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.
Also worth noting that there are about 80M more people in the United States than there were in 1992 (which, according to Google, was Carson's top year). Given that, Carson's audience of 6M was equivalent to an audience of nearly 8M today.
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.
NPR lost considerable favor with Republicans due to its unfavorable reporting of the Iraq War and its coverage of infringement on civil liberties. Fox News prioritizes ideological alignment with its viewers, reinforcing selective narratives that often diverge from consensus reporting. NPR could have gone in that direction, but then it would have grossly departed away from its north star of being a neutral source of news.
I remember the day I stopped listening to NPR as a center-right leaning individual. They had just finished running a segment condemning Kellyanne Conway and School Choice. And immediately followed it up with a slice-of-life interview with a young inner-city black child with a healthy relationship with his mother but who ultimately moves in with a white family just so he could attend a better school system.
The irony was nothing but unprofessional. On one story, the focus is negative attention to a person and her policy objectives simply because Trump shared those objectives. And in the next, we have a story highlighting themes of youth, race, and perseverance…only made possible because of school choice-albeit an unorthodox version.
NPR doesn't care about neutrality. They care about pushing agendas.
We are talking about different time periods. In 2005, Bush tried to wrest control over CPB to push for more favorable coverage of the administration's policies. NPR maintained its independence from executive control. A lot has happened in two decades.
To my chagrin, NPR *talk shows* have tilted quite a bit leftward in 2017-present. I make a distinction between news vs. talk shows. NPR news stories are more factual and dispassionate. Even so, there are substantially higher quality sources of news. NPR & PBS no longer fill the void that they did in the past. The fading in relevance probably has less to do with a leftward shift and more to do with the viability of the medium after three decades of internet adoption in the US. Without the internet revolution, NPR talk programming may have course corrected given that Americans would have fewer alternative options.
The school choice debate is a good example of a topic that needs more viewpoint diversity, but not all issues are like this one. For example, it would be fallacious to offer equal time to viewpoints on the supernatural for a program on physics.
The syndication model of programming produced by local stations (This Old House-WGBH, Freakanomics-WNYC, Hometime-WHHY, or Science Friday-WNYC) is not bad in principle. 30% of any member station's programming is locally produced news.
The woke period, with its focus on race tribalism, didn't take off until the latter part of the Obama regime. As it stands, NPR is currently so partisan that it has exhausted its goodwill from everyone outside of its captive audience. That drastically lowered the threshold for defunding.
I make a distinction between NPR news reports and talk radio programs. Some talk shows (like Fresh Air) tend to lean pretty left, perhaps to the point where many self-described liberals don’t regularly listen or tune in occasionally as a narrow slice of a broader media diet. Given the rise of tribalism, reading news from a very broad spectrum of sources can help see the contrast in what different outlets are leaving out of the picture.
Left tribalism and right tribalism are often responding to each other. Neither side has a monopoly. It's best to not participate in either side's tribalism. It's really hard to say it began on one side, especially given that wearing a tan suit was once scandalous.
Returning to your point about adapting content for broader appeal: in entertainment (like CBS late night), that may be feasible. But when it comes to journalism, I'm not so sure. Organizations like Reuters or AP stick closely to traditional standards of neutral, fact-based reporting but they’re far less profitable than outlets like Fox News or CBS. If Reuters were to compromise its principles to chase a larger, more partisan audience, it might lose its core identity as a dispassionate news source. In news, I don’t think the “go big or go home” strategy always works.
Like I said, reading from a broad spectrum of sources including outside one's bubble allows one to see which stories are being underreported and which narratives are being distorted. Credibility of the source matters. In my opinion, the Washington Post increased their credibility by not endorsing any candidate in 2024. WSJ is much more credible than the NY Post even though they came from the same umbrella corporation.
Your original argument comparing Colbert to NPR seems to be that narrowing one's audience does not make business sense. I am saying that it depends on one's objective.
