Should Stephen Colbert run for President?

This bonus epsiode covers Rob Schneider's scathing Fox News op-ed calling Colbert's show "wafer thin Democratic propaganda."

John Oliver's reaction

Could this be the best thing that ever happened to Colbert's career? Should the Democrats recruit him for that open South Carolina Senate seat? And what does Jon Stewart—Colbert's friend, manager-mate, and executive producer—have to say about it all?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Callarogas Shark Media.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hello again, I'm Johnny mag with a Stephen Colbert based
bonus episode. There was a normal episode of Daily Comedy
News in the feed earlier Monday. This is an episode
for Monday Middle of the day. Let's start with Friend
of the Show John Marco SIRESI he was on MSNBC.
What do you make of his cancellation. I mean, give
me your big takeaway pictures? Are you buying that it's financial?

(00:30):
Is it sad to see the end of such a
kind of iconic brand in franchise? It could be financial,
and you know, Epstein could have liked Trump for his drawings.
Anything's possible. Interesting reporting from Variety, who said, I guess
last week. The phrasing is earlier this week, but it's
Monday morning, so I guess. Last week, sky Dane's chief
David Ellison met with FCC chair Brendan Carr and others

(00:52):
at the commission to lobby for the deal's approval, and notably,
Ellison promised that CBS's editorial decision making reflects the varied
ideot logical perspectives of American viewers. In a February seventh
Fox News interview, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr commented on Trump's
lawsuit against CBS and said the president quote has been
right on these media bias issues. On Tuesday, January fifteenth,

(01:15):
Ellison and his lawyer met with Carr. According to a
letter posted in the FCC's docket, Ellison and Brill Brill
is Ellison's lawyer, emphasized the public interest benefits of the
sky Dance Paramount transaction end quote. We also urged the
Media Bureau to promptly grant approval of the transfer of
the CBS licenses to quote new Paramount. According to the

(01:36):
filing quote. We made clear that mister Ellison will lead
New Paramount with a talented team of executives focused on
American storytelling. A lot to unpack there. In Variety, Rob
Schneider wrote an opinion piece for Fox News. Rob Schneider writes, respectfully,
Stephen Colbert has been doing nothing but wayfer thinly disguised
democratic propaganda talking points for the last eight years plus.

(01:59):
While I completely support mister Colbert's freedom of speech, his
utter disdain for half of America and every swing state
greatly diminished his audience potential. I also respect Colbert's direct
criticism of his employer, CBS Paramount, and his opinion that
they cave to President Trump when they settled their lawsuit
against the sitting president. That took guts. I'll give him that.
But Colbert, like ABC Late Night host Jimmy Kimmel, excluded

(02:20):
conservatives completely from his show and limited parentheses prevented his
audience from hearing opposing viewpoints. Colbert fed liberal slopped to
his liberal minded Kamala supporters, and cared less about challenging
them intellectually by actually appealing to their higher nature or
engaging in thought provoking debate. Nah, just keep crapping on
half the country that's no longer afraid to say women

(02:41):
don't have penises and boys shouldn't get to beat up
girls in girls' sports. So, while I support mister Colbert's
First Amendment right for free speech, great point, Rob Schneider. Yeah.
As for CBS Paramount, they are a private company and
they have to pay the bills or used to, so
they can fire anyone they want in Colbert, who under
an estimated twenty million dollars salary, was reportedly losing the
company forty million dollars per year. Several more paragraphs there

(03:04):
than Rob ends with. I wish mister Colbert are much
success in whatever he does next. Show business is a
tough business. Rob was on Fox and Friends.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Colbert never had me on his show. Neither has Jimmy
Kimmel or well, I guess I was on a couple
of times early. But look, it's here's what happens. Like
Colbert already cut the pie. It's a pizza. He already
cut it in half. His potential audience. He cut it
in half with it just by cutting out all conservatives
at all, not caring about you know, the forty seven

(03:34):
states that may have a different opinion than the Democratic
Party of open borders, and women have junk between their legs.
We have to And so he had half the pie
already gone, and then then he has to divide that
pizza in three slices with Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.
And then so he's he's he's working for a third

