The End of The Late Show: Is America Laughing or Just Tuning Out?

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
When the lights go out on late night, laughter and
truth gets replaced by applaud signs. We stand for something louder.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Go ride.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
With Peter Morgan, where liberty leaves in the bike don't line.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
The jokes got old?

Speaker 5 (00:37):
We speak what's more.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
For truth?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
To laugh for the red white Dad.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hello, this is go right with Peter Boygan. You're Constitutionalists
for liberty.

Speaker 6 (01:07):
The end of the late show is America laughing or
just tuning out? My folks, This is Peter Boyke and
your Constitutionists for Liberty. Writer for go write news dot com.
Thank you for tuning in. I quiet goodbye from the
stage that once kept America up laughing. It used to

(01:29):
be that when the final news anchor signed off and
the house fell quiet, the nation would tune in for
something lighter, not empty, but lighter. There behind the desk
was someone funny, someone who could take up the day's
chaos and turn it into today's and chuckle before bed.

(01:54):
Johnny Carson did it with ease. Jay Leno kept it going.
David Letterman added Sarcastle. Conan O'Brien brought quirk. Each of
them had their style, their politics quietly, and their loyal
fans but more than anything, they offered something priceless, an

(02:18):
escape that didn't demand allegiance. That era just ended. Stephen
Colbert stood center stage at the Ed Sullivan's Theater, visiibly emotional,
and told his audience that The Late Show would end

(02:38):
in May twenty twenty six. Not just his show, the
entire franchise. CBS is walking away. No replacement, no reband,
no reset, and let's be honest. For many on the

(03:00):
the news was met with a smirk. Many nearly a
decade after nearly a decade of Colbert using his platform
to relentlessly mock Donald Trump, conservatives, populists, and anyone to
the right of Nancy Pelosi. We might feel like poetic justice.

(03:20):
Some may even cheer, but we shouldn't because this isn't
just about Stephen Kilbert. This is the death of an
American institution, one that once united a nation in laughter
and now vanishes not with a bang, but with corporate silence.

(03:48):
We'll be right back. Remember we fight for what's right,
because it's time to go right. Welcome back to hashtag

(04:21):
Go Right with Peter Boyke and I'm your host. From
Carson to Colbert. When Late Night was forever Late Night
didn't just started a weapon. It started as a mirror,
a funhouse mirror baby, but one that reflected us, all,

(04:42):
all of us. Johnny Carlson Carson didn't just go easy.
He didn't go easy on politicians, but he didn't go
hard on their voters. Wherever you voted for Reagan or McGovern,
you could still laugh at the same monologue. That's what

(05:03):
made it work. David Letterman brought edge and Iron Leno.
Jay Leno kept it in middle of the road. Even
John Stewart in his prime stuck and struck a balance.
He hit Bush hard, but his interviews were intelligent, often respectful,

(05:25):
sometimes surprising. But something changed in the twenty tens. When
Colbert took over in twenty fifteen, he brought the persona
from the Colbert Report with him. What began as satire
evolved into knightly sermons. His show became less of a
lounge and more of a litmus test. If you weren't

(05:47):
laughing at Trump jokes, were you even American? This wasn't
just Colbert. Jimmy Kimball did the same. Seth Myers turned
entire segments into MSNBC with a lap track. Trevor Noah
tried and failed to recapture Stuart's spark, losing both viewers

(06:08):
and cultural impact. Late night comedy became activism with the
flaw signs and the audience shrink when the joke got old.
The Trump accession backfire. Colbert's Late Show prized in Trump's
first term rating sword. The monologue was a nightly roast

(06:31):
of the forty fifth president and liberal America just couldn't
get enough. But Trump left office, the pandemic changed media consumption.
Viewers were tired, and Colbert didn't adapt. Instead of returning
to cultural humor or celebrity fund he doubled down on

(06:52):
the political. To his credit, Colbert was sharp, consistent, and professional.
And I can say some of this said I actually
did laugh at But Late Night is supposed to be
a release, not a nightly reminder of what half the
country hates. That refusal to evolve became his undoing, and now,

(07:16):
instead of passing the torch to someone new, CBS is
putting that torch out. You might ask why CBS canceled
the whole show and what it cost us. The official
reason for canceling the Late Night Show money money. CBS

(07:36):
claims it's a business decision, declining ratings, rising falls. Late
Night just asn't pulling ad dollars anymore. Now, I will
state on the side note that they had recently said
that they were going to quit doing late Night on Fridays.
That has happened in the actual news industry where Friday's

(08:00):
now been cut off. Mostly you do two big, longer
days Monday through Thursday. As I know someone in media,
they have basically said that they're now doing everything Monday
through Thursday, Friday now being cut off. It's weird in
this whole obsession of twenty four or seven news that
we would actually have three days where people would not

(08:21):
be off working and where they'd run reruns. So if
you ever want to get anything passed, you put it
on the weekend. Okay, so Late Night isn't just clearing
an add dollars, and they're not wrong. Production is expensive,
hundreds of staffers, writers, designers, editors, and band members. It

(08:44):
adds up. Makes you wonder why they didn't just go
to AI. But who wants to tune in to a
robot going I that's as the narrative, that's the light
show with AI I at all at all, at all
but that doesn't mean if the right move folks, they

(09:04):
really shouldn't be getting rid of things. Late night talk
shows have been time capsules of American life. Where else
could you say a young Barack Obama and a retiring
Bob Folks share the same stage. Where else could a
first time comedian become a star overnight? Losing the Late
Show isn't just about Colbert. It's about losing one of

(09:27):
the last remaining shared cultural spaces spaces we had. Now
can late night survive the digital shift and a streaming
world where everything is segmented and algorithms decide what we watch?
Traditional late night TV seems outdated?

