A late-night TV present is greater than the sum of its components. “The Late Show” definitely was.
First with David Letterman, then with Stephen Colbert, “The Late Show” was an amusing and comforting ritual for viewers; a treasured stage for comedians; a coveted platform for politicians and authors; and a dependable advertising and marketing car for CBS.
The interviews made information. The monologues made sense of the information. The comedy bits made the entire world really feel rather less bleak.
But now it’s all going away. CBS is closing the curtain on “The Late Show” on Thursday night time. Citing broadcast TV’s monetary woes, the community is giving up on an admittedly costly late-night format and letting Colbert take his skills elsewhere.
Many critics see it as a type of capitulation to President Donald Trump, who has bristled at Colbert’s acerbic criticism and sought to silence him. Some “Late Show” followers consider Trump successfully canned Colbert and the present.
That principle is inescapable as a result of Colbert was such a vocal a part of the anti-Trump resistance, each in the late 2010s and once more lately.
But an obituary for “The Late Show” specializing in Trump would miss what made the present particular: It was about a lot greater than politics.
“The Late Show” was about Letterman’s top-ten lists, and silly human methods, and foolish pranks at CBS’s expense. It was about Colbert’s unpredictable reside exhibits and unusually incisive interviews. It was about viewers throughout the nation teleporting to Manhattan’s Ed Sullivan Theater, spending an hour (until they dozed off early) with a performer who felt like an previous buddy.
STREAMING NOW: “The Last Laugh: Stephen Colbert,” examining the legacy of one of America’s most influential satirists.
In a media atmosphere of infinite selection and complexity, “The Late Show” was curated and constant. People tuned in out of behavior and loyalty, not as a result of a clip surfaced of their social media feed, however as a result of they’d been looking forward to years.
Judging from a few of the viewer feedback and emails I’ve learn, the followers who’re mourning the finish of “The Late Show” are additionally mourning the finish of exhibits prefer it — communal areas which have been round for so long as they will bear in mind.
“The Late Show” is just not the solely CBS establishment reaching the finish of the line this week. The community can also be shutting down the CBS News Radio division at the finish of this week, citing related monetary pressures, particularly that the legacy division is unprofitable.
Colbert and his allies have famous that CBS didn’t strive to salvage “The Late Show” by, say, dramatically slicing prices or altering the format.
But Colbert has largely struck an amicable tone about the cancellation, calling the community a fantastic accomplice and expressing gratitude for the years he had on the CBS stage.
Love, loss and late-night politics
Colbert, who taught Sunday faculty for years and is typically described as ministerial on air, has described his iteration of “The Late Show” as a present “about love,” although he knew it sounded pretentious.
“When he was taking over for Letterman, he told me the kind of show he wanted to do was a show about people and about love and about being a friend to the regular people out there,” Jon Batiste, the present’s bandleader for seven years, advised the Wall Street Journal in 2022.
Last 12 months, whereas accepting the Emmy for greatest speak collection, Colbert recounted the story about wanting the present to be about love, however stated that “at a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized that, in some ways, we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss.”
“And that’s related to love,” he stated, “because sometimes you can only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it.”
Colbert appeared to be describing how “The Late Show” developed after Trump’s shock victory in 2016.
He had taken the helm one 12 months earlier, in the center of the presidential major season, and Jeb Bush and Bernie Sanders have been amongst his first company.
Colbert’s iteration of the present struggled at first, seemingly adrift with no clear identification, and the host, by his personal account, discovered it laborious to fill the a lot larger stage he’d been given.
But the 2016 election night time was a turning level. Colbert channeled liberal viewers’ shock, grief and dismay about Trump’s success. He stated out loud what so many viewers needed to say. And by early 2017, he started to beat “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” in the day by day rankings race.
It was clear that Colbert’s viewers — particularly his followers who beloved watching Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” for years — needed him to tackle Trump.
Colbert typically minimized his political affect, saying he was only a clown, however each his supporters and detractors paid shut consideration to his commentary.
Right-wing activists decried Colbert and the late-night TV panorama extra broadly, arguing the style had turn into a nightly pile-on in opposition to Trump and his voters.
That’s why some on-line commenters are celebrating Colbert’s sign-off at the identical time that others are gutted.
Colbert’s neighbors in midtown Manhattan, the place the Ed Sullivan Theater is a vacationer attraction on Broadway, are questioning what is going to turn into of the 100-year-old efficiency area.
For the time being, there are not any agency plans. “The fact that nothing’s gonna come in here breaks my heart,” Colbert advised Architectural Digest in a video tour of the theater. “But someone will figure it out, and I wish them all the luck in the world — because they’re gonna love it.”
There’s that phrase once more: Love. It’s not a phrase generally related to late-night TV, but it surely’s true to Colbert and the spirit he introduced to “The Late Show.”
In a farewell interview with People journal, Colbert stated of his longtime viewers, “I hope they laughed. I hope they felt better at the end of the day.”
“I mean, that’s it,” he stated. “We’re there. We’re the last thing you see. A lot of things happen in a day, but we bat last, and so we get the last take that people hear before they go to bed, and I hope it made their day better.”
Knowing Colbert, he’ll strive to try this one ultimate time on Thursday night time.