Stephen Colbert and late night

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert comes to an end this week amid a lot of changes in the business and the country. Some of the sources of tension include the economics of late night, the approaching merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers, and President Donald Trump's constant criticism of late-night hosts. But for Colbert's fans, it's the end of a friendly, funny, candid show. So we’re talking about the legacy of Stephen Colbert in late night. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This week on Up First, we're in the final days before the midterm elections. And this is one of the wonderful things about politics, one of the wonderful things about humanity. We have all this data, we have all this information, and nobody really knows what's gonna happen. We're gonna follow it day by day, through Election Day and beyond. And you can listen to Up First every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:28Linda Holmes?

  Later tonight, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert comes to an end amid a lot of changes in the business and in the country. Among the sources of tension, the economics of late night in an age of clips and streaming, the approaching merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers, and President Donald Trump's constant criticism of late night hosts, which has sometimes been backed by pronouncements from the FCC. But for Colbert's fans, the end of a friendly, funny, candid show. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about Stephen Colbert on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

• 1:03Linda Holmes?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the midterm elections are wrapping up, and millions of people have already voted. We're taking one final check of the electoral pulse with a new NPR PBS News Marist Poll. It shows Democrats still poised to make gains, but also with some warning signs for just how many. We'll explain on the NPR Politics Podcast.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back.

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• 2:09Linda Holmes?

  Joining me today, of course, is Eric Deggans. He's a critic at large at NPR and also the night chair of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee University. Hello, Eric.

• 2:20Speaker 05

  I believe this is the first time I've been on the show since I have become a full professor, so I am now officially an absent-minded professor. I just want to note that here, starting out.

• 2:30Linda Holmes?

  That is awesome. I am excited to hear it. I am always proud to know you, but even more now that you are fully an absent-minded professor. And I will also say, you know, you and I have spoken about late night quite a number of times, I would say.

• 2:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:44Linda Holmes?

  And this is another one of those occasions where it feels like an important moment. The Late Show is not just ending for Stephen Colbert, it is ending entirely. He took over when David Letterman left in 2015. Colbert had recently made the Comedy Central satire The Colbert Report, a spinoff of The Daily Show. He played a fictional version of himself, a conservative, firebrand talk show host. On The Late Show, Colbert was just himself, a warm and affable presence in interviews, and more and more, as time went on, a critic of Donald Trump. In July, CBS announced that the current season would be the last, citing the difficult economics of late-night shows. But this also happened while CBS was seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission

• 3:28Linda Holmes?

  for a multi-billion-dollar merger with Skydance Media. It also closely followed Colbert's criticism of CBS's decision to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit Trump had filed over a 60 Minutes interview he claimed was unfairly edited. Colbert himself has said essentially that he thinks two things can be true: the economics of late night have indeed become difficult, but also perhaps it was particularly appealing to end the show at this particular political and corporate moment. Eric, I want to ask you first... When you think about Stephen Colbert's career, what do you think sets him apart as a host?

• 4:09Speaker 05

  What sets him apart as a host right now is I think that he has become fully this figure who embodies a lot of really interesting and wonderful qualities. He's like super smart. He's passionate about a lot of subjects, including the Lord of the Rings, which anybody who watches the show knows.

• 4:29Linda Holmes?

  That's right.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  He loves his wife, who he's been married to for ages. He's deeply religious. He's Catholic and he seems to be a good-hearted guy. And he's brought that to hosting The Late Show. And, you know, he was succeeding somebody, David Letterman, who didn't connect with his guests.

• 4:48Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 4:48Speaker 05

  And really distinguished his show by provoking them on camera in very real ways. Letterman enjoyed both making fun of the conventions of television and also provoking his guests to show genuine anger.

• 5:02Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 05

  And genuine sort of negative feelings on camera to kind of puncture the false picture that these talk shows can often present. And Colbert returned to a more collegial, you know, let's have fun. It'll be unpredictable and I'm going to try and get some real reactions out of you. But it's not going to be negative. I'm not going to be attacking you. I'm not going to be provoking you and I'm not going to be bringing on people who hate me. So, so it was kind of a very different show. And, and, you know, I spoke to Roy Wood Jr., for example, who'd been a guest on the show many times, the comic. And he said, you know, you could never predict where the conversation was going to go when you went on Colbert, because he might have a list of questions in front of him. But if something happened that he was interested in, he was going to pursue that.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  And so Colbert's legacy is kind of directing the show towards what he's passionate about, what he's interested in.

• 5:52Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  And using that to entertain the audience. And certainly his sense of fairness and morality and virtue and his sense that, you know, he's not necessarily anti-conservative, but I think he decided at some point that Trump violated a lot of the norms that he cherished in America and Decided to lean into criticizing that. And that led him to where we are now, where, you know, the bulk of his monologues now are jokes about Trump.

• 6:20Linda Holmes?