Speaker 5 (09:47):
What is it?

Speaker 6 (09:48):
Look at Conan O'Brien. After NBC, he moved to TBS.
Then he did something no one expected. He downsized no suits,
no desk, no live fan, just Cony, a guest and
a podcast. Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend became a massive
digital pits. He kept it weird, funny, and free from

(10:10):
political tryades, and Conan proved that authenticity and humor still
work even if the format changes. Maybe late night isn't debt,
Maybe it just needs a wake up and grow up.
I'm gonna add my little information in here that's not

(10:32):
in the article. But they're saying that so many people
are now watching YouTube on their phones, little clips on TikTok.
I personally believe a lot of people are working, working late,
taking care of their kids, that nobody can really afford
to stay up that late and watch, and then then

(10:52):
nobody has time to catch up on it. Nobody's really
going to the water cooler anymore and saying, hey, what's
going on here? Hey? You know, hey, did you catch
on so last night? Because everybody's afraid to talk about
subjects because you can lose your job if you become
political or no political. So I was thinking, why don't

(11:14):
they go with the whole digital age. Do your episodes,
brain back the cost, make sure you put a little
bit more fun in it. But look for the viral clips.
Jimmy Fallon for one on the Tonight Show. You can
always find viral clips online. Get somebody to make the

(11:37):
Instagram reels, the TikTok reels, the YouTube reels. Get people
excited about wanting to watch an episode. Make sure the
episodes are on, you know, promoted and pushed on your
online feed so people don't have to watch late night,
always late night. Make it late night during the day.

(11:58):
You know your wake up call, what happened old late
night last night? Make it fun, put the information into
it again. Get people reeled back into wanting to watch it.
I don't want to see it going away. So is
it just about ratings or is it about Powell? Now

(12:19):
here's where it gets murky. Just weeks before the announcement,
CBS parent company, Paramount Global, paid Donald Trump sixteen million
dollars to settle a lawsuit over a manipulated sixty minutes interview. Sorry, CBS,
they screwed up. They shouldn't have done that. It costs
them money. But they seem to be blaming that for everything.

(12:41):
I see that They have been doing some program changes
with Star Trek and other things, and they always come
back to this, well, we had to parry Donald Trump
sixteen million dollars. When it comes to corporate America, sixteen
million dollars is a drop of a hat. And if
they if that's what's causing all the problems with CBS,
we're talking about CBS, a company who's been along for
a very long ride. One of the originals, the original

(13:04):
you know, had ABC, CBS, NBC did all the radios.
The original sixteen million dollars should be nothing before, but
Colbert mocked the payout live on air. He called it
a big, fat ride. Days later, CBS pulled the plug
on his ship. A conspiracy theorist. The timing raises Alborough eyebrows,

(13:32):
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Adam Shift already demanding answers,
suggesting that CBS have acted under political pressure. The network
denies it, but it's hard to ignore the options. So
when a major network kills a flagship show right after
its host criticized a powerful figure like Donald Trump, they

(13:53):
just wrote a Trump a check too. It doesn't look clean.
It looks corporate. Senator Adam Shift just saw this on
think YouTube, Twitter or whatever, said just finished taping with
Stephen Colbert, who announced his show was canceled. If Piedmont
and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the

(14:15):
public deserves to know and deserves better. It's already eight
thousand comments, five point nine thousand shares. I think it's
a game from Facebook. We don't like Senator Adam Shift
here at go write news, but he's making a point here.
So again This is the end of the Late Show.

(14:36):
Is America lafting or just tuning out? We'll be right
back with my hashtag go right with Peter Boykin commentary,
the end of an era of what we're losing. Enjoy
this music and we'll be right back.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
They used to keep us up with laughter when the
world felt heavy and cruel.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
From Carson's grin the Letterman snark, they.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
Gave a satire, not a political tool. You could vote left,
you could vote right, But when the curtain rose at night,
we sat together, laugh together. Late Night was our cultural tether.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
But now that stage is quiet, not with applause but
corporate silence.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
The joke we watched it face from comedy gold to
a political blame.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
We tuned in for.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
Got lectures instand.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Now the punch lines gone, the room is.

Speaker 5 (16:16):
It's stopped laughing at both sides. So America stopped watching
la rye.

Speaker 4 (16:23):
The Late Show's gone, The lights weill, and we're just
left here.

Speaker 6 (16:30):
Full of doubt.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Colbert stood there, tears in his eye, but we saw
it coming.

