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CNN
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Inside CBS' ‘agonizing decision' to cancel Colbert's top-rated late-night show
From the outside, the idea made no sense at all. Why would a broadcast network cancel one of its best-known shows that ranks number one in its time slot? But on the inside, at CBS, there were several plausible answers to that question. While 'The Late Show' host Stephen Colbert was on his usual mid-summer vacation earlier this month, CBS executives weighed the pros and cons of canceling the unique but unfortunately unprofitable show. The 'cons' were obvious, as evidenced by the studio audience's boos when Colbert announced the cancellation on Thursday night. However, the 'pros' ultimately won out because, according to sources close to the network, 'The Late Show' was losing money and there was no apparent path to turning around its financial position. Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. It was an 'agonizing decision,' as the executives admitted in a statement. But CBS insiders insist, even when speaking frankly on condition of anonymity, that the move was financially driven, not politically motivated. Many observers have huge doubts about that, given that Colbert has been an outspoken critic of President Trump. So here's what the data indicates. The bottom has indeed been falling out of the late-night TV business model for several years now. Audience fragmentation and digital competition have led to a decline in ad revenue across the board. One insider described it as 'cratering' at CBS. That's because, even though Colbert outrated his competition at 11:35 p.m., the overall audience for late-night has been shrinking. 'Ad dollars and audiences are moving away from late night shows,' Variety reported — and that was back in 2023. The financial picture has only gotten gloomier since then. Guideline, an ad data firm, estimates that the networks' late-night shows earned $439 million in ad revenue in 2018 and only $220 million in 2024 — a decline of 50 percent. The shows hosted by Colbert and his rivals, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, are inherently expensive to produce, with hundreds of staffers and elaborate studio productions. But couldn't CBS have explored changes to the cost structure? That's what the network did later in the evening, in its 12:35 a.m. time slot, in 2023. 'The Late Late Show with James Corden' ended, partly due to the fact that it was no longer making money for CBS, and a cheaper show called 'After Midnight' was launched in its place. Colbert was an executive producer on both 'After Midnight' and 'The Late Show,' so he had some visibility into the financial circumstances. But the swiftness of the network's decision suggests that he wasn't given much time to suggest cost savings or other alternatives. That's why one person close to Colbert described the show's retirement, effective in May 2026, as a 'casualty of the merger.' That merger is CBS parent Paramount's long-gestating deal with Skydance, a media company controlled by David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison. The elder Ellison is a longtime friend of President Trump and has previously described himself as a Trump supporter. And David Ellison was spotted with the president earlier this year at UFC matches. The pending deal matters for two reasons: One, because companies almost always try to cut costs around the time of a merger; and two, because the deal requires sign-off from the Trump administration. Paramount entered into a settlement agreement with Trump earlier this month to resolve Trump's lawsuit against the CBS News program '60 Minutes.' The company said it would pay $16 million toward Trump's future presidential library. Trump suggested at the time that there were other components to the settlement. While there is no evidence that Colbert's cancellation is connected to the settlement, Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren are asking questions about the possibility. 'America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons,' Warren said in a statement Thursday night. At the very least, CBS executives moved forward with the retirement of 'The Late Show' franchise knowing that the optics would cause all manner of controversy. Trump personally celebrated the cancellation on Friday morning, writing on Truth Social that 'I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!'
