. I'm not sure people would believe "receipts" provided by CBS anyway.
What I mean by receipts are stockholder reports. Someone stated in that Paramount is a privately held corporation, so I don't know that there are stockholder reports.
Paramount is a publicly traded company (I own a small amount). There’s an open tender offer for the Skydance merger, but they’re not paying cash for every share. I forget the exact amount, but there’s only enough cash allocated to purchase about half the outstanding shares. So I’ll get cash for some of my shares, and new Skydance/Paramount shares for the rest.
Not to nitpick, but 2.4M is not a tiny fraction of 6M. The middle sounds accurate. The conclusion, impossible to state if you aren't the PR department at CBS.
There's a parallel here with NPR. If your medium is dying then preemptively cutting off half the country is a real genius move. Colbert is obviously a very intelligent individual and I'm sure he'll land on his feet, hosting a podcast taped from his kitchen.
In years past when Republicans tried to cut off funding for NPR they found a surprising source of opposition--other Republicans, who may have appeared on public radio or television as guests or whose right leaning constituents enjoyed public programming. But as those organizations became ever more partisan they alienated larger portions of the population. Their audiences shrank, and that left them far more vulnerable to cancelation.
You can do left-wing comedy, and you can do right-wing comedy, and have an audience locked in while locking out another.
The one thing you can't do anymore is equal-opportunity-offender comedy. At best you'll get accused of both-sides-ism (even when the shoe fits on the facts), at worst you'll reap the political whirlwind from both sides.
Smarties love a dispassionate skewering of both sides as appropriate; unfortunately, the dumbmasses don't.
I tried watching Bill Maher on HBO Max (a pro at both-sides political comedy) with a lefty. She couldn't stand it.
Eh, as a libertarian I find Bill Maher the worst of both worlds.
I wouldn't hold him up as a good example.
I honestly can't stand the man even when I agree with his points, he's smarmy, insists he knows what's best, and constantly talks down to everyone as the smartest asshole in the room. If I wanted to be insulted like that, I'd go on r/politics or r/consevative and state I'm a Libertarian.
You can do that type of comedy, John Stewart and bill mair do it. Stewart’s very first episode back at the daily show was about bidens decline. He was criticized but he still did it
The market for late night television has been steadily declining and Colbert decided that alienating half the country was a sound business plan. What a genius. The basic numbers just don't work--to a large extent he cut his own throat.
Colbert goes down and NPR loses its federal funding: who says the vibe shift (meaning the pendulum is just swinging back) isn't real? The corrective moves at the LA Times and the WaPo aren't just big media kowtowing to Trump, they are the reaction to the insane wokery that ruled at those organizations over the last few years. Nature is healing.
My theory is that there was a "selective" recession among low income earners during the Biden administration. Now the country is entering a period of recovery.
What I would watch for is when Powell cuts rates. The usual crowd is going to take this a signal to let the good times roll.
If Colbert's show costs around 100 M fully loaded, part of the problem is the money. Too many successful businesses and people get complacent, greedy, or sleepy. Too many people on TV get paid too much to be covered by the advertising. I think there will be fewer down-sized late night shows, just done more cheaply. It's just a business, designed to make money. Ratings may be a poor way to measure quality, but if ratings are the metric, then consequences follow.
This is a really good point. I wonder if the show’s budget was so high when it started. If your show’s revenues are declining then you need to reduce your costs as well, or you are putting yourself in a very dangerous position.
The section on the (poor) economics of big budget TV is surely 95% of the reason for its cancellation if not 100%. Paramount is a giant company and CBS is a tiny part. The Late Show is a tiny part of CBS. I’m sure other shows are on the chopping block and more crappy (but cheap) reality TV will replace them.
Bernie and others implying other motives is either stupid or just playing politics (which is fine as that is the level at which 80% of Americans operate).
I didn’t need to read any of the rest of Nate’s pontificating about what’s funny and what isn’t. There are actual cultural critics who have much better ideas and are much better writers. But i guess Nate had to find something to publish as many of us are coming up to our renewal dates. I wish he would focus on what he can be good at (election and sports analysis). I don’t want to read Andy Rooney Nate.
