Affirmative-action recipient Stephen Colbert got paid $12 to $15 million a year while his Late Night show lost $40 to $50 million a year, and now he’s counting on the ignorance of his small but ignorant audience not to notice why this matters.
Here’s what he said last night in the hope of glossing over this relevant fact…
“CBS, our network, CBS, who I want to reiterate, have always been great partners, put out a statement saying very nice things about me and about the show, and thank you to them for that,” said Colbert. Then he got to the bottom line: “They clarified that the cancellation was ‘purely a financial decision.’ But how could it be purely a financial decision if The Late Show is number one in the ratings?”
First off, The Late Show is not number one in the ratings. Gutfeld! is number one in the ratings by a wide mile, even though Gutfeld! is available in millions of fewer homes being as it broadcasts on a cable network, while CBS is available over the air.
Then Colbert actually admits to how much money his show is losing, but still calls the decision to cancel his money-losing show “confusing.”
“Yeah. It’s confusing. A lot of folks are asking that question, mainly my staff’s parents and spouses,” Colbert said. “Well, over the weekend, somebody at CBS followed up their gracious press release with a gracious anonymous leak, saying they pulled the plug on our show because of losses pegged between $40 million and $50 million a year.”
Colbert doesn’t dispute that number, so what exactly is confusing?
How high must the losses become before Mr. SmarmyUnfunnyMan stops being confused?
Let’s say the Late Show loses $25 trillion a year… Then might he understand why CBS might cancel his show, even if it is the number one two show in America?
Colbert attracts about two million viewers a night. For context, in their prime, Johnny Carson and even Jerry Springer used to attract seven, eight, and nine million daily viewers. Gutfeld!, which undoubtedly costs a fraction to produce, attracts over three million.
How about $6 trillion? If CBS were losing $6 trillion a year airing the number two Late Night show, would that be enough to clear up Colbert’s confusion?
Number one two means nothing if you’re losing $40 to $50 million per year. What’s the point if you are losing money? It’s not as though this smug, middle-aged loser brings anything else to CBS, like merchandise sales, cultural cache, or prestige.
Colbert is a smug, entitled cloud of ether that evaporates even before what is basically his over-produced hour of MSNBC Trump-hating runs its end credits.
Other than massive financial losses, Colbert offers nothing that cannot be found everywhere else—on basement-rated Comedy Central, on basement-rated CNNLOL, on MSNBC, on Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon… Colbert’s got nothing—no legacy other than being an establishment stooge.
And the public had already started to forget about him $200 million in losses ago.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
