July 19, 2025 • 13 mins
Colin gives his reaction to the announcement that CBS will be ending The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He looks back at the history of the show, and why the defining moment of Colbert’s time with the show was when he “stepped on the bit” with his political opinion during a segment with Jon Stewart over Covid. He points to viewers' changing habits and the injection of partisan politics into late night as the two reasons that late night shows are a dying breed.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
All right, it's a Saturday. I've been doing errands watching
Rory McElroy at the British Open Make a run. You know,
I wanted to talk at length and I do this
from time to time at the volume and on my
pod about the Stephen Colbert situation. And the reason I
want to talk about it is because it's being positioned
(00:34):
differently depending on people's politics. So I grew up a
Johnny Carson fan. My mom got me a gift of
the Carson tapes after he retired. I've watched. I wanted
to be Johnny Carson, but I moved into sports. So
when I was a kid, my favorite show and I
felt like I was the only person in high school
(00:55):
and really that my favorite show was like Johnny Carson
and then David Letterman, and I love both of them,
and they were very different personalities. Carson was doing a
show for the country, didn't do political stuff. It was
always about the audience. It could be the Potato Chip Lady,
it could be Don Rickles. He could work with anybody.
He was a guy from Nebraska, a small town. I've
read every Johnny Carson book, even the one his former
(01:20):
lawyer wrote, which lawyers should not write about their clients.
I just love Johnny Carson. My dad loved him, and
then I moved into Letterman, and Letterman was doing a
show almost as an inside joke. He always felt like,
if you could get the inside joke, you were a
little smarter than everybody else. And those were the two
(01:41):
I grew up with. And I think there's a lot
of talented people. I know Jimmy Kimmel a little bit.
Conan O'Brien, I think he's very funny. My wife already
likes his podcast now. Craig Ferguson makes me laugh. He's raw.
You know all these guys that have done it. John
Stewart's brilliant guy, and most of them, by the way,
lean left. I mean Leno I think is more moderate
(02:03):
to right. I've talked to Jay once at the comedy
store in Hermosa. I would guess he's more moderate to write,
but I don't really care. It's all about the joke,
and most comedians are making fun of people in power,
so it's kind of that's funnier than siding with the
rich powerful. It's more fun to make fun of the powerful.
So in my life I've always felt comedians kind of
(02:24):
lean left to pick on people of power and poke
him in the ribs. And that's fine. I don't really
care if the joke's funny. It's all about the joke.
So but there was a moment with Stephen Colbert. So
most of the great ones were all stand up comedians.
John Stewart did stand up. Bill Mahers show, which is
political by nature, did stand up. Letterman did stand up.
(02:48):
Leono did stand up. Conan was a writer and when
he first got on the air, he was funny, but
I didn't think he was a great television presence. I
never thought Leno had a great TV presence. I thought Letterman,
who was a local weatherman at one point, just understood
the you know, like the vagaries, the ins and outs
and the angles of television very well. So did Johnny Carson.
(03:10):
Carson's the best in my opinion, that's ever done it.
But I'm old school on that. And then there's Stephen Colbert,
who really got his. He played a character on John
Stewart's show as kind of a far right buffoony chest
out full of information and opinions, or full of an
opinions not much information, and I love that. I thought
(03:31):
the character was funny, and then they gave him a
show and it was really bumpy at first, and then
politics became front and center and he was kind of
politically savvy and the show did well. So But I
but I've always admired comedy more than acting. Comedians write
their own stuff, You get one take. Doing live television
is really effing hard. Uh, And it's just it's just
(03:55):
they're really gifted actors use somebody else's script, they get takes,
they have perfect angles and lighting. You can screw up
very easily doing late night TV and doing stand up comedy.
But what I always respected about comedians is that even
if somebody heckled Jerry Seinfeldt or Colin Quinn, who's another
guy I just thinks, just really really uniquely generationally talented.