The viability of public broadcasting in the era of YouTube aside, public broadcasting and CBS have always served different purposes. This Old House, New Yankee Workshop, Hometown, World of Chemistry, Benjamin Franklin, and Science Friday have narrower audiences than most CBS programs. The "Go Big or Go Home" model does not work for public interest programming. Big Brother and Ancient Aliens are way more lucrative than the World of Chemistry or Benjamin Franklin.
If the source matters, then how to deal with a scenario such as Bari Weiss and The Free Press? She was forced to strike out on her own because the NY Times had embarked on a program of smothering dissenting views. Can both be credible?
For that matter the NY Post broke the story of Hunter Biden's laptop, a story that the mainstream news media studiously ignored. The NY Post was an early reporter on the lab leak hypothesis, a story that the mainstream media studiously ignored. Who's got the better track record recently?
If your goal is not to make money, that's fine. Just be prepared to accept the consequences.
The real issue with a show like "This Old House" isn't the size of its audience; instead, the key issue is that the show didn't cost much to produce. It may have filled a niche, but at least it wasn't losing money. You can't say that about Colbert.
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.
Maher's routine was far more entertaining in the early 2000s when he was laughing with the audience at his "enemies" instead of sneering at them. At some point, he became personally and emotional involved with the jokes he performed and that is never good political comedy.
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.
No no you dont understand, this is a simple binary.
When a Republican was president, it was fine! No nuance in our analysis needed 🙂
When a Democrat was president, it wasn't fine, and we know because of the nuanced analysis 😟
Now that a Republican is president again, its fine again! Nuanced analysis is stupid, and all is right with the world (as long as we don't think too hard about it) 🍻
I'm skeptical broadening his audience to the Fox News crowd would have saved his show. By trying to cater to everyone, he would have catered to no one, and the show would have become bland. If he criticized the president in the most minimal way, he would have been accused of TDS by one side and an apologist by the other side. Now that the nation is well past peak woke, there is still a big market for comedy that speaks truth to power, it just might not work any more as a daily late night TV program anymore.
I don't recall a lot of political partisanship on Carson or Letterman. I find the idea that comedy needs a political element to be successful to be bizarre.
Politics is how Colbert rose to fame that it became imbued in his character identity. There will always be a market for political comedy even if it is not a late night broad market slot. Perhaps CBS could have chosen a less political figure. That said, Colbert certainly made fun of Biden a great deal.
"The Late Show" cost a tremendous amount of money to produce. If Colbert wanted to do political comedy then he should have stayed in cable.
As it is, given both the tremendous costs associated with his show plus the shrinking late night demographic, it was remarkably stupid to preemptively exclude half the country from his audience.
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.
On Bill Simmons' podcast, Matt Bellamy covered this. Other shows have cut costs. His reporting and speculation was that they made a reasonable choice to just hang up the towel instead of trying to reinvent the show. Some of this was being pessimistic about whether a scaled-down show would work. Some was from a level of genuine respect for the staff to not send them off on a fools errand.
