Crossroads Podcast: Where Does Colbert Go Next?

Channeling the rage on the Bluesky social-media platform, Sunny Hostin at “The View” claimed that the decision by CBS executives to cancel Stephen Colbert's “Late Show” could be the start of dangerous people "dismantling of our Constitution."

This raised questions for me, several of which were discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. For starters, who — other than President Donald Trump & Co. — were these dangerous people? Did this include millions of Americans who used to watch late-night television and are now watching whatever they choose to watch on YouTube? 

Hostin proclaimed, as co-host of a program that has welcomed zero cultural or political conservatives during 2025:

"My concern is, if it is political, then everyone should be concerned. People on the right should be concerned. People on the left should be concerned. Because it's very clear that, if it is political, this is the dismantling of our democracy. This is the dismantling of our Constitution. Right? …

"The First Amendment is the First Amendment for a reason and that is freedom of the press, freedom of speech. Freedom to speak truth to power. If that is taken away, if the comedians are being attacked, then that means our Constitution is being dismantled. … That means the very rubric of our democracy is being dismantled. And I think every single person should be really, really concerned about it."

In the immortal words of (apparently) A.J. Liebling: “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” If that is true, Hostin was arguing that the people running CBS, with their eyes on the red-ink bottom line, were attacking the First Amendment by openly daring to make decisions about which performers could star in programs on their network.

But, for me. most interesting question raised by the left’s passion-play reactions to the CBS decision about Colbert’s future (it appears that he will get to finish the next year on his contract) is this: What, precisely, was “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in the eyes of the star’s most vocal supporters in the red v. blue marketplace of American public discourse? (For my take, please see “Confessions of an ‘old’ Colbert fan.”)

Yes, once again we have veered into the blue America v. red America tensions explored in this Rational Sheep post: “Age of the crashing Hollywood empires.” Is there a “religion ghost” hidden in this drama? Only if readers believe that entertainment plays a major role in public life when it comes to discussing hot-button topics in culture, morality, ethics and faith.

Thus, back to that question: What WAS Colbert’s show, in terms of its screens-culture role in the current mass-media marketplace?

Writing on the left side of the global mainstream press, mass-media columnist Adrian Horton hinted at one answer in a commentary with this headline: “Losing Stephen Colbert and The Late Show is a crushing blow, whatever the reason.”

For the better part of six years, I have watched every late-night monologue as part of my job at the Guardian (hello, late-night roundup), and though I often grumble about it, The Late Show has become a staple of my media diet and my principle source of news; as a millennial, I haven’t known a television landscape without it. There are many bleaker, deadlier things happening daily in this country, and the field of late-night comedy has been dying slowly for years, but the cancellation of The Late Show, three days after Colbert called out its parent company for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump, felt especially and pointedly depressing – more a sign of cultural powerlessness and corporate fecklessness in the face of a bully president than the inevitable result of long-shifting tastes.

The key phrase? That would be her confession that late-night programs had moved on from old-school attempts to be funny and that Colbert’s program had become “my principle source of news” (emphasis added).

She dug deeper later in the column:

For years, I have argued that the late-night shows have long outstripped their original function as comedy programs. They are satirical, occasionally relevant, sometimes profane, but hardly ever funny, in the traditional sense of making you laugh. Often, they resort to so-called “clapter” — laughter as a polite applause, jokes for agreement rather than laughter — in a deadening anti-Trump feedback loop. With the exception of The Daily Show, a cable program founded for the purpose of political satire, the shows basically serve two functions in the internet era: (1) Generate viral celebrity content as they promote another project, and (2) Comment freely on the news, unbound from the strictures of decorum, tone and supposed “objectivity” that hamstrings so much journalism in the US.

In other words, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was both a Hollywood public-relations vehicle and a political commentary show appealing to political and cultural progressives. Losing that show would hurt the causes supported by Horton and millions of others, even if the program simply vanished, as opposed to being continued with a centrist or conservative host. 

Here's another big question, in the evolving video marketplace: Where does Colbert go next?

The New York Post, quoting research by the conservative Media Research Project, offered some blunt statistics about Colbert’s methodology in a news feature with this headline: “Colbert’s left-wing ‘Late Show’ became ‘therapy’ session for liberals.”

Basically, these critics watched what CBS paid to put on the air in recent years and did the math:

Since 2022, Colbert has hosted 176 left-leaning guests and only one Republican on soon-to-be cancelled “The Late Show” … a staggering imbalance that has tracked with his 2025 guest list.

In just the first six months of this year, the show booked 43 left-leaning political guests — and zero conservatives — leading all late-night programs in partisan tilt. …

Colbert’s roster included 14 Democratic politicians and 29 liberal journalists or celebrities, including socialist Big Apple lawmakers such as mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and City Comptroller Brad Lander, plus big-name Democrats like Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker.

The media crowd featured MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, HBO’s John Oliver and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein.

In other words, Colbert’s show preached to its own choir, while — in the words of NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck — demonstrating a “visceral hatred for more than half the country.” 

That tended to affect the show’s ratings. At the same time, this made the show a cherished service — a late-night rite — for the members of Colbert’s flock. The MRC study also combined Colbert’s numbers with those of Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and The Daily Show and found that, since 2022, they had welcomed “511 liberal or Democratic guests” as opposed to “14 conservatives and Republicans.”

It would be interesting to know if those numbers were even more unbalanced than the public figures interviewed on programs on MSNBC, which openly courts progressive news consumers.

The implication is that CBS and other major networks would be attacking democracy if they hired comedians and commentators that were either silent on divisive public issues or chose to aim jokes and satire at leaders — elderly politicos, perhaps — on both sides of the political aisle.

Also, anyone promoting a #JUSTBEFUNNY hashtag — perhaps attached to clips by the late, great Norm Macdonald — would be making a conservative political statement. At this point, humor has become a strategic weapon in America’s culture wars (see this post “Once again, it's time to pay attention to comedy”).

In another New York Post report, former “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno tried to make a financial case for nonpartisan humor. The headline: “Jay Leno slams late-night hosts for alienating half of viewers by targeting just Trump.” 

By the way, note the organization that conducted this interview:

“Why shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole?” Leno, 75, told Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation CEO David Trulio during a recent interview.

“I don’t understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don’t do it at all,” the former “Tonight Show” host said. “I’m not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what’s funny.”

Let’s keep reading:

Leno said such conflicts are exactly why he pointedly avoided partisan political humor during his 22 years as the king of late night – with one analysis cited by Trulio showing he made fun of both sides of the aisle in equal measure throughout his career.

“Funny is funny,” Leno said. “It’s funny when someone who’s not … when you make fun of their side, and they laugh at it, you know, that’s kind of what I do.”

“It was fun to me when I got hate letters, ‘Dear Mr. Leno, you and your Republican friends’ and, ‘Well, Mr. Leno, I hope you and your Democratic buddies are happy’ — over the same joke.”

While using this approach in late-night work, Leno frequently drew criticism from entertainment writers who called his humor too “mainstream,” “middle brow” or even “conservative.”

Nevertheless, if people were to adopt a #JUSTBEFUNNY hashtag, what kind of material might they promote? Here are two items that I thought of immediately:

Or, on the global level, even this: 

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others. Oh, and please leave comments with URLs for additional #JUSTBEFUNNY nominations.