(04:20):
I love Colin Quinn. Years ago, I was with a
friend from Portland, Bryan. We poked our head into Carolines
and Colin Quinn, lucky enough, was doing an act and
I remember just sitting there walking out saying like, I
hope America gets how smart that guy is and how
funny Colin Quinn is. He's so good. And now he's
done some Broadway stuff, and he and Seinfeld and Chris
rockebol has been close, but most of the great ones
(04:42):
just I admire how talented they are. And the thing
to note about comedians is when even when people are
heckling them or things go sideways, Carson was a master
at this. They're always true to the joke. If you
hackle a comedian, he's just trying to make it funny.
When Carson would misread something or the joke would bomb,
it was often funnier than the jokes that hit. It's
(05:04):
all about the joke. Don't step on the joke. It's
all about the audience and hitting the joke. It doesn't
matter if you're Dave Chappelle, another guy who's brilliant, Ricky Gervais,
who may be smarter than all of them. And so
I was willing to give Stephen Colbert a chance, and
I think he's a really bright guy. But there was
a moment that the defining moment for Stephen Colbert, who,
(05:26):
by the way, is going to be let go in
May by CBS, and CBS isn't replacing it. They're getting
rid of the business. And that we could talk all
of it all day long about how YouTube and young
viewers don't watch TV, and young people are the ones
that stay up late at night to watch those shows.
And it was inevitable and they were all going to
die eventually. But Colbert had a moment. It was during
COVID when his buddy, also I think it's fair to
(05:48):
say a left leaner, John Stewart, came on the show,
and Stuart worked hard for this bit. You could tell
from the writing how he delivered it. I mean John
had worked on this bit, you can look it up.
And his buddy stepped on the bit Stephen Colbert, because
he was such a partisan hack that he didn't care
about the audience. He didn't care about his friend, and
(06:09):
he didn't care about the bit. He cared about his
opinion on COVID, which, by the way, I lived in California.
As Bill Maher has noted many times, Florida may have
gotten it more right than California. We were guessing for
three months, but we weren't guessing after three months we
knew kids weren't dying. There's a real argument that Florida
did a better job with it than California. Don't want
to get into that, but one of the reasons mar
(06:30):
has endured is that Bill is willing to go after
his own side. He's not tribal or parochial to the
point or two insular where he can't look and say,
you know, liberals are wrong here. And that's why I've
I've been on Mars show once. I just think he's
as good as anybody who's ever done it in that
political space. I think he's the best that's ever done it.
I think John Stewart's second. And so Stuart comes on
(06:56):
a left leaner to Cobert, his buddy. Remember Stuart's the
one that helped put Colbert in the forefront. And Stuart,
you know, clearly worked on this bit and Colbert kept
stepping on it over and over again. And Carson wouldn't
do that, and Letterman wouldn't do that. I mean, when
(07:16):
John Stewart is doing stuff and somebody comes on and
says something that may not he may not agree with.
I've seen John do this so many times. He will
uncomfortably laugh and say, don't don't make me go there,
don't make me laugh at this. This is wrong, you're wrong.
But he doesn't get in the way of the joke,
because the fucking joke is sacred for comedians, they write
(07:39):
their own they perform one time. It's hard as hell.
Respect the performer, respect the joke, Respect how hard writing is.
There's no thirty four takes. It's live. It is live.
And Stuart came on to deliver this and it was
just a I mean, it's about the wu Han lamp
(08:02):
and Colbert stepped on it. He just couldn't get over himself,
and it elicited such a visceral reaction. To me, I've
never seen in the same way. I just it's just like, Okay,
he's I don't care what the ratings are. It doesn't
matter for me that there was a certain rubicon or
something that was passed. I just couldn't get past. I
(08:25):
just couldn't get past it. And maybe it didn't. Maybe
maybe if you're left leaning, you loved that moment because
you thought the conservatives were crazy to to speculate that
maybe it was a man made virus, which I think
is a very reasonable thing to discuss. I mean, that's
that's worthy of discussion. I mean, that's that's the whole
point of this, getting through stuff, getting over stuff, working
(08:49):
our way through turbulence and social uh discomfort is the discussion.
