{"id":48563,"date":"2025-07-30T22:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48563\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T22:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T22:18:09","slug":"samantha-bee-talks-late-show-cancellation-amid-merger-awful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/48563\/","title":{"rendered":"Samantha Bee Talks \u2018Late Show\u2019 Cancellation Amid Merger: \u2018Awful\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAdd Samantha Bee<\/a> to the list of current and former late-night hosts speaking out about CBS<\/a>\u2019 cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert<\/a><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the Breaking Bread podcast<\/a>, Bee and host Tom Papa discussed the network\u2019s decision and what led to it. Bee said she believes both CBS\u2019 stated rationale that The Late Show is losing money<\/a>, citing the current state of linear TV, and that the soon-to-close merger <\/a>of CBS parent Paramount<\/a> Global with Skydance \u2014 which required approval from the Trump<\/a> administration \u2014\u00a0played a role.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think both things are true and real,\u201d Bee told Papa. \u201c\u2026 These legacy shows, they are hemorrhaging money, with no real end in sight. People are just not tuning in even remotely comparatively to how they used to. People are literally on their phones all the time, for one thing. They don\u2019t need a recap of the day\u2019s events.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continued, \u201cWe\u2019re consuming news media all the time, and I do it too. \u2026\u00a0But we don\u2019t relax in the same way by watching \u2018everybody get together and lay down in your bed\u2019 TV, and watch some jokes and some interviews. That\u2019s true, and it\u2019s also true that when the president of the United States has to give his sign-off on a corporate merger, the thing you can\u2019t do is make jokes about him. He\u2019s a thin-skinned idiot, and we know he\u2019s like a pernicious cancer, and he cares about that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBee has some experience with a show getting canceled in the wake of a merger: Her TBS late-night show Full Frontal With Samantha Bee was cut following the Warner Bros. Discovery merger (which is currently in the process of being undone<\/a>), and it was on the air when AT&T and TBS parent Time Warner merged.<\/p>\n

\n\tPapa asked if TBS executives asked her to tone down her show\u2019s political stances, and she replied, \u201c100 percent. When a huge corporate merger is happening, nobody wants to cause trouble. Business trumps everything \u2026\u00a0Everything you think is important is absolutely impotent. It\u2019s not even a consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fact, Bee said she suspects a lot of conversations about ending The Late Show among CBS and Paramount executives had to do with optics: \u201cThe extra element is it\u2019s so much easier for them to cut [The Late Show] loose with this merger coming down the pike,\u201d she said. \u201cProbably the most agonizing decisions they were having were about, \u2019How do we float this? How do we not get a lot of blowback?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBee and Colbert worked together on The Daily Show from 2003-05 before he began hosting The Colbert Report at Comedy Central. \u201cIt\u2019s awful,\u201d she said of the cancellation. \u201cI know so many people who work there. I love Stephen \u2014\u00a0I consider him to be a friend. I think he\u2019s amazing. So shocked, not surprised, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBee\u2019s comments on the Late Show cancellation follow a show of support<\/a> from Colbert\u2019s fellow current late-night hosts and Late Show originator David Letterman<\/a> blasting CBS and Paramount for the decision.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe full episode of Breaking Bread featuring Bee is below; the conversation about The Late Show starts about 23 minutes in.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Add Samantha Bee to the list of current and former late-night hosts speaking out about CBS\u2019 cancellation of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[991,88,11448,4208,36196,10674,10675,3479,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-48563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-cbs","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-late-night-tv","11":"tag-paramount","12":"tag-samantha-bee","13":"tag-stephen-colbert","14":"tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","15":"tag-trump","16":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}