Stephen Colbert is not shying away from the fact that The Late Show was canceled.
Kicking off Monday’s show with a joke about Trump wanting to change the name of the Washington Commanders NFL team (the “Washington Epsteins”, Colbert suggested), he walked into the Ed Sullivan theater to loud cheers and said “This is going to be fun”. It certainly was.
“Cancel culture has gone too far,” he joked. “Last week we learned that The Late Show will be ending in May. I want to thank everybody who reached out to me over the weekend, including one text from an unknown number, offering a high paying IT work-from-home job for only two to three hours a day. Yes, I am very interested and I will be sending you my routing number in May. Daddy needs a job.”
He added that the news sunk in over the weekend that CBS was “killing” his show. “But they made one mistake. They left me alive. Now for the next 10 months, the gloves are off. I can finally speak unvarnished truth to power and say what I really think about Donald Trump. I don’t care for him. Doesn’t have the skillset to be President,” he joked.
Colbert noted that people have been “speculating” about the timing of the decision, coming days after he called CBS’ settlement of its lawsuit with President Trump a “big fat bribe”. “People have been speculating about the timing of this decision from Paramount, and they’re pointing out the last Monday, just two days before my cancelation, I delivered a blistering monologue in which I showed the courage to have a mustache. When obviously CBS saw my upper lip and boom, canceled. Coincidence? Oh, I think not. This is worse than fascism. This is stashism.”
He kidded that CBS may turn the Ed Sullivan Theater into a self-storage facility (“Put your old records where the Beatles performed”).
He reiterated that CBS have “always been great partners” and thanked them for the “very nice things” it said in the press release announcing the axing. “They clarified that the cancelation was purely a financial decision. But how could it purely be a financial decision if the Late Show is number one in ratings. A lot of folks are asking that question, mainly my staff’s parents and spouses,” he added.
But he had a few stern words by suggesting that CBS leaked the fact that The Late Show loses between $40M-$50M a year. “Over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40M and $50M a year. $40M is a big number. I could see us losing $24 million but where would Paramount have possibly spent the other 16 million? Oh, yeah,” he added, alluding to the settlement.
