Latest news with #Bernie Sanders
Reuters
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Colbert is latest casualty of late-night TV's fade-out
LOS ANGELES, July 19 (Reuters) - Late-night television had been fighting for its survival even before 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' was canceled this week. The announced end of one of the most popular broadcast late-night shows, days after host Stephen Colbert accused the network owner of bribing President Donald Trump to approve a merger, drew cries of political foul play from liberal politicians, artists and entertainers. "Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late-night host, slams the deal. Days later, he's fired. Do I think this is a coincidence? NO," Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent, wrote on X. CBS executives said in a statement that dropping the show was "purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount." Whether or not politics were at play, the late-night format has been struggling for years, as viewers increasingly cut the cable TV cord and migrate to streaming. Younger viewers, in particular, are more apt to find amusement on YouTube or TikTok, leaving smaller, aging TV audiences and declining ad revenues. Americans used to religiously turn on Johnny Carson or Jay Leno before bed, but nowadays many fans prefer to watch quick clips on social media at their convenience. Advertising revenue for Colbert's show has dropped 40% since 2018 - the financial reality that CBS said prompted the decision to end 'The Late Show' in May 2026. One former TV network executive said the program was a casualty of the fading economics of broadcast television. Fifteen years ago, a popular late-night show like 'The Tonight Show' could earn $100 million a year, the executive said. Recently, though, 'The Late Show' has been losing $40 million a year, said a person briefed on the matter. The show's ad revenue plummeted to $70.2 million last year from $121.1 million in 2018, according to ad tracking firm Guideline. Ratings for Colbert's show peaked at 3.1 million viewers on average during the 2017-18 season, according to Nielsen data. For the season that ended in May, the show's audience averaged 1.9 million. Comedians like Colbert followed their younger audiences online, with the network releasing clips to YouTube or TikTok. But digital advertising did not make up for the lost TV ad revenue, the source with knowledge of the matter said. The TV executive said reruns of a hit prime-time show like 'Tracker' would leave CBS with 'limited costs, and the ratings could even go up." "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" is just the latest casualty of the collapse of one of television's most durable formats. When 'The Late Late Show' host James Corden left in 2023, CBS opted not to hire a replacement. The network also canceled 'After Midnight' this year, after host Taylor Tomlinson chose to return to full-time stand-up comedy. But the end came at a politically sensitive time. Paramount Global (PARA.O), opens new tab, the parent company of CBS, is seeking approval from the Federal Communications Commission for an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media. This month Paramount agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a "60 Minutes" interview with his 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris. Colbert called the payment 'a big fat bribe' two days before he was told his show was canceled. Many in the entertainment industry and Democratic politicians have called for probes into the decision, including the Writers Guild of America and Senator Edward Markey, who asked Paramount Chair Shari Redstone whether the Trump administration had pressured the company. Paramount has the right to fire Colbert, including for his political positions, Markey said, but 'if the Trump administration is using its regulatory authority to influence or otherwise pressure your company's editorial decisions, the public deserves to know.' A spokesperson for Redstone could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday night. "It's a completely new world that artists and writers and journalists are living in, and it's scary," said Tom Nunan, a veteran film and TV producer who is co-head of the producers program at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. "When the news came in about Colbert, we were shocked but not surprised."
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bernie Sanders: If AI Is Doing Such Amazing Work, Everyone Should Get a Four-Day Workweek
In 2025, we're constantly told, artificial intelligence is bringing about a workplace revolution. Countless billionaires have waxed poetic about the "coming recession" and "unemployment crisis" that their hyped up AI chatbots are sure to bring. Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont, has been listening. Calling the US tech industry on its AI hype — which mostly involves generating shareholder value — Sanders recently posed a rhetorical question on the Joe Rogan podcast: if AI is as powerful as they say, why not give workers a 30-hour week? "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours." "That means, give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you want to do," the senator suggested. "You don't have to work 40 hours a week anymore." While a 30-hour work week may sound untenable to some, it's important to remember that the 40 hour week is less than a century old, only becoming federally law in 1940. One could look at that legislation as a concession to placate industrial workers, who in 1933 were agitating for the same 30-hour week which most of us in 2025 can hardly imagine. Even Bernie agrees. It's "not a radical idea," he told Rogan, adding that "there are companies around the world that are doing it with some success." However, the reality is that AI is far from ready to bring about optimistic labor reforms like Sanders' laudable 30-day week, or even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's guilt-ridden idea for universal basic income. Despite widespread fear of AI-fueled layoffs and a job market in shambles, AI's main function is currently to give corporations cover as they outsource high-paying jobs to lower-wage workers. As time goes on, more and more corporate executives are realizing that AI — buggy, inefficient, and stubbornly prone to hallucinations — is no match for human beings. Still, even in the utopian world where AI could execute tasks accurately, Sanders' idea has some flaws. Most notable is the issue of unequal exchange