So to me, I don't have a lot of pity
for Stephen Cobert. He'll he'll get a job, he'll be fine.
But he wasn't. He didn't honor his friend, he didn't
honor the joke. He was more about himself. He wasn't
about the audience. He wasn't about making us left go
watch a great comedian. By the way, the other moment
(09:14):
that I remember with Colbert's show is the Ricky Gervais
religion discussion, where again Jervas is just a really smart guy,
and again Colbert can't get out of his own way.
He just doesn't. He's just so uncomfortable that it's making
it's moving in a direction that he doesn't agree with.
It's about the joke and the story. It's about the
(09:37):
audience and making them laugh and entertain. And I don't
know why I'm so worked up over this, but the
Hollywood Reporter talked about it today. These shows for the
last seven years, they've lost half of their ad revenue. Why.
Two reasons. One, young viewers don't stay up and watch
TV anymore. The only thing anybody watches on TV is sports.
(10:01):
I mean, that's pretty much it. Sports and News and
in every four years, the political cable shows explode. The
second reason they're dying is because the late night shows
talking about politics, and that's a no fly zone for
a lot of advertisers. Listen. Even Fox News, which is
a juggernaut, a behemoth on cable television, there are advertisers
(10:22):
that are not interested and don't want to be on
the shows, like big name advertisers, because they just don't
want to get in the crosshairs of polarizing, controversial discussions.
And that's okay, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN. There are advertisers
that don't want any part of that. And I respect
the advertisers. It's one of the reasons that I'm talking
a lot of politics on my show. If I want
(10:42):
to talk him, I can talk them on the volume.
That's my company. But so the Cobert Show is losing
forty million dollars a year, and it's been losing hemorrhaging
money for years and years, and it's got a huge staff,
and so yeah, like I mean, that's not a viable business.
But that moment bothered me so much that I had
to literally on a Saturday can talk about it because
(11:05):
somebody who grew up with Carson and love Letterman, and
I've got so much respect for comedians. I mean, I
brought Norm McDonald on my show, Bill Maher, my show,
David Spade on my show, probably a couple others. I
just to me the ability to write your own stuff, perform,
(11:25):
and I mean, you're just you're just putting yourself out there,
the idea that you're gonna go on a show and
you're gonna you've been working on. Norm McDonald would tell
these four minute jokes. Do you know how much courage
it would take to go out with a joke that's
never been told? And Conan O'Brien never got in the
way of the joke. Conan O'Brien would sit there patiently
(11:48):
waiting to reward Norm as Norm would reward him. And
I think that's amazing that the code like Conan O'Brien
more than once, is uncomfortable with with Norm mcdonnald, because
his jokes were going forever the moth joke and forever
and ever and you're waiting for the punchline and Norm's
a little different. Rest in peace. But that bothered me.
(12:09):
That always drove me nuts about Colbert is just so partisan.
So much about his belief that he stepped on Stewart
and I think they're great friends. It just drove me
nuts and I've just wasted everybody's twenty minutes. But it's
a Saturday. That's how I felt. And this is more
(12:30):
kind of an ode to how gifted and great our
comedians are. Ricky Gervais, I mean, I remember watching Dennis
Miller tapes Letterman. You know, you just watched him for years,
and I you know, people over the course of my
life like who is your inspiration? And I love Costas
(12:53):
and al Michaels, and I mean it's just Joe Davis,
Joe Buck. I mean, there's so many gifted guys out
there doing play by play. Kevin Burkhart, his life story
is amazing. But there's something about comedians to just write
your own stuff, perform it, you get one time, knowing
it can completely bomb. There's just I've got a soft
(13:15):
spot for how smart they are, how clever, empty canvas.