The other thing he mentioned is that Fallon and others have been better at creating additional revenue through YouTube clips and brand extensions (licensing Car Pool Karaoke as a show, etc.), but this just isn't where Colbert excels.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nate, I've been a big fan since your Baseball Prospectus days, so know I say this with love: this was possibly your worst article/analysis I've seen. You completely ignored the elephant in the room -- the pending merger with CBS/Paramount and Skydance that needs the Trump Administration's approval. Your failure to even bring that up in pondering whether or not the cancellation was political is mind-boggling. THAT is what the progressive critics have glommed on to. First, CBS/Paramount caved to possibly the most ludicrous lawsuit I've ever seen over the editing of Kamala Harris's Israel answer on "60 Minutes" vs. another show they used the first half of her answer on. This was a case that was beyond winnable and possibly even open to a counter lawsuit over its emptiness. And then, by all appearances, the cancellation of Colbert was another part of currying favor for the billionaires buying and selling the companies to get the approval for their deal. How someone as astute and comprehensive in their dissection of things as you could choose to ignore this major, basic fact is beyond me, even if you ultimately were to determine it's still not the proof that progressives are convinced it is. (In which case, I think you'd be wrong, but still). Everything else I have to criticize is minor compared to this major initial point, but you also ignore the fact that despite linear TV's dwindling audience, Colbert still had over 10 million subscribers on YouTube. And shows like his and "The Daily Show" have segments that often go viral and are shared across social media. So it's not just linear ratings by which his show's worth can be judged. And then there's other general value "The Late Show" generates for CBS: prestige (it had just gotten another Emmy nomination two days ago), being in the national conversation (as Colbert often was), bargain rights (#1 in late night, as they crowed to their shareholders), the immense value the property had to local 11 pm newscasts being the number one show in late night as a lead-out, and a platform to promote other shows on their schedule and movies being released. The long lead-time for the cancellation also offers no proof of anything. Colbert and the show are under contract for 10 more months. If cancelling the show was about saving money, spending $100 million and getting zero in return would clearly make no sense. The fact is, most networks would have made this announcement at the upfronts so they could sell to advertisers "the last season of The Late Show!" Announcing it when they did, on the heels of the "60 Minutes" settlement and while the merger was under review explain the timing far more than your experience of quickly being shown the door at ABC. And finally, your specific lens of seeing the view primarily through tribal political eyes and defining comedy as "left of center" doesn't serve you well here. Since the 1960s comedy has always been left-of-center and subversive. And the best comedy still is. "The Daily Show," Colbert, and John Oliver manage to be both political and cutting edge. The rise of right-wing comics in the manosphere has been a recent phenomenon that trades on the idea of being subversive -- "Ooh, we're saying un-PC and offensive things that upset overly sensitive people" without really being truly subversive, so young men can feel like they're rebelling, when they're really not. Tony Hinchcliffe might have a popular following, but calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage isn't really the kind of comedy that does anything but cater to a crowd that laments not being able to be openly racist or sexist anymore. There's an audience for that, just like there's an audience for Fox News. But it's destined to land in the junk pile. Read Marc Maron's dissection of this type of comic. It's very insightful. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
The rationalization and normalization of the obvious is very sad. Plain and simple, CBS fears retribution. Paramount fears retribution. It isn't more complicated than that. They're throwing Trump another doggie bone. All must bow to the king.
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.
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.
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 think Stewart is anti-anti-woke and can be a bit grating but hes still funny. He has admitted to being a Bernie fan, which explains why he is able to punch at the establishment. Whereas Stephen Colbert is literally where the establishment is at, which explains the love hes getting from the Dem establishment.
I watched Colbert's segment with Zohran and it was just so bizzare. There is plenty to challenge Zohran about but the entire segment was about Israel, and how Zohran might "endanger" Jewish safety in NYC. According to Cuomo's internals apparently, Zohran got more than 50% of the Jewish vote. This just shows Colbert spends most of his time talking to older rich people. The Dem establishment first alienated center right types, now it's just going to be a circlejerk of them talking to each other, having scolded the anti-establishment leftists away too.
That is part of Colbert's problem, aside from the obvious shrinking TV markets and the high budgets of his show. If you can't punch at the powers that rule (even those on your own side), you will never be a compelling comedian. Stewart did not make the mistake of getting into bed with the establishment and he remains far more watchable than Colbert.
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
And here’s the link to that article if anyone cares: https://www.imightbewrong.org/p/with-colbert-was-it-retribution-or
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').
That is perfectly fine but don't expect anyone to believe their claims either if they don't bring the receipts.
Non-shareholders don't owe anything either to Paramount.
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.
Also worth noting that there are about 80M more people in the United States than there were in 1992 (which, according to Google, was Carson's top year). Given that, Carson's audience of 6M was equivalent to an audience of nearly 8M today.
40% BE precise
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.
