Stephen Colbert’s final episode of The Late Show may have pulled in record viewership and bagged Paul McCartney as a star guest, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the late-night host’s home network, CBS.
CBS Mornings didn’t mention the Thursday finale at all the following day, reportedly because of a directive from a CBS News executive upset with a recent Colbert gag mocking the newsroom.
CBS News president Tom Cibrowski reportedly urged the show not to mention the Colbert send-off, according to Puck, after the comedian mocked CBS News’s failure to get anchor Tony Dokoupil into China for President Donald Trump’s recent summit with Xi Jinping.
Earlier in May, Colbert ran a brief video sketch about the fumble, featuring a man with a pumpkin stuck on his head and the tagline “reporting live from the wrong China” as audio of Dokoupil’s actual coverage, which was broadcast from Taiwan, played in the background. Colbert’s roast “kicked colleagues when they were down” and was “unprofessional and unprovoked,” a CBS source told the outlet.
The Independent has contacted CBS for comment.
open image in galleryGayle King, one of the hosts of CBS Mornings, later paid tribute to Colbert in an Instagram post, writing, “I can’t imagine late night without Stephen Colbert and yet here we are.”
Even before the finale, Colbert occupied a complicated place at the network.
Last May, he sharply criticized Paramount’s decision to pay $16 million to settle a Trump lawsuit over coverage on CBS News’s 60 Minutes, a move he called a “big fat bribe” aimed at greasing federal approval of the eventual Paramount Skydance merger.
Shortly before the deal closed, Paramount announced it would not only end Colbert’s hosting gig soon but shutter the Late Show franchise itself, calling the move a purely “financial decision.”
Others saw the announcement as another bid to please Trump and the network’s soon-to-be owners, the Ellison family, who are close with the president.
open image in galleryThe alleged Colbert finale drama is the latest reported tension inside CBS News, which media observers have watched closely since anti-woke commentator Bari Weiss was appointed as editor-in-chief last year as part of the Ellison overhaul.
As The Independent has reported, newsroom staff reportedly bristled at Weiss’s appointment and feared coverage would shift in a more conservative direction, conflicts that spilled out in the open when Weiss made the controversial decision to temporarily hold a bombshell segment about the Trump administration unilaterally deporting alleged gang members to a gulag-like prison in El Salvador.
The Ellisons continue to remain close to Trump.
This year, ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison hosted the president and top members of the administration at a private dinner in Washington as the media mogul seeks federal sign-off on a bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.