The late-night show model is dying not because of pressure from President Trump, but because the hosts have decided to focus on denouncing Republicans and conservatives instead of being funny, according to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr. During an interview with Fox News’s media critic, Howard Kurtz, on Sunday, Mr. Carr addressed his agency’s approval of Skydance Media’s acquisition of CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, and allegations — including from far left politicians such as Senators Sanders and Warren — that CBS canceled “The Late Show,” hosted by an anti-Trump comedian, Stephen Colbert, to placate the president. Mr. Carr said he believes the real reason late-night TV is in decline is that comedians shifted from generally being funny, including making fun of both sides of the political divide, to spending much of their shows, night after night, attacking conservatives and, in particular, Mr. Trump and his supporters. “Their business models are failing but not exactly for the reasons they think,” Mr. Carr said as he suggested the marketplace is “speaking” and that viewers are rejecting the left-wing late-night content.The more virulently anti-Trump late-night host is Mr. Colbert, who has spent the last decade attacking Mr. Trump five days a week. Mr. Carr noted reports that said Mr. Colbert’s show is losing as much as $50 million a year and said it is “great” to have comedians who roast people in power.Stephen Colbert during a taping of ‘The Late Show’ on July 21, 2025, at New York. Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via AP“But one of the stories here is that Colbert and others went from being court jesters making fun of everybody to being court clerics, and they stopped going for joke lines and laugh lines and they started going for applause lines,” Mr. Carr said. “Just look at who’s been on there recently, former Vice President Harris, you know, Adam Schiff, the list goes on and on.”Mr. Carr’s sentiment has been shared by conservative commentators who have suggested that the late-night hosts’ monologues and jokes are no longer meant to provoke laughter but to virtue signal to a left-wing audience — an audience that is not particularly well represented among CBS’s core, older, middle-class audience in the American hinterland. Besides the anti-Trump monologues, critics of Mr. Colbert and other late-night shows point out that the guests have increasingly tended to be left-wing politicians and candidates instead of celebrities. Last week, Mr. Colbert hosted Vice President Harris for her first sit-down interview since the election. The night CBS announced his show would be canceled, he interviewed one of Mr. Trump’s main antagonists in Congress, Senator Schiff. And in May, he interviewed a far-left MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow.A study by an affiliate of the conservative Media Research Center, NewsBusters, recently found that the only conservative guest to appear on Mr. Colbert’s show since 2022 was Liz Cheney, a fierce opponent of Mr. Trump and supporter of Ms. Harris, who was forced out of the House leadership and then lost her seat in a primary challenge after she joined up with House Democrats on the January 6 committee. No Trump supporter has appeared on the program in years.Senator Schiff, a devoted opponent of President Trump, has appeared on ‘The Late Show’ multiple times over the years. Paramount GlobalFor the last six months of 2024, during the presidential campaign, 99 percent of guests were liberal across the major late-night shows on broadcast television, NewsBusters found. When CBS announced the decision to cancel “The Late Show” and not replace it, the network said it was “purely” a financial decision and was “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.”Skydance said last week that it had no say in the decision and was informed shortly before CBS announced the move. However, fans of Mr. Colbert have suggested that he was fired to placate Mr. Trump and help pave the way for the FCC to approve Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount. Mr. Colbert has skewered Paramount’s decision to settle Mr. Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit. Mr. Colbert responded to the president, who celebrated his firing, telling him, “Go f— yourself.”James Comey appears on ‘Late Night With Stephen Colbert.’ ParamountHe also went after Paramount with a slew of pee jokes.“I’m thrilled for everyone at Paramount that the deal went through and very excited for our newly announced, official combined Paramount-Skydance stock ticker name, which will go from PARA to PSKY,” he said days after the FCC approved the Skydance deal. “Soon, PSKY will blast hot, streaming content right in your face with hits like ‘Yellowstone,’ ‘Yellowjackets,’ and a full variety of water sports. I predict PSKY will become synonymous with number one. PSKY: A pitcher of warm entertainment.”Yet while many of Mr. Colbert’s fans have attributed the end of his decade at CBS to the Trump administration, other comedians, who are not known to be fans of the 47th president, have spoken out to suggest that the cancellation was a financial decision. A far-left comedian, Samantha Bee, who was harshly criticized in 2018 after she called Ivanka Trump a “feckless” c-word, suggested during an appearance on the “Breaking Bread with Tom Papa” podcast that the Skydance merger might have influenced the decision to cancel “The Late Show,” but also said the business model is failing.“It definitely was hemorrhaging money. These legacy shows are hemorrhaging money with no real end to that … in sight, people are just not tuning in,” Ms. Bee said. “People are literally on their phones all the time for one thing, so they actually don’t necessarily need a recap of the day’s events. They’re very well-versed in what has happened.”The Federal Communications Commission commissioner, Brendan Carr, testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesShe said that it was probably a “no-brainer” for CBS to cancel the show with the merger happening. Meanwhile, a legendary former host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” Jay Leno, criticized late-night hosts for becoming overtly political. “I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, the pressures of life, wherever it might be,” Mr. Leno said during an event at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. “And I love political humor, don’t get me wrong, but what happens [is] people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.”He asked, “Why shoot for just half an audience? Why not try to get the whole?”Stephen Colbert on the set of ‘The Late Show.’ ParamountEven one of Mr. Colbert’s colleagues at CBS, a morning show co-host, Tony Dokoupil, who was reprimanded last year over his sharp questioning of an anti-Israel author, Ta-Nehisi Coates, said, “The business is broken.”“What no one seems to acknowledge is that the politics also changed. The business changed and so did the politics, and it got way more one-sided than anything Johnny Carson was ever doing. I think we should reflect on those changes as well. It’s been a big shift culturally in that regard also,” Mr. Dokoupil added.While industry insiders have conceded the business model is not working, there have been some attempts to show popular support for Mr. Colbert by holding rallies seeking to pressure CBS to reverse course. But the New York Post reported that a July 27 rally outside the CBS Broadcast Center drew less than two dozen people.