They do their own work, they do their own painting,
and are willing to walk on stage and just bomb.
Actors don't have to go through that, right they get
forty takes. Somebody else writes it. Happy Saturday,
All right, it's a Saturday. I've been doing errands watching
Rory McElroy at the British Open Make a run. You know,
I wanted to talk at length and I do this
from time to time at the volume and on my
pod about the Stephen Colbert situation. And the reason I
want to talk about it is because it's being positioned
(00:34):
differently depending on people's politics. So I grew up a
Johnny Carson fan. My mom got me a gift of
the Carson tapes after he retired. I've watched. I wanted
to be Johnny Carson, but I moved into sports. So
when I was a kid, my favorite show and I
felt like I was the only person in high school
(00:55):
and really that my favorite show was like Johnny Carson
and then David Letterman, and I love both of them,
and they were very different personalities. Carson was doing a
show for the country, didn't do political stuff. It was
always about the audience. It could be the Potato Chip Lady,
it could be Don Rickles. He could work with anybody.
He was a guy from Nebraska, a small town. I've
read every Johnny Carson book, even the one his former
(01:20):
lawyer wrote, which lawyers should not write about their clients.
I just love Johnny Carson. My dad loved him, and
then I moved into Letterman, and Letterman was doing a
show almost as an inside joke. He always felt like,
if you could get the inside joke, you were a
little smarter than everybody else. And those were the two
(01:41):
I grew up with. And I think there's a lot
of talented people. I know Jimmy Kimmel a little bit.
Conan O'Brien, I think he's very funny. My wife already
likes his podcast now. Craig Ferguson makes me laugh. He's raw.
You know all these guys that have done it. John
Stewart's brilliant guy, and most of them, by the way,
lean left. I mean Leno I think is more moderate
(02:03):
to right. I've talked to Jay once at the comedy
store in Hermosa. I would guess he's more moderate to write,
but I don't really care. It's all about the joke,
and most comedians are making fun of people in power,
so it's kind of that's funnier than siding with the
rich powerful. It's more fun to make fun of the powerful.
So in my life I've always felt comedians kind of
(02:24):
lean left to pick on people of power and poke
him in the ribs. And that's fine. I don't really
care if the joke's funny. It's all about the joke.
So but there was a moment with Stephen Colbert. So
most of the great ones were all stand up comedians.
John Stewart did stand up. Bill Mahers show, which is
political by nature, did stand up. Letterman did stand up.
(02:48):
Leono did stand up. Conan was a writer and when
he first got on the air, he was funny, but
I didn't think he was a great television presence. I
never thought Leno had a great TV presence. I thought Letterman,
who was a local weatherman at one point, just understood
the you know, like the vagaries, the ins and outs
and the angles of television very well. So did Johnny Carson.
(03:10):
Carson's the best in my opinion, that's ever done it.
But I'm old school on that. And then there's Stephen Colbert,
who really got his. He played a character on John
Stewart's show as kind of a far right buffoony chest
out full of information and opinions, or full of an
opinions not much information, and I love that. I thought
(03:31):
the character was funny, and then they gave him a
show and it was really bumpy at first, and then
politics became front and center and he was kind of
politically savvy and the show did well. So But I
but I've always admired comedy more than acting. Comedians write
their own stuff, You get one take. Doing live television
is really effing hard. Uh, And it's just it's just
(03:55):
they're really gifted actors use somebody else's script, they get takes,
they have perfect angles and lighting. You can screw up
very easily doing late night TV and doing stand up comedy.
But what I always respected about comedians is that even
if somebody heckled Jerry Seinfeldt or Colin Quinn, who's another
guy I just thinks, just really really uniquely generationally talented.
