{"id":635757,"date":"2026-04-29T05:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/635757\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T05:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T05:49:08","slug":"stephen-colbert-explains-why-he-made-the-late-show-more-political","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/635757\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert Explains Why He Made ‘The Late Show’ More Political"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tStephen Colbert<\/a> recently told The New York Times<\/a> that, after an uneven first couple of months of \u201cThe Late Show<\/a>,\u201d his producer encouraged him to lean back into his political roots.<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert said at first, the plan was to back away from politics after his transition from \u201cThe Colbert Report\u201d to \u201cThe Late Show.\u201d He explained to NYT, \u201cIt was my instinct to be less topical, because I didn\u2019t want to have to engage with what I saw was an increasingly contentious public discourse. And I thought, \u2018Aren\u2019t there other ways to have fun with the audience?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then, the 2016 national party conventions gave Colbert the opportunity to push hard on political humor. The late-night host said during that time, he felt like \u201cClint Eastwood in \u2018Unforgiven,\u2019 or is it some other movie? He buried his guns. And I\u2019m like, you know, I buried those damn guns. I was talking to Paul Dinello \u2014 he\u2019s one of my oldest friends and one of my producers here \u2014 and he\u2019s like, \u2018You\u2019re having fun, and people love to see that.\u2019 And I said, \u2018But that means I got to go dig up the guns.\u2019 And he says, \u2018Buddy, that\u2019s the part the audience wants to see.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert will soon air his final episode of \u201cThe Late Show.\u201d His home network, CBS<\/a>, announced the end of the historic late-night program in July of 2025, citing the move as \u201ca financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.\u201d<\/a> Some have speculated that CBS ended \u201cThe Late Show\u201d to curry favor with longtime critic, President Donald Trump<\/a>, who, through the FCC, could\u2019ve stopped a then-pending merger between CBS\u2019 parent company, Paramount, and Skydance.<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert told The Times that, although he does \u201cmake jokes\u201d about CBS\u2019 ulterior motives, he does \u201cnot dispute their rationale\u201d for ending \u201cThe Late Show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s possible that two things can be true,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cBroadcast can be in trouble. They cannot monetize because of things like YouTube, because of the competition of streaming. They\u2019ve got the books, and I do not have any desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work for them anymore. But less than two years before they called to say it\u2019s over, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert recently told The New York Times that, after an uneven first couple of months of \u201cThe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,6714,1376,75,3668,18745,348],"class_list":["post-635757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cbs","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}