Rusty Muck

Wait. George Cheeks makes the decision, he tells Colbert Wednesday night, and THEN he tells Shari Thursday morning?!? This story not only throws George under the bus, it tramples him over with a marching band, stomps him over with a herd of elephants and runs him over with a freaking steamroller.

Given that most cities only had three television stations in 1968 and that the controlling regime at the time was actually competent and evil, CBS's nerfing of Smothers Brothers was incalculably worse than this. In many cases the duo's career was hurt badly and took an inordinate amount of time to recover; they didn't have anywhere else to go to whilst Colbert will have Netflix or Amazon begging to hire him.

Dan Rather survived being paired with Connie and the major affiliate defections even while being in third place the whole time. Since Rathergate, they've changed anchors more that I change my socks.

Doesn't matter. When half the population believes CBS is a puppet for the gelatinous pile of goo that used to be the "republican party", they simply won't watch. There was never a congressional inquiry into Rathergate AFAIK but it was absolutely damning for CBS News, torpedoed Dan's career, nuked 60 Minutes II and set the CBS Evening News to a near-permanent state of ratings miasma, no matter what they do or format they take. Yes, half the population hates Fox News and they're still on the air. The difference between them and any other broadcast entity is that Fox is propped up with insane retransmission revenue from cable and satellite, thus, they don't need to have any actual advertising (the existing advertising ecosystem for right-wing media is simply a bonus). CBS would be permanently injured with an audience defection of any sort.

And now the WGA is breathing oxygen into the ongoing conflagration https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/writers-guild-bribery-investigation-colbert-cancellation-1236464878/ Even if CBS is being fully truthful, it doesn't matter. Colbert's fanbase and audience is already seeing it as nothing more than a political hit job and that's being baked in as we speak. If it is revealed as a political favor, then that's a scandal worse than Rathergate and the death knell for CBS. Simple as that.

Which is hardly unexpected. It's almost as if this is being done to manipulate sentiment on the left side of the aisle. Look, I'm going to say my peace here. I'm highly, highly distressed seeing people fall for conspiracy theories on here and on RadioDiscussions over the past few days. I've personally been in contact with @Weeters about this behavior on social media and it legitimately sounds like the left is falling for the exact same "this is autocracy and Trump is consolidating power" like it's an endless Sarah Kenzidor thread from 2016. There's also people continuing to amplify the falsehood that the election was rigged or that the shooting in PA last July was fully staged. Absolutely scary stuff. Everything is not okay. Loathsome, slimy vermin are indeed at the controls. But it is also not okay to not have any semblance of perspective. And linear media was dying long before November 2024 and Paramount Global was dying under Shari Redstone and I will die on those two hills. It's not autocracy but talk that that plays right into the hands of the aforementioned vermin.

Trump (or whomever is running the "Truth Social" account for that dementia-riddled barely sentient corpse these days) would take credit for Kimmel or Colbert having a hangnail. By calling the cancellation of The Late Show or Kimmel retiring after his contract run out (which Kimmel has talked about for years) nothing more than a political hit job, you're giving Trump superpowers he doesn't have. Which is why I consider Sens. Schiff and Warren's comments out of line because, besides being ineffectual, they further conspiracy theorists. Larry Ellison's son is probably more content with DuMonting CBS and jettisoning the owned-stations to Nexstar. CBS doesn't serve a purpose for him in the same way NBC Radio did not serve a purpose for GE in 1986.

Unless CraigyFerg didn't want the 11:30pm slot, it's probably one of the worst moves CBS ever made in recent years.

Meanwhile someone close to The Late Show told Brian Stelter that the show was already starting to lose money due to "plunging ad revenue". Which is the actual story here. There's a likely chance it would have continued in a different political climate, downscaled significantly, or moved to Paramount+ but the tourniquet was used instead. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/17/media/cbs-cancels-stephen-colbert

I guess this was inevitable. Facts about the declining asset that is late night don't matter when you can spin it as "the show was solely cancelled at the behest of Trump". https://www.thewrap.com/stephen-colbert-late-show-cancellation-reactions-adam-schiff-elizabeth-warren/

You can absolutely kiss public broadcasting as a whole goodbye, along with a major chunk of the EAS PEPs. These braindead republicans and their cult leader…

That's inviting Dr. Kevorkian to preside over the funeral.

