USA-Stephen Colbert: Trump critic sawed off

When Stephen Colbert took over his late show on the US broadcaster CBS by icon David Letterman ten years ago, many fans first wondered whether Colbert would now keep the fingers of political comments. He had become famous as a fake correspondent of the left Daily Show on Comedy Central. Later he got his own spin-off with “The Colbert Report”, in which he mimicked the excessive caricature of a right media influencer for years. Even at the annual correspondent of the US President, to whom he was invited as the main speaker in 2006, he remained in this role right next to George W. Bush.

Nine years later, he was supposed to take over a show that had been rather apolitical so far, the typical mix of zoten monologue, top ten lists and interviews with stars and starlets. Colbert went a different path and remained loyal. He criticized Donald Trump almost daily in the following years. This cost the late show at first some spectators, but other new ones were added. Under Colbert, the late show rose quickly and permanently to number 1 in the late night cosmos. A performance that even Letterman was very rarely successful in the eternal duel with Jay Leno. Colbert is still at the top of the rich lists, but on Thursday evening he announced that CBS announced the show at the end of the season Discontinue in May 2026 become.

The broadcaster called “financial reasons” that cannot be completely dismissed. Nevertheless, it has to be doubted that it is the only ones. Colbert had heavily criticized the paramount paramount paramounting paramount just two days earlier: Paramount’s leadership has long wanted to have the indebted media giants fusion with Skydance Media. In the deal, billions of income are waving, but the state antitrust authority, which has been checked by Donald Trump’s supporters since January, still has to agree. If this does not happen until October, the deal and Paramount has to bear the $ 400 million costs.

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President Trump, on the other hand, had sued CBS because of a supposed intervention in the 2024 election campaign because an interview with his opponent Kamala Harris was cut in the show “60 Minutes”. Although this is completely common and all right -wing experts Trump had not given a chance in the procedure, Paramount now agreed under the merger time printing and pays Trump $ 16 million. Colbert called this in his monologue: “Big, fat bribes”. Two days later, he received the news that his shipment would be discontinued.

The late show is not the first late night comedy to be set. The format itself has been losing spectators in the USA for years. When Jay Leno took over his tonight show in 1992 from the “King of Late Night” Johnny Carson at NBC, 16 million people watched. At Colbert there are only 2.4 million on average. The decline is mainly due to the fragmentation of the media landscape: Today there are much more late night formats than before, which divide the same cake into many smaller pieces. In addition, streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney-Plus (and Paramount+ Self) are increasingly attracting young people from old-fashioned live television.

Nevertheless, it is extremely unusual if the market leader Colbert has to go in front of many others. The 61-year-old youngest son of a 13-member family of Catholic, who grew up in South Carolina, had realigned the format by putting politics at the center of the joke among the big broadcasters. The direct opponents Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon then became braver. This modernization probably had late night shows in the United States survived for a few years longer. But soon it will be over at least on CBS and the audience threatens the third spin-off by Big Bang Theory instead.