between rich and poor countries. Given the tech industry's growing tendency to offload laborious tasks like AI grading to low-wage workers in countries like Kenya, it's likely that an AI-powered 30-hour workweek in the US would only increase inequality in other parts of the world. We're already seeing signs of this: a 2024 digital labor study found that the AI industry helps rich countries maintain poor nations' economic dependencies on exploitative trade, at the expense of their workers. In poor countries, AI also leads to new types of economic turmoil, while worsening that which already exists. Within the US, the 30-hour concept also relies on the goodwill of for-profit companies, something they've never offered workers out of the kindness of their hearts. Even now, with today's deeply flawed AI, workers in the US report that the tech is lowering their productivity and saddling them with more work per day — not less. Meanwhile, studies show massive AI investments have had "no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation." These issues aside, Sanders' proposal does cut to an exciting fact: that a universal 30-hour workweek is possible, and it's up to the workers of the world to win it for ourselves. More on labor: Top Venture Capitalist Says AI Will Replace Pretty Much All Jobs Except His, Which Relies on His Unique Genius Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Bernie Sanders Issues Warning About How AI Is Really Being Used
Senator Bernie Sanders is, like most of us, worried about how AI is going to affect our future — but he's not convinced that the mainstream conversation is capturing the dynamics of how the tech is really affecting the labor market. In an interview with Gizmodo, the Vermont legislator revealed that in the wake of his call for AI to aid in the establishment of a four-day work week, he has taken to speaking with AI experts and CEOs about the technology. Though Sanders refused to name names, the tech luminaries he's been speaking with are apparently of two minds. In one school, experts warn that there "will be massive job losses," while others insist that new jobs will be created even as others go by the wayside. "I happen to believe this is not like the Industrial Revolution," Sanders told Giz. "I think this could be a lot more severe." As the two-time presidential contender noted, AI seems already to be accelerating the longstanding disparity between increasing worker productivity and those same workers failing to see the fruits of their labor. As the independent senator puts it, all that money instead goes "to the corporations and to the companies that developed that technology" — and the current existential struggle should be about AI helping rather than hindering labor rights and security. "Workers today... are earning less, and I fear very much that almost all the new benefits of worker productivity will go to the people on top at the expense of working people," Sanders told the site. "That is something that concerns me very much." "Unless we change the political dynamics, the benefits are going to accrue to the people on top at the expense of working people," he continued. "That to me is the most important issue. I want workers to benefit from this new technology, not just the people on top." Still, he believes that "AI is neither good nor bad" — but that it's also "not science fiction" either. "There are very, very knowledgeable people... who worry very much that human beings will not be able to control the technology," the former Burlington mayor said, "and that artificial intelligence will in fact dominate our society." Like so many AI doomers before him, Sanders believes that there may soon come a time when "we will not be able to control" the nascent technology, and that instead, "it may be able to control us." "That's kind of the doomsday scenario," he concluded, "and there is some concern about that among very knowledgeable people in the industry." All told, Sanders' AI take isn't all that surprising given the workers' rights rhetoric he's espoused for his entire career. What sets him apart in the increasingly politicized AI wars isn't that he's cautiously optimistic about it, but that he intends to hold tech CEOs' feet to the fire to make sure the technology doesn't result in the kind of massive unemployment that so many have warned about. That show of integrity, at the end of the day, inspires much more confidence than the collective shoulder-shrug we're seeing from most politicians on the topic. More on AI and politics: Elon Musk's Bizarre Behavior May Force Tesla Board to Step in, Analyst Warns Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
10-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
What Democrats Can Learn From Mamdani's Victory
Usually, there isn't much to learn from a single idiosyncratic primary election. In the case of the recent New York mayoral contest, most candidates will not be able to replicate Zohran Mamdani's viral campaign, and not many candidates will have Andrew Cuomo's heavy baggage. Such a superficial analysis of the candidates might be enough to tell the tale for many primaries. But not this one. The New York Democratic mayoral primary was about much more than the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, and as a consequence there's a lot more to learn. Just consider how many political, demographic, economic and technological changes over the last decade helped make Mr. Mamdani's victory possible. There was the Bernie Sanders campaign and the rise of a new democratic socialist left, along with a growing number of young millennial and Gen Z voters. There was the founding of TikTok and the rise of vertical video, #MeToo, Israel's war in Gaza, the rising cost of housing and even halalflation. There's room to debate the relative contributions of these and other factors to Mr. Mamdani's victory. What can't be disputed is that these developments helped him enormously, but even on the day of the election it was not obvious that these changes would be enough to put him over the top. Of all these changes, the most obvious one is that the Democratic electorate has simply moved farther to the left. Over the last few years, this hasn't always been obvious. To many, the last presidential election seemed to mark a new rightward turn in the culture, including among the young voters who had powered the ascent of progressives. Looking even further back, progressives mostly seemed to stall after Mr. Sanders's breakthrough in 2016, including in New York City. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