NPR lost considerable favor with Republicans due to its unfavorable reporting of the Iraq War and its coverage of infringement on civil liberties. Fox News prioritizes ideological alignment with its viewers, reinforcing selective narratives that often diverge from consensus reporting. NPR could have gone in that direction, but then it would have grossly departed away from its north star of being a neutral source of news.
I remember the day I stopped listening to NPR as a center-right leaning individual. They had just finished running a segment condemning Kellyanne Conway and School Choice. And immediately followed it up with a slice-of-life interview with a young inner-city black child with a healthy relationship with his mother but who ultimately moves in with a white family just so he could attend a better school system.
The irony was nothing but unprofessional. On one story, the focus is negative attention to a person and her policy objectives simply because Trump shared those objectives. And in the next, we have a story highlighting themes of youth, race, and perseverance…only made possible because of school choice-albeit an unorthodox version.
NPR doesn't care about neutrality. They care about pushing agendas.
We are talking about different time periods. In 2005, Bush tried to wrest control over CPB to push for more favorable coverage of the administration's policies. NPR maintained its independence from executive control. A lot has happened in two decades.
To my chagrin, NPR *talk shows* have tilted quite a bit leftward in 2017-present. I make a distinction between news vs. talk shows. NPR news stories are more factual and dispassionate. Even so, there are substantially higher quality sources of news. NPR & PBS no longer fill the void that they did in the past. The fading in relevance probably has less to do with a leftward shift and more to do with the viability of the medium after three decades of internet adoption in the US. Without the internet revolution, NPR talk programming may have course corrected given that Americans would have fewer alternative options.
The school choice debate is a good example of a topic that needs more viewpoint diversity, but not all issues are like this one. For example, it would be fallacious to offer equal time to viewpoints on the supernatural for a program on physics.
The syndication model of programming produced by local stations (This Old House-WGBH, Freakanomics-WNYC, Hometime-WHHY, or Science Friday-WNYC) is not bad in principle. 30% of any member station's programming is locally produced news.
The woke period, with its focus on race tribalism, didn't take off until the latter part of the Obama regime. As it stands, NPR is currently so partisan that it has exhausted its goodwill from everyone outside of its captive audience. That drastically lowered the threshold for defunding.
I make a distinction between NPR news reports and talk radio programs. Some talk shows (like Fresh Air) tend to lean pretty left, perhaps to the point where many self-described liberals don’t regularly listen or tune in occasionally as a narrow slice of a broader media diet. Given the rise of tribalism, reading news from a very broad spectrum of sources can help see the contrast in what different outlets are leaving out of the picture.
Left tribalism and right tribalism are often responding to each other. Neither side has a monopoly. It's best to not participate in either side's tribalism. It's really hard to say it began on one side, especially given that wearing a tan suit was once scandalous.
Returning to your point about adapting content for broader appeal: in entertainment (like CBS late night), that may be feasible. But when it comes to journalism, I'm not so sure. Organizations like Reuters or AP stick closely to traditional standards of neutral, fact-based reporting but they’re far less profitable than outlets like Fox News or CBS. If Reuters were to compromise its principles to chase a larger, more partisan audience, it might lose its core identity as a dispassionate news source. In news, I don’t think the “go big or go home” strategy always works.
The Hunter Biden laptop story, the Covid lab leak hypothesis, BLM, crime rates, etc.
Like I said, reading from a broad spectrum of sources including outside one's bubble allows one to see which stories are being underreported and which narratives are being distorted. Credibility of the source matters. In my opinion, the Washington Post increased their credibility by not endorsing any candidate in 2024. WSJ is much more credible than the NY Post even though they came from the same umbrella corporation.
Your original argument comparing Colbert to NPR seems to be that narrowing one's audience does not make business sense. I am saying that it depends on one's objective.