I agree with Nate's analysis here. While politics certainly played at least some role, the reality is, TV is dying right before our eyes. We are in the midst of a gigantic shift in how people get and consume entertainment, news, etc. I am 61 and grew up watching TV on a schedule (everyone did).
Now? It's utterly fragmented and people watch when they want, not on a schedule. The faster people pull the plug on cable, the faster this is going, and it is fastest within the demo of people advertisers crave.
This is why the costs for sports have gone to the moon. It's because sports are becoming the only thing that people will sit and watch live, when it happens, and thus are a captive audience to advertisers.
Y'all want to see just how things are today? The number of people that watch a show at a certain time has crashed. But look how fast the Coldplay concert story spread. I would guess 80% of Americans have seen the video, or at least read about it on their feed.
We live in a time where things are changing faster than they ever have.
In terms of technological progress things are moving at a fast pace.
But consider this: in 1949 the big hits were Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters. Twenty years later it was the Door and CCR. Not to mention you have Hendrix wailing away at Woodstock.
Now go back to 2005. To my untrained ear the music from then pretty much sounds exactly like the music of today.
Late Night is, above all, a dying medium. Why bother staying up late to watch live when you can just get the highlights the next day? Better yet, why not listen to podcasts catered to your specific tastes rather than the catch-all audience late night has to appeal to? One of the major networks was bound to cancel their late-night programs eventually, even if the timing is a bit suspicious right now. Colbert supposedly had better numbers than Kimmel and Fallon, which might explain why they're coming to his defense - they know they're next.
A part of me selfishly hopes this might lead to the return of The Colbert Report, or at least Colbert's character from the Report. I thought the Report was 10x funnier than anything he did on the Late Show
Display ads have very low conversion rates, the viewership is getting older as the demographics of cord cutting and alternate entertainment sources appear.
Advertisers "crave" young viewers because there are most swayed by advertising and early brand habits drive long time brand associations (eg. the Mustang SUV).
There is a reason that traditional TV advertising revenue is expected to have a -4% CAGR over the next decade.
Why stay up late to watch TV? There's plenty to watch any time you want, and topical shows like talk shows typically have a very poor shelf life, even if you DVR it and watch it tomorrow evening.
Maybe Kimmel and Fallon have better economics even if the ratings aren't as good.
You do realize there won’t be highlights the next day if there’s no show the night before, right? And also that CBS is able to monetize those highlights?
While linear TV is losing viewership, the Colbert analysis requires comparison to a baseline of that linear decline. His viewership declined 36% the last 5 yrs (Kimmel /Fallon less; Gutfeld meteoric rise).
The discussion was long term, so to get into the weeds, this is the overall dynamic:
2021 Launch: Since its debut in April 2021, Gutfeld! has increased its audience by 81% in total viewers, 37% in the 25–54 demographic, and 52% in the 18–49 demographic.
• 2022–2023: The show averaged around 2.5 million viewers through this period, making it the most-watched late-night show in the U.S..
• 2024: Gutfeld! saw record-breaking growth, averaging 2.5 million nightly viewers—a 35% increase year-over-year. Key episodes, including special guest appearances, drew nearly 5 million viewers, the highest in the show’s history.
Any evidence Colbert/Stewart consumers care what the Times television editor thinks?
I think the timing is the circumstantial case for the cancellation being political. Colbert calls the Skydance/60 Minutes ettlement a bribe, Skydance is merging with Paramount, Skydance CEO meets with the administration, and all of a sudden Colbert gets cancelled.
Surely if the shoe were on the other foot and some neoliberal bro were being canceled for being unprofitable after a scandal for problematic behavior, there wouldn't be as much credulity regarding the stated reason for cancellation.
Well, there was that whole Dominion Voting Systems thing. Carlson cost Fox News hundreds of millions of dollars and was a potential future liability going forward.