  Yeah. And one of the things that I have always thought was interesting about him is that he is not afraid at all of really earnest conversations with guests, like earnest, deeply felt conversations with guests about grief. He's talked a lot about loss and how he deals with loss. And, you know, you mentioned his faith, which is a huge part of his personality and a huge part of, I think, his worldview. And when he talks to guests about faith and grief and God and things like that, it is just something that, you know, you occasionally, especially I would say, late in his career, got sort of earnest conversations with Letterman, but not to the same degree at all.

• 7:01Linda Holmes?

  I think Colbert really is perfectly happy to have a very deeply, I really like you, we really like this conversation kind of discussion with guests. And it goes alongside, you know, one of the things that you wrote about as the show was winding down was his relationship with Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver and Seth Meyers. And those guys made the Strike Force Five podcast during the writing and acting strike, which you and I also talked about at the time that that was going on. But those guys all came around also, you know, during the closing days of Colbert's show and all appeared together, which is something that like you and I know in the olden days of late night, that was not a thing.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 7:43Linda Holmes?

  Like, that was just not a thing you would have seen.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  Not at all. The, the other thing I would say is that I think times have changed. And one of the things that is, is easy to miss is that the public now wants authenticity. They would not tolerate, I don't think, a host like Carson, who would come on and be like, hey, I'm this, you know, smooth, you know, charismatic guy, and then privately, you know, I'm a jerk.

• 8:07Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  You know, TMZ and Radar Online would go crazy talking about the hidden side of Carson.

• 8:13Linda Holmes?

  Sure.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  So these hosts have to be authentic. They have to reveal themselves.

• 8:17Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  And I think that was what Colbert learned when he transitioned. From, you know, he, he hosted the Colbert Report as a character. He was playing a parody of a Fox News style conservative host. He comes to the Late Show, you, you, he has to figure out, you know, who am I going to be on camera?

• 8:33Linda Holmes?

  Right, right.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  And he decides he's gonna try to not talk about topical things and he's going to maybe shy away from politics. But there was a sense that when he leaned into politics and stopped doing bits so much, people were seeing him, which is what they wanted. They wanted to see him. And I think that's just where we are with these shows. That's what the whole influencer trend is about. You know, seeing authentic people.

• 8:57Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  Even when they are inauthentically authentic.

• 9:01Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I think that's right. And I think you can see that even in the difference between his approach and Jon Stewart's approach, because I think Jon Stewart has always held himself at a little bit of a distance. And when people talk to him about politics or whatever, he has always, at least for large chunks of his career, he has always kind of said, I'm just making a comedy show. And has to me, to some degree, kind of not wanted to be responsible for

• 9:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:24Linda Holmes?

  the actual analysis of what he's doing. I think that has shifted somewhat as he's gotten older and stepped back from doing it every single day. But I think Colbert much more was like, yeah, I'm, I am willing to tell people that I'm really upset, you know, not tell them in terms of doing a polemic, but like making jokes that make it clear that he's really bothered by things and that he thinks things are really wrong, or that he thinks things are really troubling and or dishonest or stuff like that. And I, and on that point, I want to go back to something that you wrote about for NPR this week, which is this sort of truthiness concept that he developed on the Colbert Report. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of that to you?

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I think this is emblematic of how times change. So the very first show that he did, so the background is that Stephen Colbert was a correspondent on The Daily Show, and he sort of developed this character of a know it all. He called it, quote, "a high status idiot." So this guy is an anchor, a conservative anchor, cable TV news pundit, who is hosting his own show. They created a show called The Colbert Report. And in the very first First episode, he coined this term truthiness. Now, what's interesting about that is that he kind of alludes to what it means during that segment. He doesn't actually sort of totally spell out what that means. But later, you know, Colbert did, you know, define it more definitively, which, which is this idea

• 10:49Speaker 05

  that believing passionately that because you believe something is true, it must be true, regardless of the facts. And of course, we were seeing this across, you know, all kinds of punditry on cable TV news and even on talk radio. People like Rush Limbaugh, people like Bill O'Reilly, people like Sean Hannity, you know, constantly insisting that because they believe something was true, that it must be true, regardless of what the facts might actually say. You know, the ultimate expression of what they call confirmation bias. Sorry to put my professor's hat on for a minute.

• 11:23Linda Holmes?

  Of course.

• 11:24Speaker 05

  So then he sort of embodies that as a character for, you know, nine years on the Colbert Report. And then he comes over to The Late Show and he's living in a world that is constructed, a political world that is constructed by truthiness. You know, Donald Trump's and MAGA Republicans' secret weapon is truthiness. And so now he has to navigate that as an actual person, as himself. And it's just been fascinating to watch how he coined exactly what we would be struggling with for the next 20 years. And in the end, his show was, you could argue, if you doubt CBS

• 12:06Speaker 05

  and you think one reason his show got canceled was because he was a consistent Trump critic.

• 12:10Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  His show was filled by truthiness.

• 12:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Speaker 05

  He identified the thing that ultimately would end his TV hosting career.

• 12:18Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  You know, there's all sorts of parallels that are poignant there.