The viability of public broadcasting in the era of YouTube aside, public broadcasting and CBS have always served different purposes. This Old House, New Yankee Workshop, Hometown, World of Chemistry, Benjamin Franklin, and Science Friday have narrower audiences than most CBS programs. The "Go Big or Go Home" model does not work for public interest programming. Big Brother and Ancient Aliens are way more lucrative than the World of Chemistry or Benjamin Franklin.
If the source matters, then how to deal with a scenario such as Bari Weiss and The Free Press? She was forced to strike out on her own because the NY Times had embarked on a program of smothering dissenting views. Can both be credible?
For that matter the NY Post broke the story of Hunter Biden's laptop, a story that the mainstream news media studiously ignored. The NY Post was an early reporter on the lab leak hypothesis, a story that the mainstream media studiously ignored. Who's got the better track record recently?
If your goal is not to make money, that's fine. Just be prepared to accept the consequences.
The real issue with a show like "This Old House" isn't the size of its audience; instead, the key issue is that the show didn't cost much to produce. It may have filled a niche, but at least it wasn't losing money. You can't say that about Colbert.
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.
Maher's routine was far more entertaining in the early 2000s when he was laughing with the audience at his "enemies" instead of sneering at them. At some point, he became personally and emotional involved with the jokes he performed and that is never good political comedy.
God yes.
Also, he started to believe his own hype and cut himself off from the naysayers in his circle of friends.
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 its such a simple binary, what the hell is a "selective" recession?
By that measure, the most recent time the economy was poor was when Trump was president the first time.
No no you dont understand, this is a simple binary.
When a Republican was president, it was fine! No nuance in our analysis needed 🙂
When a Democrat was president, it wasn't fine, and we know because of the nuanced analysis 😟
Now that a Republican is president again, its fine again! Nuanced analysis is stupid, and all is right with the world (as long as we don't think too hard about it) 🍻
I'm skeptical broadening his audience to the Fox News crowd would have saved his show. By trying to cater to everyone, he would have catered to no one, and the show would have become bland. If he criticized the president in the most minimal way, he would have been accused of TDS by one side and an apologist by the other side. Now that the nation is well past peak woke, there is still a big market for comedy that speaks truth to power, it just might not work any more as a daily late night TV program anymore.
I don't recall a lot of political partisanship on Carson or Letterman. I find the idea that comedy needs a political element to be successful to be bizarre.
Politics is how Colbert rose to fame that it became imbued in his character identity. There will always be a market for political comedy even if it is not a late night broad market slot. Perhaps CBS could have chosen a less political figure. That said, Colbert certainly made fun of Biden a great deal.
"The Late Show" cost a tremendous amount of money to produce. If Colbert wanted to do political comedy then he should have stayed in cable.
As it is, given both the tremendous costs associated with his show plus the shrinking late night demographic, it was remarkably stupid to preemptively exclude half the country from his audience.
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.
On Bill Simmons' podcast, Matt Bellamy covered this. Other shows have cut costs. His reporting and speculation was that they made a reasonable choice to just hang up the towel instead of trying to reinvent the show. Some of this was being pessimistic about whether a scaled-down show would work. Some was from a level of genuine respect for the staff to not send them off on a fools errand.
The other thing he mentioned is that Fallon and others have been better at creating additional revenue through YouTube clips and brand extensions (licensing Car Pool Karaoke as a show, etc.), but this just isn't where Colbert excels.
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.