Beyond general knowledge, I'm afraid I don't have much insight. It seems that Carlson had uniquely embarrassing internal communication implying he didn't believe the allegations and thought Trump was an idiot. There's also an allegation of antisemitism to which I do not know the substance--all potentially money-losers for Fox.
Why Carlson doubtlessly will tell you he was canceled, there was probably also a business case for doing so.
Nate's business overview of the big picture from Paramount's perspective is good, but it leaves out a major point.
There is an opportunity cost to trying to rescue something like a show running a $30M estimated deficit.
Suppose an exec decides to do something about it. Trim the $100M budget to $50M, and if you are really good at it maybe the cuts only drop the revenue from $70M to $60M.
That is a lot of work, and congratulations - you made the company $10M, with the unfortunate prospect that the actual business economic mean that it will need to be revisited again in a year or two. Woot! A growing share of a shrinking market.
Meanwhile, the up and coming exec in the office next door takes a $5M flyer on an emerging E-game, and sees it also return $10M. A growing share of a growing market.
Every rescue project related minute spent in a VP level meeting is a minute that that would be better spent on projects with unbounded upside.
Rescue projects can tank careers, even if the project is a success.
If you are a director looking for a Sr director or VP bump you know this in your bones.
Part of the noise from the Left might be the NPR effect.
If you look at any major metro with an NPR affiliate, the NPR affiliate typically has very high TSL (time spent listening, that is, the number of person-hours the station is listened to), but very low cume (number of unique listeners).
In other words, some of this kind of programming has fewer fans than one might expect, but those fans are BIG fans.
There's a similar phenomenon on the Right with religious stations, conservative talk, and sports talk (high TSL with low cume). Of course, sports talk isn't necessarily right-wing but it is right-coded.
If, say, Biden had had an issue with Fox and some of the more conservative shows (say, Hannity) had gotten cancelled due to economics, you'd hear similar hollering from the Right.
Speaking of Fox, I do find it interesting that Murdoch is choosing to fight Trump over his suit against the WSJ, versus trying to settle (at least yet). Of course, the economics in favor of settling lawsuits where there would be a good (but not 99%) chance of winning while running up attorney's fees is often significant.
One thing I have not seen mentioned is that maybe Skydance or Paramount wanted to cancel Colbert versus re-upping him just to clean the books of upside-down assets and onerous contracts. That happens often in M&A.
Highest rated show gets cancelled after the host calls out parent company for a bribe..
Someone made a great point on a recent Risky Business episode, something to the effect of “that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s just human inference.”
Also, tbh sports is overrated. Nobody watches sports anymore.
No connection? The NFL and NBA are giants compared to MLS, (much less the WNBA). Is it reasonable to speculate that the amount of money paid for broadcast fees is going to be the same for all four?
I will forever be annoyed that nobody remembers the episode of TDS in which Stephen Colbert, who to wit pronounced his last name as “Kohl-burt”, made the public decision to start pronouncing it as “Kohl-bear” because it sounded French, and thus would annoy Bill O’Reilly.
I like the way Jeff Maier puts it: “In TV, if you’re making money, you could wave your genitals at the Pope while high on crack and the network will loudly defend your right to free expression. But if you’re losing money, it’s like A Quiet Place: Make any noise at all, and you will be whisked away to instant death.”
Apologies- I meant Jeff Maurer
Getting my name on the second try is way above average!
I swear it was auto-correct!
It's been 30 years and Orioles fans still can't escape it
While I can understand that many people believe this is political, the dispassionate facts indicate otherwise, and Colbert is just the first of MANY dominos soon to fall. To wit:
Colbert averages 2.4 million viewers — less than 1% of the country. It’s a TINY FRACTION of Carson, Leno and Letterman’s previous audiences. For example, Johnny Carson averaged 15 million nightly viewers, with Jay Leno and David Letterman averaging 6-7 million viewers each.