CNN
17-07-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Trump's victory over PBS and NPR ‘bias' will be ‘devastating' for rural areas, station leaders say
Public television stations will be 'forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,' PBS CEO Paula Kerger said Thursday, after the Senate voted in the middle of the night to approve a bill that cancels all the federal funding for the network. Once the House passes the bill, as expected, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget will be zeroed out for the first time since 1967, back when television stations still broadcast in black and white. It is a long-sought victory for President Trump, who has harshly accused PBS and NPR newscasts of being 'biased,' and a long-dreaded disruption for local stations that bank on taxpayer support. Public media executives say some smaller broadcasters will be forced off the air in the months and years to come. That's because stations in rural areas and smaller communities tend to rely more heavily on the federal subsidy. Stations in larger markets typically have a wider variety of other funding sources, like viewer donations and foundation support. Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. Kerger said in a statement that 'these cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas.' She pointed out that the stations 'provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts.' The two Republican senators who voted against the rescission, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, both said they valued those aspects of public media, even while criticizing perceived bias of some NPR programming. Most other Republicans, however, concentrated on the bias complaints above all else, and argued that the entire system is obsolete in the streaming age. David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, which has campaigned against the federal support for decades, celebrated the 'historic rollback' in an X post overnight. 'PBS and NPR were chartered to provide objective journalism,' Bozell wrote. 'Instead, we got drag shows for kids, gushing coverage of Democrats, and silence or smears for conservatives.' Public media officials say critics completely distort what actually airs on stations. Thursday morning's report about the clawback on NPR's 'Morning Edition,' for example, was studiously neutral, and the hosts pointed out that NPR management was not involved in the news coverage of its own funding dilemma. An NPR spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the Senate vote. But the public radio network has previously pointed to polling that showed broad support for public media. Early Thursday morning, America's Public Television Stations, an advocacy group for the stations, argued that the rescission 'defies the will of the American people,' citing both the polls and the fact that Congress actually allocated the next round of funding earlier this year. In 1967, when Congress created the corporation, it declared that noncommercial TV and radio 'for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes' was in the public interest. Shows like 'Sesame Street' and 'Antiques Roadshow' sprang forth. The public media system continued to enjoy bipartisan support from lawmakers for many years, even as conservative activists sought to strip away the taxpayer funding. Congress ignored proposals from past Republican presidents to cut the PBS and NPR budgets. But Trump has proven to be much more assertive. Earlier this year Trump made it a priority to claw back the funding before the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was set to receive it in October. 'For decades, Republicans have promised to cut NPR, but have never done it, until now,' Trump boasted in a Truth Social post last month. The exact impacts are uncertain, given the complex structure of public media and the various other revenue streams that exist. But some local stations are already making changes. In New York, the operator of the powerhouse NPR station WNYC said Wednesday that its CEO LaFontaine Oliver is moving into a new position, executive chair, that's been created in response to the threats to federal funding. Oliver will focus on 'new funding models' and try to find financial support from other non-federal sources, the station said. In San Francisco, the KQED radio and TV network said it is laying off about 15 percent of its staff, citing financial uncertainties. 'Despite today's setback, we are determined to keep fighting to preserve the essential services we provide to the American public,' Kerger said.
CNN
12-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Conservative activists have waited decades to defund PBS and NPR. They are finally getting their chance
Richard Nixon tried. Ronald Reagan tried. President Donald Trump tried during his first term in office. All three Republican presidents wanted to strip taxpayer support for PBS and NPR stations. But all three men were stymied by Congress. This time, however, might be different. Trump, emboldened in his second term, sent a package of spending cuts to Capitol Hill earlier this month, and the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the measure Thursday afternoon. The bill, known on Capitol Hill as a 'rescissions' proposal, is the closest NPR and PBS have ever come to a complete loss of federal funding. The bill would strip all federal funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes taxpayer dollars to radio and TV stations across the country. If it passes the House, it will move to the Senate for consideration. Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. For public media officials, the bill is a worst-case-scenario. But for conservative activists, it is a welcome change and the culmination of a very long campaign. 'We are thrilled to finally get to this point,' NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham told CNN. 'I've been documenting their taxpayer-funded tilt at MRC for 36 years.' Advocacy groups like MRC, short for Media Research Center, which runs NewsBusters, have been arguing against NPR and PBS for decades, asserting that the taxpayer funding is unnecessary and unfair. The core contention is that public broadcasting is infected with liberal bias and thus is not representative of the public as a whole. The leaders of NPR and PBS reject that charge. 'One of the advantages of public media is that we serve everyone, and it is a requirement and a mandate. It's also a very important mission in polarized times,' NPR CEO Katherine Maher told CNN. One challenge with trying to be a middle-of-the-road platform is that 'people don't agree on what the middle is now,' she added. But the belief that PBS and NPR 'which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as 'news'' (something the Trump White House claimed earlier this year) has become close to GOP orthodoxy. Trump has directed his administration to bring public media to heel, sparking several lawsuits this spring. If the House and Senate pass the spending cuts package, it will be a victory both for Trump and for generations of conservative activists. 