(03:56):
of a piece of pie, and that's just not going
to pay the bills. They have two hundred employees, and frankly,
you know I have more more people will watch this
on Twitter. Then you know, for his advertising group that
everybody on TV seems to still think is important that
eighteen to thirty five group, and it's just that audience
isn't there anymore. It's I mean, the late night show

(04:17):
is a relic. But the thing about it which was
special when I was a kid, you know, when we
were you know, my family were all, you know, climbing
mom and Dad's bed and watching TV. Johnny Carson was
he made the show for everybody. He didn't alienate anyone,
and you never knew who he kind of thought that
these guys all leaned left like most of the media,

(04:39):
but you never knew one hundred percent. And that's kind
of a beautiful thing. And I hope it goes back
to that.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Rosie O'Donnell jumped on Instagram on Sunday and wrote, Hey,
Tangerine Trump. First you said I should be stripped of
my citizenship. Now you're publicly celebrating that Stephen Colbert lost
his job. You've never understood the role of comedy or
the role of truth. You think isolent seeing a comedian
means you've won something you haven't. Stephen said up to
you like so many of us have. Not because it
was easy, but because it was necessary. He told the

(05:08):
truth with wit and courage night after night. Well, you
used your platform to spread fear, lies and hate. John
Oliver was in Eerie, Pennsylvania. He was part of that
stunt to rebrand the baseball team the Moon Mammoths. He
was asked about Stephen Colbert. John Oliver said, I love Steven,
I love his staff, I love that show. It's incredibly said.
I'm partly excited to see what they're going to do

(05:29):
the next ten months. It's terrible, terrible news for the
world of comedy. Late night shows mean a lot to me,
not just because I work in them, but because even
growing up in England, I would watch Letterman Show, which
of course was Stephen's Show. I think about what a
glamorous world that was so to have got to be
on Letterman Show, and Stephen's Show has always been one
of the most fun things. So it's very very sad news.
I look forward to seeing what he's going to do next,

(05:49):
because that man will not stop now. The Wall Street
Journal jumped in again. I think many things can be
true at once. My spidy senses tingling with the timing
here in the merger deal, but also the numbers and
the financials. As you look at all this, it's not
crazy talk to end this show. Perhaps there's a scenario
where you could do some cost cutting or figure something out.

(06:10):
But the Journal points out Colbert has two point four
million viewers most nights, less than one percent of the country.
It's a tiny fraction of Johnny Carson's viewership at a
time when the nation was smaller. The late show's audience
has fallen more than thirty percent in the past five years,
and even more among the eighteen to forty nine s.
Colbert's operation reportedly costs north of one hundred million dollars

(06:31):
annually and hemorrhaged forty million dollars last year, nearly half
being the host salary. The Journal rights America depends on
a shared sense of Wii boomers and gen X once
found some of that on late night TV from millennials
and gen Z. A fragmented media ecosystem that's insufficiently popular
to sustain a common culture presents real challenges. Any revolution
would not be televised. It would be streamed from one

(06:53):
thousand angles across a million platforms. The New Yorker happens
to have a piece by Stephen Colbert this week. It
is titled Stephen Colbert and Kenneth Tynan's Profile of Johnny Carson.
Apparently there was a good profile of Carson in nineteen
seventy eight. Colbert wrote that article is twenty thousand words.
It's giving ahead. While I host a show in the

(07:14):
same time slot and tradition as Carson, I am not Johnny.
Neither was quote unquote Johnny, who is described as an
eighth of Carson, the rest being hidden behind midwestern and
professional recipitudes and protective sodality. A lot of big words
here of producers, lawyers, and execs who pronounced Johnny a
reformed drinker, loving son and husband, faithful to the point

(07:35):
of celibacy. Two or false? Do we care Johnny or Johnny?
He was there every night like the tide, and we
loved him. I have the Carson books, I've watched the
Carson biles. I have a dear friendship with his old
writer and pure Dick Cavitt. One disappointment. Tynan presents no process.
How did Johnny arrive at quote between sixteen and twenty
two short fire jokes per monologue? What happened behind that
rainbow curtain? I know the articles about the man, not