Furthermore The Late Show’s audience has fallen more than 30% in the past five years, and has declined even more among the critical 18- to 49-year-old demographic prized by advertisers, who have shifted to streaming, You Tube and Podcasts in huge numbers. Colbert’s operation reportedly costs north of $100 million annually, and hemorrhaged $40 million last year, nearly half of the loss being the host’s salary.
And CNN is planning significant layoffs as part of a broad restructuring aimed at adapting to the challenges of this rapidly changing media landscape. CNN CEO Mark Thompson announced in January 2025 that it would lay off roughly 200 jobs on the television side of the business alone, with company-wide layoffs of roughly 6%, and that a number of big name ‘CNN Personalities’ along with their accompanying huge salaries, would not have their contracts renewed (although these people will remain on the air until the contract expirations). These layoffs are responding to continued declines in traditional cable viewers and plummeting advertising revenue as viewership shifts to You Tube, Streaming and Podcasts.
Other major networks including NBC News and ABC News have also announced they are planning major staff cuts in response to similar financial pressures, and Comcast, the corporate parent of both NBC and MSNBC is planning on spinning-off MSNBC, and in the future it will no longer have automatic access to shared reporting, studios, and administrative resources from NBC News.
The entire media landscape is undergoing seismic changes as the viewerships (and revenues) of traditional shows are in free-fall.
MONEY not Politics is the PRIMARY driver of all these changes.
Nevertheless, Paramount owes us receipts proving that the show costs $100+ million to produce.
If MAGA demands receipts on Epstein from Trump, why should we settle for less?
Paramount is a private entity. It doesn't owe receipts to anybody but its auditors.
Well, if paramount wants us to believe a public claim, it should offer evidence. Why does it expect its public claims to be believed?
Why should it care?
It cared enough to deny politics as the reason and to claim “money” instead.
While Paramount may be a PUBLIC Company, that simply means it owes NOTHING to ANYONE except its OWNERS (aka 'Stockholders').
I'm sure if someone pro, in the media, really cares they can go through quarterly statements, how CBS accounting structures shared costs and costs like owning the Ed Sullivan Theater to have a Late Night Show there etc... and get a decent estimate of what the costs actually are. I'm not sure people would believe "receipts" provided by CBS anyway.
What I mean by receipts are stockholder reports. Someone stated in that Paramount is a privately held corporation, so I don't know that there are stockholder reports.
Paramount is a publicly traded company (I own a small amount). There’s an open tender offer for the Skydance merger, but they’re not paying cash for every share. I forget the exact amount, but there’s only enough cash allocated to purchase about half the outstanding shares. So I’ll get cash for some of my shares, and new Skydance/Paramount shares for the rest.
I meant private in the sense of private industry, as compared to a public (government) institution. It's publicly traded (on NASDAQ).
Not to nitpick, but 2.4M is not a tiny fraction of 6M. The middle sounds accurate. The conclusion, impossible to state if you aren't the PR department at CBS.
You are correct. I meant to say 'a tiny fraction of Americans and between 1/5 and 1/3 of Carson, Leno, and Letterman'. My bad.
There's a parallel here with NPR. If your medium is dying then preemptively cutting off half the country is a real genius move. Colbert is obviously a very intelligent individual and I'm sure he'll land on his feet, hosting a podcast taped from his kitchen.
In years past when Republicans tried to cut off funding for NPR they found a surprising source of opposition--other Republicans, who may have appeared on public radio or television as guests or whose right leaning constituents enjoyed public programming. But as those organizations became ever more partisan they alienated larger portions of the population. Their audiences shrank, and that left them far more vulnerable to cancelation.
You can do left-wing comedy, and you can do right-wing comedy, and have an audience locked in while locking out another.
The one thing you can't do anymore is equal-opportunity-offender comedy. At best you'll get accused of both-sides-ism (even when the shoe fits on the facts), at worst you'll reap the political whirlwind from both sides.
Smarties love a dispassionate skewering of both sides as appropriate; unfortunately, the dumbmasses don't.
I tried watching Bill Maher on HBO Max (a pro at both-sides political comedy) with a lefty. She couldn't stand it.
