Stephen Colbert hasn\u2019t even been off the air for a week, but is already causing some hubbub with the launch of a new YouTube channel that has garnered more than 120,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n
The popular late-night host, who aired his final episode<\/a> of The Late Show last Thursday, quietly debuted the channel over the weekend with a single video<\/a> titled: \u201cOnly In Monroe — May 22, 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n The hour-long video features Colbert appearing<\/a> on Monroe Community Media, a public access television station in Monroe, Michigan \u2013 a small town with a population of roughly 20,000.<\/p>\n In the video, the 62-year-old comedian joked: \u201cIt\u2019s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I am grateful to be able to be here on Monroe Community Media before they also get acquired by Paramount,\u201d referring to CBS\u2019s parent company, which was recently acquired by Larry and David Ellison \u2013 allies of Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 as part of an $8bn deal.<\/p>\n Colbert\u2019s new YouTube channel cropped up amid lingering controversy surrounding the end of Colbert\u2019s show and Paramount. Last year, Paramount announced the cancellation of Colbert\u2019s show while seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration for its merger with Skydance Media.<\/a><\/p>\n The proposed deal faced months of delays after the president filed a lawsuit against CBS News over a 60 Minutes interview with former vice-president Kamala Harris in 2024. In the lawsuit, Trump and his legal team accused<\/a> the program of deceptively editing Harris\u2019s interview, claiming the broadcast amounted to \u201celection interference\u201d.<\/p>\n Paramount eventually settled the lawsuit and agreed to donate $16m to Trump\u2019s future presidential library. Colbert sharply criticized the agreement on-air, calling it a \u201cbig fat bribe<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended \u2026 I don\u2019t know if anything \u2013 anything \u2013 will repair my trust in this company. But, just taking a stab at it, I\u2019d say $16m would help,\u201d Colbert added at the time.<\/p>\n Colbert\u2019s comments quickly drew backlash from Trump, who publicly demanded the host be taken off the air. Meanwhile, critics viewed the cancellation<\/a> of Colbert\u2019s show as a move to appease Trump amid a federal review of the Paramount-Skydance merger.<\/p>\n Following Colbert\u2019s surprise appearance on Only in Monroe \u2013 a show he had previously appeared on in 2015 ahead of the debut of The Late Show \u2013 clips from the episode quickly spread across social media.<\/p>\n CBS responded by issuing a wave of copyright notices targeting users who had reposted footage from the appearance, prompting backlash online. Critics accused<\/a> Paramount of trying to \u201csuppress\u201d the clips through what they described as \u201cfrivolous\u201d copyright claims.<\/p>\n In response to the criticism, CBS reversed course, stating<\/a> that the episode had been \u201cfinanced and produced by CBS Studios and was posted on Stephen Colbert\u2019s YouTube channel in collaboration with Monroe Community Media and The Late Show\u2019s YouTube channels\u201d.<\/p>\n The company added that it would \u201cwaive further enforcement of this standard industry practice pending additional review\u201d while emphasizing that \u201cas is our regular practice, we send copyright notices to unauthorized websites that post copyrighted content from CBS<\/a> and our network\/studio talent such as Stephen Colbert\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert hasn\u2019t even been off the air for a week, but is already causing some hubbub with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-446610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}