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Credit: CBS Broadcasting Inc<\/p>\n
David Letterman may need no introduction, but it\u2019s rare you\u2019ll catch him in a room with a traditional outlet doing a traditional interview these days. The former late night host and current Netflix host did speak out around the time of Stephen Colbert\u2019s big exit from CBS, and with good reason: Both men were tied to the Eye Network for years before breaking free to do new projects. So, I get why there would be curiosity around what Letterman thinks. Yet, I did not see his \u201cadult bookstore\u201d reference coming.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what happened. Not only did the New York Times<\/a> snag an interview with the former host, they also caught him in time to talk about his feelings about Colbert\u2019s show getting axed<\/a> on the 2026 TV schedule<\/a>. He didn\u2019t hold back, which is where the adult bookstore analogy came in.<\/p>\n I wondered: What the hell have they done to Stephen [Colbert]? And I would say farther down on the list is your point: Wait a minute, this used to be my show. It\u2019s like driving by your old neighborhood and realizing that where you used to live, they\u2019re putting up an adult bookstore.<\/p>\n Now, that he put this analogy out into the universe, I can\u2019t unsee it. I know exactly how he\u2019s feeling. There was once something great and something familiar in this slot and now it\u2019s been ceded to something that\u2019s unexpected. In fact, Letterman also told the news outlet his first feelings were \u201cdisbelief.\u201d Afterward, he felt like it had been a \u201cbotched holdup.\u201d All of these visuals really paint a negative picture of how he felt CBS handled the situation as a whole.<\/p>\n As the former host of The Late Show with David Letterman, he knows more about the inner workings of late night, the network and what happened behind the scenes than most.<\/p>\n David Letterman Does Not Blame Byron Allen<\/p>\n Of course, David Letterman also was quick to point out he\u2019s not mad at Byron Allen, the man at the head of the new series that took over The Late Show\u2019s timeslot, Comics Unleashed. He and Allen have palled around before, and he\u2019s not opposed to Byron coming in and making his mark.<\/p>\n He\u2019s been wildly more successful than any hundred of us. I periodically talk to him, and neither he nor I understand how he became a billionaire. God bless him. To hell with CBS. To hell with Skydance. To hell with the Winslow twins or whoever the hell these guys are. But Byron, he\u2019ll still be providing comedy in that time period. I think that\u2019s a valuable bit of resolution here.<\/p>\n [Editor Note: As Letterman himself noted, the “Winslow Twins” or the “Ellison Twins” are what Letterman likes to call the one son of Larry Ellison, David. That part is a bit.] <\/p>\n However, he definitely still feels Stephen Colbert got a raw deal. The Eye Network has claimed its choice to cancel The Late Show was all financial, but it\u2019s not just Letterman who is skeptical. Fellow late night host Jimmy Kimmel also spoke out about how the choice may have been more related to politics than the money piece<\/a>. Colbert himself famously said “my side of the street is clean”<\/a> when it came to any political allegations.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, David Letterman himself had a somewhat tumultuous run on late night, eventually signing on with NBC as a potential successor for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Then, executives at the time famously chose Leno instead. Letterman had a long and storied history on CBS, anyway, and retired of his own accord in 2015. (Other famous hosts like Conan O’Brien<\/a> and Kimmel also spoke out about The Late Show<\/a> at that time.)<\/p>\n It ended on his own terms, but Letterman still has a bit of a contrarian in him. If someone is calling out the network he formerly worked at, he’ll lead the charge.<\/p>\n Time has separated me from the genealogy of the show. On the other hand, if there\u2019s outrage to be directed at management, either real or imagined, I\u2019m all in. Let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n