Speaker 5 (16:37):
Can't deny when every night it's the same damn fight.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
You lose the middle, you lose the light from Kimmel's
skull to Myer's preach comedy became a left wing speech,
and when the laughter turned in or CBS said, we
can't pay for this anymore. To love to go.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Nonoblue, just to show what if the jokes could heal.

Speaker 5 (17:14):
Again, make us laugh like we're still friends.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
Conan knew what to do. Cut the said, kept it real,
no death, no bad, just heard.

Speaker 5 (17:28):
That was the deal.

Speaker 4 (17:29):
He proved you don't need to scream to be hurt,
You just need to speak with humor in words. The
Cooper clung to the fight and forgot to find the
funny the night so Ceebs pulled the plug and paid
the bill. Late Night died on that head Sullivan Hi.

Speaker 6 (17:52):
Show.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
We watched it fad from water cooler talk to click,
bade and rage, It didn't.

Speaker 5 (18:08):
Ed, control was gone.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
It isn't it coun't played too long and laughed with
memes and rants. No Carson come, no lit, no glance.
If we want real laughs to start a new we
need shows that joke.

Speaker 5 (18:35):
With me and you.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Maybe it's not the end, Maybe it's just the wake
up Q. Because America doesn't need fewer jokes, We just
need better ones.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
That laugh with us, not at us.

Speaker 6 (19:43):
Welcome back to hashtag Go write with Peter Boyk And
this is the part where I give you my full commentary.
I know, yes, we have a lot of opinions in
the articles, and again you can read this full article
on go writnews dot com. I try to do a
couple of podcast the week, but I do a lot
of articles, at least one or two a day on

(20:04):
go writnews dot com, Go writ nc dot com, and
a few on other places. So the end of an
era what we're losing. As a constitutionalist for liberty, I
believe in the power of open dialogue, free speech in
American culture that doesn't come with a side of censorship.

(20:26):
Stephen Colbert and I don't see the world the same way.
That's fine. I've criticized his show, his tone, and his
treatment of Trump supporters. I've also laughed a few times,
and it's funny jokes when it gets funny. But I'll
say this clearly, canceling the Late Show altogether is a
crucial and critical and cultural loss. We used to have

(20:52):
places in America American media where people of all viewpoints
could share lacks, ideas and moments that define the generation
I mean the other day I saw Shatner, William Shatner,
Star Trek Captain Kirk with Debase Oosse or whatever on stage,

(21:13):
and somebody would say, I think if I'll see would
be more on the left wing side science wise, and
a lot of people intended that Shatner's more on the
right side. And I saw Colbert Interview the other day.
I tuned in, and I normally I don't watch it,
but it just seems to be on the TV when
I'm going to work, and Colbert was on there, and

(21:37):
he was interviewing our governor Democrat governor and made some
valid points. So there's interest there. But do I turn
on Colbert afterwards? You want to hear Do I like
a few of the intros they're finding out? I agree again,
we used to have places in American media where people

(21:59):
of all viewpoints share laughs, ideas and moments that defined
a generation. Now we have TikTok rants, an algorithm approved outrage.
Everybody's doing their show, I'm doing my show. They not
used to unite us all at the end of the day,
not anymore, because instead of adapting, the network's polarized, and

(22:20):
when the numbers didn't support the division they walked away,
someone would say, go woke, go broke. I don't really
like the word woke, but in this case, you go
ultra political one way, especially in a light show. What
do you think is gonna happen? I've talked about this

(22:41):
in previous articles. Johnny Carson used to say, you know,
in a way he would address things in a political
nature without being too political one way or the other.
And that way you didn't risk you didn't risk alienating
your full audience. And that's what's happened. So what ifstead

(23:06):
of the networks walking away, what if they chose unity instead?
What if we had a late night show where the
host could roast both sides, talk to guests from every
political corner, and welcome the full American spectrum without apology.

(23:28):
We don't need fewer conversations, We need better conversation, and
we need to remember that freedom of speech only matters
when it applies to those we don't agree with. Like
I say, I will disagree with what you say, but

(23:50):
I will fight for your right to say it, because
this is America and it's your constitutional wife. Colbert's show
didn't because people stop laughing at Trump. It died because
it forgot how to laugh at itself. Thanks for knowing, everybody,

(24:16):
I just remember it. Go write news. We exist to
be different. We read the whole story. We played devils out.
We call out hypocrisy left or right. We defend your
constitutional rights and shine light where the part is. Impress
will mind. We believe in truth, not tribalism. Hashtag go
right means defending all viewpoints, not worshiping clipback, read the

(24:39):
full story, see a movie, watch a Superman movie, make
up your mind. That is how we keep our constitutional
public alive by thinking for ourselves and having fun while
we do it. You can read more and support constitutional media.
Go rightnews dot com. This has been hashtag Go write

(25:00):
with Peter boy Can you subscribe to us at rumble
dot com. It's go write news and it Go right
with Peter Boykin podcast on YouTube and on spreaker and
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(25:21):
cash app at dollar sign Go write news stand form
but stay free. It's time to go right. God bless everybody.
Peacea

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