• 12:21Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, and I want to ask you, you know, you talked about doubting CBS because obviously the CBS explanation was the economics of late night. And I don't think there's any question that that's a real thing, right? In terms of viewership, in terms of economics, they've thrown around various numbers about the show losing various amounts of money. And I think, you know, it is always so difficult to actually verify what does that mean? And where are you getting those numbers from? And what is the validity of that? But it is certainly, the viewership is not what it was. People watch so much of these shows on clips and streaming and you see it on social media and stuff like that, as opposed to either staying up to

• 13:00Linda Holmes?

  watch Colbert, or Seth Meyers, or whoever, or even a DVR, you know, I DVR it every night and watch the next day. You don't get as much of, I think, either of those things. But to me, it's always misleading to evaluate the value, even just the economic value of those shows, based on like, how much can you sell ads? And how much money can you make directly on the show? Because these shows still play an enormous role in the promotional cycle for movies, for television, for even for books. In some cases, Seth Meyers is a big book guy and will have segments about books. And I am curious, you know, what you

• 13:41Linda Holmes?

  think, I mean, are all these shows going to go away in the next two years, five years, 10 years? Or is this something where as long as it still has value to the big media companies as a way to like, your movie star talks to Jimmy Fallon and that clip circulates and circulates and circulates? Is that enough that it would keep them alive? Or do you see it as an endangered format?

• 14:09Speaker 05

  Well, certainly, I think late night TV is challenged, right? And its biggest challenge is that it seems like many more people are watching these shows online

• 14:22Linda Holmes?

  Yes.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  in places where the network can't monetize the views. Let's sort of start with CBS's contention that this was purely a financial decision. Everyone that I've talked to that knows the TV industry, including people who have hosted late night shows, none of them fully believe that.

• 14:37Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 05

  In part because he's the highest rated network TV late night show host right now.

• 14:44Linda Holmes?

  Right, right.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  They didn't even try to figure out the economics of that show.

• 14:50Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  Can we figure out ways to cut costs so we can still do this as we transition into a digital future?

• 14:57Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 14:58Speaker 05

  The other thing is Stephen Colbert is a popular brand still, and he can be used to sell CBS programming.

• 15:05Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  To other kinds of CBS programming. He could be branded all over their websites. But I think also there's a sense that CBS as a network is shifting away from Colbert people and more towards Trump people.

• 15:20Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 05

  So, so I think to them, his value as a mascot or face of the network was also diminished.

• 15:28Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 15:28Speaker 05

  Because the people they want to appeal to wouldn't necessarily gravitate to him.

• 15:33Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  And they had a handy excuse. New ownership, the show costs a lot, we're going in a different direction.

• 15:40Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  The problem is they're leasing that space to Byron Allen, a mogul who has two shows that he's developed himself.

• 15:47Linda Holmes?

  Unexpected mogul to me if you watched him on Real People. Who knew?

• 15:50Speaker 05

  Well, you know, you and I are people of a certain age. I have a feeling there's fewer and fewer of us who watched him, you know, way back in his early days on TV and as a stand-up comic. But they're leasing this time to Byron Allen. Anyone who's watched those shows know that they can't compare to the original content the network was creating for those time slots. And also, I think a lot of Colbert's fans realize, or at least feel, that he got canceled in order to appeal to the Trump administration. So they're not going to watch that time slot.

• 16:21Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  Anymore. So whatever they put there, but in particular, what Byron Allen is doing, which is, you know, in my view, not nearly as good as the network program that was here. People are going to leave. They're going to get lower ratings. You know, CBS may have guaranteed that they're going to get a certain level of revenue, no matter who watches that space.

• 16:41Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Because Byron Allen is paying them regardless of how of the ratings that he gets.

• 16:45Linda Holmes?

  Right. It's not a conventional arrangement.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  But they're also sort of ensuring that that space is going to be lower quality.

• 16:53Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh.

• 16:53Speaker 05

  It's going, fewer people will watch it. And which means fewer people will be watching CBS. And it just continues the cycle of encouraging people not to watch the linear channel.

• 17:05Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 05

  If you put less interesting, compelling content on broadcast, then fewer people are going to watch it. And that's the thing I don't understand is, is why in the world are they creating a situation where they're accelerating the demise of the platform that still earns money, which is broadcast television?

• 17:25Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  At any rate, you know, for whatever reason internally, they have made this decision. And so now everybody's wondering about the future of late night. Well, I think part of what's going to happen is a lot of that audience is going to go to Kimmel. Maybe some of it will go to Fallon, but I think-

• 17:40Linda Holmes?

  Mostly Kimmel, I bet.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  You know, a lot of Colbert fans are not dissatisfied with Fallon because they think he's soft on Trump. So I think we're going to have late night shows for at least two or three more years.

• 17:51Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  Because, you know, the, the available audience is going to flow to Kimmel. And everyone who likes what he's doing in criticizing Trump is going to support him more because they're angry about what happened to Colbert.

• 18:05Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I get that. Well, it is always good to talk late night with you, Eric. That does bring us to the end of our show. Thank you so much for being here.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  I'm such a late night nerd, I've actually been to Colbert's late show twice. So, hey, anytime you want to talk late night, please just, just pick up the phone, I'll be there.

• 18:23Linda Holmes?

  Absolutely. All right. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Cassiff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes and we'll see you all next time.

• 19:06Speaker 02

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