Eh, as a libertarian I find Bill Maher the worst of both worlds.
I wouldn't hold him up as a good example.
I honestly can't stand the man even when I agree with his points, he's smarmy, insists he knows what's best, and constantly talks down to everyone as the smartest asshole in the room. If I wanted to be insulted like that, I'd go on r/politics or r/consevative and state I'm a Libertarian.
You’re not wrong.
You can do that type of comedy, John Stewart and bill mair do it. Stewart’s very first episode back at the daily show was about bidens decline. He was criticized but he still did it
Not entirely true, but you have to do it so no holds barred that it is your brand. South Park is a good example.
The market for late night television has been steadily declining and Colbert decided that alienating half the country was a sound business plan. What a genius. The basic numbers just don't work--to a large extent he cut his own throat.
Colbert goes down and NPR loses its federal funding: who says the vibe shift (meaning the pendulum is just swinging back) isn't real? The corrective moves at the LA Times and the WaPo aren't just big media kowtowing to Trump, they are the reaction to the insane wokery that ruled at those organizations over the last few years. Nature is healing.
Eh, I think the backlash to the Trumpen overreach is going to be ugly, especially when the economy starts to go south.
My theory is that there was a "selective" recession among low income earners during the Biden administration. Now the country is entering a period of recovery.
What I would watch for is when Powell cuts rates. The usual crowd is going to take this a signal to let the good times roll.
Yeah everything's really recovering right now....
For me it's a simple binary: recession or not? Looking increasingly like "not" at this point.
If Colbert's show costs around 100 M fully loaded, part of the problem is the money. Too many successful businesses and people get complacent, greedy, or sleepy. Too many people on TV get paid too much to be covered by the advertising. I think there will be fewer down-sized late night shows, just done more cheaply. It's just a business, designed to make money. Ratings may be a poor way to measure quality, but if ratings are the metric, then consequences follow.
This is a really good point. I wonder if the show’s budget was so high when it started. If your show’s revenues are declining then you need to reduce your costs as well, or you are putting yourself in a very dangerous position.
The section on the (poor) economics of big budget TV is surely 95% of the reason for its cancellation if not 100%. Paramount is a giant company and CBS is a tiny part. The Late Show is a tiny part of CBS. I’m sure other shows are on the chopping block and more crappy (but cheap) reality TV will replace them.
Bernie and others implying other motives is either stupid or just playing politics (which is fine as that is the level at which 80% of Americans operate).
I didn’t need to read any of the rest of Nate’s pontificating about what’s funny and what isn’t. There are actual cultural critics who have much better ideas and are much better writers. But i guess Nate had to find something to publish as many of us are coming up to our renewal dates. I wish he would focus on what he can be good at (election and sports analysis). I don’t want to read Andy Rooney Nate.
I agree with Nate's analysis here. While politics certainly played at least some role, the reality is, TV is dying right before our eyes. We are in the midst of a gigantic shift in how people get and consume entertainment, news, etc. I am 61 and grew up watching TV on a schedule (everyone did).
Now? It's utterly fragmented and people watch when they want, not on a schedule. The faster people pull the plug on cable, the faster this is going, and it is fastest within the demo of people advertisers crave.
This is why the costs for sports have gone to the moon. It's because sports are becoming the only thing that people will sit and watch live, when it happens, and thus are a captive audience to advertisers.
Y'all want to see just how things are today? The number of people that watch a show at a certain time has crashed. But look how fast the Coldplay concert story spread. I would guess 80% of Americans have seen the video, or at least read about it on their feed.
We live in a time where things are changing faster than they ever have.
In terms of technological progress things are moving at a fast pace.
But consider this: in 1949 the big hits were Perry Como and the Andrews Sisters. Twenty years later it was the Door and CCR. Not to mention you have Hendrix wailing away at Woodstock.
Now go back to 2005. To my untrained ear the music from then pretty much sounds exactly like the music of today.
