{"id":742915,"date":"2026-06-17T14:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/742915\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T14:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T14:38:12","slug":"cbs-forced-to-pay-fine-for-colbert-finales-music-usage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/742915\/","title":{"rendered":"CBS Forced to Pay Fine for Colbert Finale’s Music Usage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\t\t\t\tQuick Take<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tCBS will pay a fine for the unauthorized use of a song on Stephen Colbert\u2019s finale episode of The Late Show.The rights owners will donate the fine to charity.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

It hasn\u2019t even been a full month since Stephen Colbert gave his final bow as host of CBS\u2019 The Late Show<\/a> and already it feels like years. The eyeball network has moved on to pastures far less green. (They\u2019ve also lost the timeslot\u2019s audience<\/a>, by some reports). But if you thought Colbert didn\u2019t still have one gift left for his former network, you\u2019d be wrong. You see, on The Late Show series finale, Colbert played a piece of music specifically without a license. Now CBS has to pay for it.<\/p>\n

\"StephenCBS<\/p>\n

In news we first saw via The Wrap<\/a>, Colbert played the song \u201cLucy and Linus\u201d by the Vince Guaraldi Trio on the episode. (You know, the Peanuts song.) He specifically called out how they didn\u2019t obtain a license for it. Well, now the network has to pony up. The rights holders, Lee Mendelson Film Productions, Inc., said in a statement that they\u2019ll donate the fee. It will go to Chef Jos\u00e9 Andr\u00e9s\u2019 World Central Kitchen, Colbert\u2019s charity of choice. The Kitchen sends food around the world to areas hit by problems from natural disasters to civil unrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cLMFP found the music\u2019s use on\u00a0\u2018The Late Show\u2019\u00a0funny and entertaining, and is proud to support World Central Kitchen\u2019s mission,\u201d Jason Mendelson, Chairman of LMFP, said\u00a0in a release<\/a>. \u201cA principal goal of our enforcement actions is to educate individuals, businesses, and government entities about the need to obtain written license agreements to use music in a commercial setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When Colbert had his house band, Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine, to play \u201cLucy and Linus\u201d in the May 21 episode, he explained that LMFP had cracked down on unlicensed use of Guaraldi tracks. The show had not obtained such an agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh no,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cI hope this doesn\u2019t cost CBS any money.\u201d Neither party has disclosed the amount of money CBS has to pay. But it\u2019s bound to be less than the $16 million parent company Paramount paid to the President of the United States so the Skydance deal went through. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u26a1 Quick Take CBS will pay a fine for the unauthorized use of a song on Stephen Colbert\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75,251356,3668,6713],"class_list":["post-742915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-peanuts","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742915","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=742915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}