Does this mean we are getting old…
Cobert could be so much funnier doing his own podcast, etc.. This is good for viewers even if it's sad for the late show staff
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nate, I've been a big fan since your Baseball Prospectus days, so know I say this with love: this was possibly your worst article/analysis I've seen. You completely ignored the elephant in the room -- the pending merger with CBS/Paramount and Skydance that needs the Trump Administration's approval. Your failure to even bring that up in pondering whether or not the cancellation was political is mind-boggling. THAT is what the progressive critics have glommed on to. First, CBS/Paramount caved to possibly the most ludicrous lawsuit I've ever seen over the editing of Kamala Harris's Israel answer on "60 Minutes" vs. another show they used the first half of her answer on. This was a case that was beyond winnable and possibly even open to a counter lawsuit over its emptiness. And then, by all appearances, the cancellation of Colbert was another part of currying favor for the billionaires buying and selling the companies to get the approval for their deal. How someone as astute and comprehensive in their dissection of things as you could choose to ignore this major, basic fact is beyond me, even if you ultimately were to determine it's still not the proof that progressives are convinced it is. (In which case, I think you'd be wrong, but still). Everything else I have to criticize is minor compared to this major initial point, but you also ignore the fact that despite linear TV's dwindling audience, Colbert still had over 10 million subscribers on YouTube. And shows like his and "The Daily Show" have segments that often go viral and are shared across social media. So it's not just linear ratings by which his show's worth can be judged. And then there's other general value "The Late Show" generates for CBS: prestige (it had just gotten another Emmy nomination two days ago), being in the national conversation (as Colbert often was), bargain rights (#1 in late night, as they crowed to their shareholders), the immense value the property had to local 11 pm newscasts being the number one show in late night as a lead-out, and a platform to promote other shows on their schedule and movies being released. The long lead-time for the cancellation also offers no proof of anything. Colbert and the show are under contract for 10 more months. If cancelling the show was about saving money, spending $100 million and getting zero in return would clearly make no sense. The fact is, most networks would have made this announcement at the upfronts so they could sell to advertisers "the last season of The Late Show!" Announcing it when they did, on the heels of the "60 Minutes" settlement and while the merger was under review explain the timing far more than your experience of quickly being shown the door at ABC. And finally, your specific lens of seeing the view primarily through tribal political eyes and defining comedy as "left of center" doesn't serve you well here. Since the 1960s comedy has always been left-of-center and subversive. And the best comedy still is. "The Daily Show," Colbert, and John Oliver manage to be both political and cutting edge. The rise of right-wing comics in the manosphere has been a recent phenomenon that trades on the idea of being subversive -- "Ooh, we're saying un-PC and offensive things that upset overly sensitive people" without really being truly subversive, so young men can feel like they're rebelling, when they're really not. Tony Hinchcliffe might have a popular following, but calling Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage isn't really the kind of comedy that does anything but cater to a crowd that laments not being able to be openly racist or sexist anymore. There's an audience for that, just like there's an audience for Fox News. But it's destined to land in the junk pile. Read Marc Maron's dissection of this type of comic. It's very insightful. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
Why would they give Colbert 10 more months to lose money and take down Trump if it were that black and white?
Truthiness - 1000%!
The rationalization and normalization of the obvious is very sad. Plain and simple, CBS fears retribution. Paramount fears retribution. It isn't more complicated than that. They're throwing Trump another doggie bone. All must bow to the king.
excellent. for additional support: FCC Chairman Carr's statement is an ideological victory lap.
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-413229A1.pdf
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.
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/
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!
I think Stewart is anti-anti-woke and can be a bit grating but hes still funny. He has admitted to being a Bernie fan, which explains why he is able to punch at the establishment. Whereas Stephen Colbert is literally where the establishment is at, which explains the love hes getting from the Dem establishment.
I watched Colbert's segment with Zohran and it was just so bizzare. There is plenty to challenge Zohran about but the entire segment was about Israel, and how Zohran might "endanger" Jewish safety in NYC. According to Cuomo's internals apparently, Zohran got more than 50% of the Jewish vote. This just shows Colbert spends most of his time talking to older rich people. The Dem establishment first alienated center right types, now it's just going to be a circlejerk of them talking to each other, having scolded the anti-establishment leftists away too.
That is part of Colbert's problem, aside from the obvious shrinking TV markets and the high budgets of his show. If you can't punch at the powers that rule (even those on your own side), you will never be a compelling comedian. Stewart did not make the mistake of getting into bed with the establishment and he remains far more watchable than Colbert.