Late Night is, above all, a dying medium. Why bother staying up late to watch live when you can just get the highlights the next day? Better yet, why not listen to podcasts catered to your specific tastes rather than the catch-all audience late night has to appeal to? One of the major networks was bound to cancel their late-night programs eventually, even if the timing is a bit suspicious right now. Colbert supposedly had better numbers than Kimmel and Fallon, which might explain why they're coming to his defense - they know they're next.
A part of me selfishly hopes this might lead to the return of The Colbert Report, or at least Colbert's character from the Report. I thought the Report was 10x funnier than anything he did on the Late Show
TV is, above all, a dying medium.
Display ads have very low conversion rates, the viewership is getting older as the demographics of cord cutting and alternate entertainment sources appear.
Advertisers "crave" young viewers because there are most swayed by advertising and early brand habits drive long time brand associations (eg. the Mustang SUV).
There is a reason that traditional TV advertising revenue is expected to have a -4% CAGR over the next decade.
Why stay up late to watch TV? There's plenty to watch any time you want, and topical shows like talk shows typically have a very poor shelf life, even if you DVR it and watch it tomorrow evening.
Maybe Kimmel and Fallon have better economics even if the ratings aren't as good.
You do realize there won’t be highlights the next day if there’s no show the night before, right? And also that CBS is able to monetize those highlights?
While linear TV is losing viewership, the Colbert analysis requires comparison to a baseline of that linear decline. His viewership declined 36% the last 5 yrs (Kimmel /Fallon less; Gutfeld meteoric rise).
https://www.tvinsider.com/1202434/late-night-ratings-2025-gutfeld-kimmel-colbert-fallon/
"[Gutfeld] was down [Q2 2025] compared to the first quarter of 2025 ... by -9% in total viewers and -22% in the [18–49] demo." (July 15, 2025)
The discussion was long term, so to get into the weeds, this is the overall dynamic:
2021 Launch: Since its debut in April 2021, Gutfeld! has increased its audience by 81% in total viewers, 37% in the 25–54 demographic, and 52% in the 18–49 demographic.
• 2022–2023: The show averaged around 2.5 million viewers through this period, making it the most-watched late-night show in the U.S..
• 2024: Gutfeld! saw record-breaking growth, averaging 2.5 million nightly viewers—a 35% increase year-over-year. Key episodes, including special guest appearances, drew nearly 5 million viewers, the highest in the show’s history.
Of course 10 pm isn't actually a late night slot - it actually is classically prime time, and Gutfeld has been there for a couple of years.
Here are typical primetime ratings for comparison :
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/final-2024-25-network-tv-ratings-tracker-high-potential-1236312223/
Any evidence Colbert/Stewart consumers care what the Times television editor thinks?
I think the timing is the circumstantial case for the cancellation being political. Colbert calls the Skydance/60 Minutes ettlement a bribe, Skydance is merging with Paramount, Skydance CEO meets with the administration, and all of a sudden Colbert gets cancelled.
Surely if the shoe were on the other foot and some neoliberal bro were being canceled for being unprofitable after a scandal for problematic behavior, there wouldn't be as much credulity regarding the stated reason for cancellation.
What happened to Tucker Carlson? AFAIK his show was profitable--a ratings leader, in fact--right up to the moment he was canceled.
Well, there was that whole Dominion Voting Systems thing. Carlson cost Fox News hundreds of millions of dollars and was a potential future liability going forward.
Weren't there other Fox News personalities who repeated the same charges? Were they also canne?
Not all of them. Lou Dobbs was also canned. Communication acquired during discovery was also pretty damnin of Carlson.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Voting_Systems_v._Fox_News_Network
So there was no consistent approach to terminations related to Dominion.
Plus there was Bill O'Reilly in the past.
Beyond general knowledge, I'm afraid I don't have much insight. It seems that Carlson had uniquely embarrassing internal communication implying he didn't believe the allegations and thought Trump was an idiot. There's also an allegation of antisemitism to which I do not know the substance--all potentially money-losers for Fox.