(04:20):
I love Colin Quinn. Years ago, I was with a
friend from Portland, Bryan. We poked our head into Carolines
and Colin Quinn, lucky enough, was doing an act and
I remember just sitting there walking out saying like, I
hope America gets how smart that guy is and how
funny Colin Quinn is. He's so good. And now he's
done some Broadway stuff, and he and Seinfeld and Chris
rockebol has been close, but most of the great ones
(04:42):
just I admire how talented they are. And the thing
to note about comedians is when even when people are
heckling them or things go sideways, Carson was a master
at this. They're always true to the joke. If you
hackle a comedian, he's just trying to make it funny.
When Carson would misread something or the joke would bomb,
it was often funnier than the jokes that hit. It's
(05:04):
all about the joke. Don't step on the joke. It's
all about the audience and hitting the joke. It doesn't
matter if you're Dave Chappelle, another guy who's brilliant, Ricky Gervais,
who may be smarter than all of them. And so
I was willing to give Stephen Colbert a chance, and
I think he's a really bright guy. But there was
a moment that the defining moment for Stephen Colbert, who,
(05:26):
by the way, is going to be let go in
May by CBS, and CBS isn't replacing it. They're getting
rid of the business. And that we could talk all
of it all day long about how YouTube and young
viewers don't watch TV, and young people are the ones
that stay up late at night to watch those shows.
And it was inevitable and they were all going to
die eventually. But Colbert had a moment. It was during
COVID when his buddy, also I think it's fair to
(05:48):
say a left leaner, John Stewart, came on the show,
and Stuart worked hard for this bit. You could tell
from the writing how he delivered it. I mean John
had worked on this bit, you can look it up.
And his buddy stepped on the bit Stephen Colbert, because
he was such a partisan hack that he didn't care
about the audience. He didn't care about his friend, and
(06:09):
he didn't care about the bit. He cared about his
opinion on COVID, which, by the way, I lived in California.
As Bill Maher has noted many times, Florida may have
gotten it more right than California. We were guessing for
three months, but we weren't guessing after three months we
knew kids weren't dying. There's a real argument that Florida
did a better job with it than California. Don't want
to get into that, but one of the reasons mar
(06:30):
has endured is that Bill is willing to go after
his own side. He's not tribal or parochial to the
point or two insular where he can't look and say,
you know, liberals are wrong here. And that's why I've
I've been on Mars show once. I just think he's
as good as anybody who's ever done it in that
political space. I think he's the best that's ever done it.
I think John Stewart's second. And so Stuart comes on
(06:56):
a left leaner to Cobert, his buddy. Remember Stuart's the
one that helped put Colbert in the forefront. And Stuart,
you know, clearly worked on this bit and Colbert kept
stepping on it over and over again. And Carson wouldn't
do that, and Letterman wouldn't do that. I mean, when
(07:16):
John Stewart is doing stuff and somebody comes on and
says something that may not he may not agree with.
I've seen John do this so many times. He will
uncomfortably laugh and say, don't don't make me go there,
don't make me laugh at this. This is wrong, you're wrong.
But he doesn't get in the way of the joke,
because the fucking joke is sacred for comedians, they write
(07:39):
their own they perform one time. It's hard as hell.
Respect the performer, respect the joke, Respect how hard writing is.
There's no thirty four takes. It's live. It is live.
And Stuart came on to deliver this and it was
just a I mean, it's about the wu Han lamp
(08:02):
and Colbert stepped on it. He just couldn't get over himself,
and it elicited such a visceral reaction. To me, I've
never seen in the same way. I just it's just like, Okay,
he's I don't care what the ratings are. It doesn't
matter for me that there was a certain rubicon or
something that was passed. I just couldn't get past. I
(08:25):
just couldn't get past it. And maybe it didn't. Maybe
maybe if you're left leaning, you loved that moment because
you thought the conservatives were crazy to to speculate that
maybe it was a man made virus, which I think
is a very reasonable thing to discuss. I mean, that's
that's worthy of discussion. I mean, that's that's the whole
point of this, getting through stuff, getting over stuff, working
(08:49):
our way through turbulence and social uh discomfort is the discussion.