(07:57):
the job, but were told the show is Johnny john
is the show. You'll find that in the print edition
July twenty eighth, twenty twenty five issue of The New
Yorker The Town podcast. They did this asn't aside. They
were talking about the Colbert of it all. They said,
Mullaney on Netflix was getting five hundred thousand viewers, five
hundred thousand, five hundred thousand Formulaney. I don't know if

(08:21):
that thing's coming back. Maybe just with the zeitgeist, they
think people will rally behind Malani. But like I said,
when the show was airing season two, I didn't think
the show was working creatively and I didn't think it
was really capturing a buzz. And I may have been right.
Friend of the show, Jason Zinneman in The New York
Times right, it's getting canceled may end up being the
best thing that's ever happened to Stephen Colbert. The same

(08:42):
cannot be said for its impact on late night television.
His quick, improv honed wit and intellectual depth could feel
hamstrung by the show's short segments, and sometimes when he
got on a good riff or dug into an area
of major interest. You wondered if it would fit better
on a podcast. Zinneman rights, late night television is not finished.
In fact, you could say we're reverting to the era
before the early nineties, when NBC dominated and there were

(09:02):
occasionally network alternatives. The loss of the late show is
not the deathnell, but it is a deathnell. If video
killed the radio star, who did in the network late
night superstar. The Internet is the primary suspect, increasing competition,
shipping away at ad dollars, and transforming the time at
which we watch these shows, making the term late night
itself a misnomer all caps. Of course, money matters, but

(09:23):
so does the climate which it's allocated. Late night used
to be, among other things, a prestige business. The hosts
were some of the key phases of the network. On
top of profits, the show's generated press, attention, in house promotion,
and buzz. Now, media bosses seem more willing to cut
a check for millions of dollars to make a political
problem go away, rather than spend that money to keep
their late night show. Yeah. I talked about this in
one of the other bonuses. So at some point you

(09:44):
have to ask the question, who are we Fox shows
sports and animation. You know, maybe CBS is looking at
that and going, all right, why don't we just do
our procedurals from E two eleven. We'll show some football
during the fall, and why do we have a late
night show? Not crazy? The Hollywood Reporter wondered what's next
for Colbert, and they pointed out while he lives in
New Jersey, he's from South Carolina and one of those

(10:06):
states Senate seats is open next year. Colbert has joked
about the idea of running for office for years. When
asked directly about this in two thousand and seven, Larry
King asked if Colbert would ever consider running for president,
and again, that's two thousand and seven, a lifetime ago
in some ways, Colbert said, obviously, every boy's thought of it.
And when you look at a field of candidates like this,
so that's the two thousand and eight campaign, you know,

(10:27):
and trailed off. I thought about that a lot over
the weekend. Stephen Colbert is sixty one, so he'd be
sixty three sixty four when the next election rolls around.
He's nice looking, he's telegenic, he's good at the art
of the media. He's not eighty years old. The people
who don't like him, Rob Schneider apparently already don't like him,

(10:49):
so there's no loss there. If I'm the Democrats, I'm
calling Stephen Colbert today. If you're not alreaddy on the
phone with him, you should be. I don't know if
he would want the gig, but if they rolled him
out as a candidate, very interesting. The current holder of
the office, among other things on his resume, hosted a
show called The Apprentice and was really good at media

(11:10):
and look at you head to you tonight Late Nighter
points out, let's pay a lot of attention to John
Stewart tonight. Colbert and Stewart are friends. John Stewart is
an EP on The Late Show. They share the same manager,
James baby Doll Dixon. We'll see what John has to say.
And that is a bonus episode back in the morning
with a normal episode. It was a very busy weekend.

(11:30):
Just in case you haven't caught everything. Going back Friday
morning's episode where I recapped Shane Gillis, I thought was strong,
and then it's just been bonus regular, bonus regular, bonus regular.
I'll be back in the morning. See then, thanks for listening,