Those channels (even totally dead channels like MTV and VH1) have no budget or payroll and thus still turn enough of a profit especially with retransmission revenue drying up. Same reason why a clunker like NewsNation still exists despite nonexistent ratings; the overhead is small enough that Nexstar still makes a profit and thus justifies the channel’s existence. Blame can be assigned by a 9:1 ratio. It’s almost entirely Shari’s fault; Trump simply gave the final nudge. Anything else is revisionist history. Look, anyone who knows me knows that I revile and despise that man, his supporters and his rubber stamp drones like Carr and Trusty. But cancelling the Late Show was in truth a long time coming. Corden getting yeeted and Seth Meyers losing his house band both happened prior to last November and were legitimate warning signs. As was The Daily Show being unable to find a replacement for Trevor Noah before coaxing Jon Stewart out of retirement.

Here’s what happened, in image form: Easy prediction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will be lobbied hard by the streaming platforms, and wherever they go, they’ll get way better numbers than they ever have on linear media. If this was a so-called “hit job” by Trump it honestly missed the mark, and badly so.

Fred Silverman almost replaced Johnny Carson with McLean Stevenson. It’s not unprecedented.

How long has Shari been trying to get rid of Paramount Global? Three years? Of course she’s desperate and would stoop to nothing. It also discounts hard core realities with linear television. Because Shari was desperate and incompetent. It only serves to destroy the brand value of CBS.

I’m going to be That Guy that is saying this has more to do with CBS dying on the vine than anything else. Giving Trump any credit for the cancellation of The Late Show completely and unnecessarily absolves Shari Redstone of blame for her mismanagement of Paramount Global and CBS, let alone her utter incompetence in trying to sell it all off. CBS was in awful shape prior to this. The cracks were showing during the SAG-AFTRA strike and were never repaired. Honestly I wonder if CBS even survives or just fades into oblivion like Dumont 70 years ago.

KYUS-TV fell silent on New Year's Day but forgot to file the STA paperwork until two weeks ago.

They probably had no choice in the matter as YTTV, Hulu and Fubo were under no obligation to continue carrying an independent station. And why would they? It's only a matter of time before Berkshire Hathaway puts WPLG up for sale in a liquidation.

The Sturlaugsons didn't even want KXGN-TV. It's obvious that KDZN-FM propped up channel 5 and just about everything else. Just as much as KYUS-TV was only being run as a public service and relayed KULR at no charge to Cowles. WJSU and WCFT say hello.

NBC hasn't been in Glendive since KXGN dropped the subchannel on January 1. While KYUS-TV has been silent since that same time, KULR does has a translator in Miles City, a tiny one at that.

So both KXGN and KYUS are joining Montana PBS later this year. Both were sold to Montana State University for $375,000.

"powergate92" on RadioDiscussions found the bankruptcy docket and this looks really bad. I'll quote them: "So I found the bankruptcy docket. It looks like the plan is for Merit Street assets to be sold at auction with final sale to be completed by the end of September." Here's the link to the dockets.

Scripps isn't selling anything. This setup was deliberately engineered so KOAA can merge directly into KKTV, which recently got new studios. When it gets approved, Scripps will have the Big Three affiliations in Colorado Springs with KRXM as the only tangible competition. Likewise, when Gray buys Allen as a whole, the husk known as KADN/KLAF can easily merge into KATC.

How much money are these companies going to throw at Carr and Trusty to pay them off is the real question. Paramount Global threw away $16M so they could merge into Skydance, after all, and Gray, Nexstar and Sinclair know how to butter up the right people so they can get their way. It's a battle of the shameless.