Why Carlson doubtlessly will tell you he was canceled, there was probably also a business case for doing so.
Nate's business overview of the big picture from Paramount's perspective is good, but it leaves out a major point.
There is an opportunity cost to trying to rescue something like a show running a $30M estimated deficit.
Suppose an exec decides to do something about it. Trim the $100M budget to $50M, and if you are really good at it maybe the cuts only drop the revenue from $70M to $60M.
That is a lot of work, and congratulations - you made the company $10M, with the unfortunate prospect that the actual business economic mean that it will need to be revisited again in a year or two. Woot! A growing share of a shrinking market.
Meanwhile, the up and coming exec in the office next door takes a $5M flyer on an emerging E-game, and sees it also return $10M. A growing share of a growing market.
Every rescue project related minute spent in a VP level meeting is a minute that that would be better spent on projects with unbounded upside.
Rescue projects can tank careers, even if the project is a success.
If you are a director looking for a Sr director or VP bump you know this in your bones.
Part of the noise from the Left might be the NPR effect.
If you look at any major metro with an NPR affiliate, the NPR affiliate typically has very high TSL (time spent listening, that is, the number of person-hours the station is listened to), but very low cume (number of unique listeners).
In other words, some of this kind of programming has fewer fans than one might expect, but those fans are BIG fans.
There's a similar phenomenon on the Right with religious stations, conservative talk, and sports talk (high TSL with low cume). Of course, sports talk isn't necessarily right-wing but it is right-coded.
If, say, Biden had had an issue with Fox and some of the more conservative shows (say, Hannity) had gotten cancelled due to economics, you'd hear similar hollering from the Right.
Speaking of Fox, I do find it interesting that Murdoch is choosing to fight Trump over his suit against the WSJ, versus trying to settle (at least yet). Of course, the economics in favor of settling lawsuits where there would be a good (but not 99%) chance of winning while running up attorney's fees is often significant.
One thing I have not seen mentioned is that maybe Skydance or Paramount wanted to cancel Colbert versus re-upping him just to clean the books of upside-down assets and onerous contracts. That happens often in M&A.
Still, it's time for all of us to demand receipts from Paramount regarding the show costing $100+ million to produce.
If MAGA is demanding receipts from Trump, why should we settle for less?
Are you a shareholder or something?
No. I don't like it when people expect me to believe them without evidence.
Since you're not a shareholder how exactly do you plan on forcing Paramount to come clean?
Highest rated show gets cancelled after the host calls out parent company for a bribe..
Someone made a great point on a recent Risky Business episode, something to the effect of “that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s just human inference.”
Also, tbh sports is overrated. Nobody watches sports anymore.
Follow the money. Colbert's show was losing money. Pro sports make money.
We can't follow the money if we don't have the numbers. We can speculate about the numbers though, which is what Nate's post is all about.
Paramount claims that Colbert's show is losing money.
Revenue for the major sports franchises is easily found on Google.
"Paramount claims that Colbert's show is losing money."
That's the whole question Slaw. You're just re-asserting something we don't know the veracity of.
Google "late night ratings 2023 to 2025".
Maybe Paramount is committing de facto fraud by lying about profitability, but their narrative is broadly consistent with what we know about ratings.
Fraud? Either way, it's just PR.
But yah, ratings are a thing we know.
Revenue for major sports franchises has no bearing on revenue received by sports broadcasters, though.
No connection? The NFL and NBA are giants compared to MLS, (much less the WNBA). Is it reasonable to speculate that the amount of money paid for broadcast fees is going to be the same for all four?
This is absolutely not true. Total NFL ad revenue was under $5B va $11B of rights fees paid annually.
The leagues themselves are solvent, other than the occasional aberration like the WNBA.
I will forever be annoyed that nobody remembers the episode of TDS in which Stephen Colbert, who to wit pronounced his last name as “Kohl-burt”, made the public decision to start pronouncing it as “Kohl-bear” because it sounded French, and thus would annoy Bill O’Reilly.
And then it stuck! And nobody remembers it!