LateNighter can exclusively report that Jon Stewart, back behind The Daily Show desk tonight for his first taping since news broke last week that CBS is canceling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, delivered both heartfelt praise for Colbert and a pointed rebuke of his corporate bosses.
“When your industry’s facing change, you don’t just call it a day,” Stewart said in a fiery monologue scheduled to air later tonight.
While some speculated Stewart might use tonight’s Daily Show to throw in the towel—or perhaps to announce news of his own cancellation—the host was defiant.
“I’m not giving in. I’m not going anywhere,” Stewart declared, before adding a wry nod to his own uncertain fate: “…I think?”
That declaration came after Stewart acknowledged that late-night television is indeed grappling with an outdated business model, likening it to “a Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records.” He even noted that The Late Show could well have been losing money.
But he argued that declining profitability shouldn’t be the end of the story. Stewart likened the situation to the collapse of CD sales—noting that the music industry didn’t give up on music altogether. After conceding that Paramount has $8 billion at stake, he made a sharper point to his parent company: “The shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and control? A not-insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those f*cking shows.”
If you’re trying to figure out why Stephen’s show is ending,” Stewart told viewers, the answer doesn’t lie solely in back-channel communications between Trump and Paramount—or in accounting documents about “the financial health of late night.”
“I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America’s institutions at this very moment,” he said.
And just in case his corporate bosses don’t get the message, the segment concludes with a return visit from the show’s go f*ck-yourself choir, as Stewart declares “This isn’t the time to shrink, it’s the time to fight!”
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