'This could be our last, best chance to win the battle once and for all,' MRC's call-your-congressman website says. Republicans have been trying to take the 'public' out of public broadcasting for almost as long as the system has existed. In the 1998 book 'Made Possible By…: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States,' James Ledbetter chronicled how Nixon's administration had a 'smoldering animus against public television' that erupted several times in the early '70s. Nixon vetoed two bills relating to the system's funding structure. But even his veto memos defended the existence of public broadcasting and said it needed to be 'strengthened.' Reagan, and later George W. Bush, also proposed cuts to the system's budget and tried to slow its rate of growth. But the proposals always ran into congressional opposition, including from fellow Republicans who strongly believed in the system's mission. The power of educational TV programming like 'Sesame Street' was often invoked to protect public media's pot of money. Graham's group says those arguments are out of date now. And Trump has changed the contours of the debate by trying to zero out the corporation's budget altogether. Trump's anti-NPR, anti-PBS budget proposals were ignored by Congress during his first term. But this year's proposal is branded differently — as a 'DOGE' cut, referring to the much-debated Department of Government Efficiency. The upshot: Added pressure on Republican lawmakers to go along with the bill. The $1.1 billion in public media funds being targeted now, representing the next two years of funding, were allocated by congressional Republicans in a massive budget bill that Trump signed into law earlier this spring. The rescissions package singles out the funds and also claws back money for the US Agency for International Development. Graham said Republicans 'should vote on a party line' to defund what he called 'Democrat-run Broadcasting.' 'It's not state-run, because it sounds like the very opposite of state-run when Republicans are in power. It's Democrat-run at all times, and has been since Jim Lehrer gushed over the twice-a-day coverage of the Watergate hearings: 'As justice, it was pure delicious!'' Lehrer, the famed PBS anchor who died in 2020, made that comment about the fact that Nixon was plotting to defund the system but was sidelined by his own all-consuming scandal. PBS grew in popularity thanks to its live coverage of the Watergate hearings, and some Nixon allies never forgot. Public media officials often point out that news and current affairs programming is a small slice of the overall programming on stations across the country. Shows like 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' and 'Antiques Roadshow' have ardent fan bases — and those supporters have been urged to contact Congress to defend the federal funding that's currently at risk. At the same time, however, Trump allies like Kari Lake have taken to the commercial airwaves to argue that the public dollars are not needed, citing all the changes that have taken place across the media landscape in recent years. 'If NPR and PBS are as amazing as they claim, they should have no trouble securing public funding from people who want to support them,' Lake recently wrote on X. 'But hardworking Americans should no longer be forced to fund content they find objectionable.' Public media officials say those arguments are rooted in exaggerations and misperceptions about what the networks actually air. CNN's Max Foster contributed reporting.
CNN
10-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Bob Costas: Trump's attacks on the media are unlike anything in my lifetime
'The free press is under attack,' Bob Costas said at an awards ceremony Monday evening. 'Democracy as we know it is under attack.' The famed sports broadcaster was at the Edison Ballroom podium in New York, accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award for his 'distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public's understanding of the media.' What began as a speech reflecting upon a 50-year career in sports journalism quickly became a scorching sermon about the state of sports media and the threats to the free press coming from President Donald Trump. 'What's happening now are not matters of small degree,' Costas, 73, said of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, including personal lawsuits, FCC investigations, and crackdowns on press access. 'They're different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.' Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. The president 'intimidated ABC into reviewing George Stephanopoulos,' Costas said of the network settling Trump's 2024 defamation lawsuit brought against it after the star anchor repeatedly said on-air that Trump had been 'found liable for rape' in the E. Jean Carroll case when a jury had found him liable for sexual abuse. 'All they should have said was George misspoke,' the sportscaster said. 'They didn't have to pay a $15 million ransom.' Costas then turned his attention to CBS News. 'Did Shari Redstone — because she wants to effect a merger that Trump's FCC could stand in the way of — did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, '60 Minutes?'' Redstone, 71, currently controls Paramount Global, the global media company that owns CBS News. She is seeking to sell her stake in the company as part of a merger with Skydance Media, but the deal needs approval from the Trump administration. As a result, Redstone has reportedly sought to settle the president's lawsuit against CBS over a '60 Minutes' segment — a lawsuit that legal experts have repeatedly deemed bogus — sparking outcry from the network's journalists. 'Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there's billions of dollars at stake,' Costas remarked. (ABC and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) 'These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press,' he said. 'It does not mean that we are without fault,' Costas said. 'It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn't screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives.' However, he added, 'if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump's view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him… I'll stay where we are.' 'I used to love Bob Costas, but then he turned political,' Costas said he's often heard from sports fans. 'You know what, if that's what you think and that's how you think and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.' Costas has often drawn criticism from fellow sports broadcasters for using his perch to bring attention to political issues. In one particularly famous instance in December 2012, he devoted his 'Sunday Night Football' segment to make a plea for gun control after a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself outside the team's practice facility. Costas, who left NBC Sports in 2019 after 40 years there, also lamented the current state of sports broadcasting, which he said 'tragically' lacks in-depth coverage of the political and social issues intimately connected to the games themselves. Such issues, he said, 'need to be covered, not during the game, not in between pitches, or in between free throws, but at some point need to be covered.' Costas suggested that broadcasters have become deferential to the sports leagues, avoiding interrogative questions or controversial topics altogether. 'With all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage, let's say, of the NFL, can't there be a 'Meet the Press'-style interview of (commissioner) Roger Goodell somewhere?' He quipped: 'Sports isn't brain surgery, but it doesn't have to be brain dead either.'