So to me, I don't have a lot of pity
for Stephen Cobert. He'll he'll get a job, he'll be fine.
But he wasn't. He didn't honor his friend, he didn't
honor the joke. He was more about himself. He wasn't
about the audience. He wasn't about making us left go
watch a great comedian. By the way, the other moment
(09:14):
that I remember with Colbert's show is the Ricky Gervais
religion discussion, where again Jervas is just a really smart guy,
and again Colbert can't get out of his own way.
He just doesn't. He's just so uncomfortable that it's making
it's moving in a direction that he doesn't agree with.
It's about the joke and the story. It's about the
(09:37):
audience and making them laugh and entertain. And I don't
know why I'm so worked up over this, but the
Hollywood Reporter talked about it today. These shows for the
last seven years, they've lost half of their ad revenue. Why.
Two reasons. One, young viewers don't stay up and watch
TV anymore. The only thing anybody watches on TV is sports.
(10:01):
I mean, that's pretty much it. Sports and News and
in every four years, the political cable shows explode. The
second reason they're dying is because the late night shows
talking about politics, and that's a no fly zone for
a lot of advertisers. Listen. Even Fox News, which is
a juggernaut, a behemoth on cable television, there are advertisers
(10:22):
that are not interested and don't want to be on
the shows, like big name advertisers, because they just don't
want to get in the crosshairs of polarizing, controversial discussions.
And that's okay, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN. There are advertisers
that don't want any part of that. And I respect
the advertisers. It's one of the reasons that I'm talking
a lot of politics on my show. If I want
(10:42):
to talk him, I can talk them on the volume.
That's my company. But so the Cobert Show is losing
forty million dollars a year, and it's been losing hemorrhaging
money for years and years, and it's got a huge staff,
and so yeah, like I mean, that's not a viable business.
But that moment bothered me so much that I had
to literally on a Saturday can talk about it because
(11:05):
somebody who grew up with Carson and love Letterman, and
I've got so much respect for comedians. I mean, I
brought Norm McDonald on my show, Bill Maher, my show,
David Spade on my show, probably a couple others. I
just to me the ability to write your own stuff, perform,
(11:25):
and I mean, you're just you're just putting yourself out there,
the idea that you're gonna go on a show and
you're gonna you've been working on. Norm McDonald would tell
these four minute jokes. Do you know how much courage
it would take to go out with a joke that's
never been told? And Conan O'Brien never got in the
way of the joke. Conan O'Brien would sit there patiently
(11:48):
waiting to reward Norm as Norm would reward him. And
I think that's amazing that the code like Conan O'Brien
more than once, is uncomfortable with with Norm mcdonnald, because
his jokes were going forever the moth joke and forever
and ever and you're waiting for the punchline and Norm's
a little different. Rest in peace. But that bothered me.
(12:09):
That always drove me nuts about Colbert is just so partisan.
So much about his belief that he stepped on Stewart
and I think they're great friends. It just drove me
nuts and I've just wasted everybody's twenty minutes. But it's
a Saturday. That's how I felt. And this is more
(12:30):
kind of an ode to how gifted and great our
comedians are. Ricky Gervais, I mean, I remember watching Dennis
Miller tapes Letterman. You know, you just watched him for years,
and I you know, people over the course of my
life like who is your inspiration? And I love Costas
(12:53):
and al Michaels, and I mean it's just Joe Davis,
Joe Buck. I mean, there's so many gifted guys out
there doing play by play. Kevin Burkhart, his life story
is amazing. But there's something about comedians to just write
your own stuff, perform it, you get one time, knowing
it can completely bomb. There's just I've got a soft
(13:15):
spot for how smart they are, how clever, empty canvas.
They do their own work, they do their own painting,
and are willing to walk on stage and just bomb.
Actors don't have to go through that, right they get
forty takes. Somebody else writes it. Happy Saturday,
Hosts And Creators
Colin Cowherd
Jason McIntyre
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