CNN
10-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Bob Costas: Trump's attacks on the media are unlike anything in my lifetime
'The free press is under attack,' Bob Costas said at an awards ceremony Monday evening. 'Democracy as we know it is under attack.' The famed sports broadcaster was at the Edison Ballroom podium in New York, accepting a lifetime achievement Mirror Award for his 'distinct, consistent and unique contributions to the public's understanding of the media.' What began as a speech reflecting upon a 50-year career in sports journalism quickly became a scorching sermon about the state of sports media and the threats to the free press coming from President Donald Trump. 'What's happening now are not matters of small degree,' Costas, 73, said of the Trump administration's attacks on journalism, including personal lawsuits, FCC investigations, and crackdowns on press access. 'They're different in kind to anything certainly in my lifetime and maybe in the history of the American presidency.' Get Reliable Sources newsletter Sign up here to receive Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter in your inbox. The president 'intimidated ABC into reviewing George Stephanopoulos,' Costas said of the network settling Trump's 2024 defamation lawsuit brought against it after the star anchor repeatedly said on-air that Trump had been 'found liable for rape' in the E. Jean Carroll case when a jury had found him liable for sexual abuse. 'All they should have said was George misspoke,' the sportscaster said. 'They didn't have to pay a $15 million ransom.' Costas then turned his attention to CBS News. 'Did Shari Redstone — because she wants to effect a merger that Trump's FCC could stand in the way of — did she have to besmirch and undercut the gold standard in our lifetime of broadcast journalism, '60 Minutes?'' Redstone, 71, currently controls Paramount Global, the global media company that owns CBS News. She is seeking to sell her stake in the company as part of a merger with Skydance Media, but the deal needs approval from the Trump administration. As a result, Redstone has reportedly sought to settle the president's lawsuit against CBS over a '60 Minutes' segment — a lawsuit that legal experts have repeatedly deemed bogus — sparking outcry from the network's journalists. 'Paying $20 million in ransom to Trump is just the cost of doing business when there's billions of dollars at stake,' Costas remarked. (ABC and CBS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.) 'These are ongoing assaults on the basic idea of a free press,' he said. 'It does not mean that we are without fault,' Costas said. 'It does not mean that the legacy or mainstream media doesn't screw up from time to time or have blind spots or misplaced narratives.' However, he added, 'if the answer to that is MAGA media, if the answer to that is Donald Trump's view of the world, which is only through a prism of what benefits him… I'll stay where we are.' 'I used to love Bob Costas, but then he turned political,' Costas said he's often heard from sports fans. 'You know what, if that's what you think and that's how you think and you think it in defense of that guy, I wear that as a badge of honor.' Costas has often drawn criticism from fellow sports broadcasters for using his perch to bring attention to political issues. In one particularly famous instance in December 2012, he devoted his 'Sunday Night Football' segment to make a plea for gun control after a Kansas City Chiefs linebacker shot and killed his girlfriend and then himself outside the team's practice facility. Costas, who left NBC Sports in 2019 after 40 years there, also lamented the current state of sports broadcasting, which he said 'tragically' lacks in-depth coverage of the political and social issues intimately connected to the games themselves. Such issues, he said, 'need to be covered, not during the game, not in between pitches, or in between free throws, but at some point need to be covered.' Costas suggested that broadcasters have become deferential to the sports leagues, avoiding interrogative questions or controversial topics altogether. 'With all the hundreds and hundreds of hours of coverage, let's say, of the NFL, can't there be a 'Meet the Press'-style interview of [commissioner] Roger Goodell somewhere?' He quipped: 'Sports isn't brain surgery, but it doesn't have to be brain dead either.'
