Bob Schwartz

Tag: The Late Show

July 19, 2025

Colbert cancelled? No worries. YOU are Colbert, or can be.

As we have all heard, Paramount, parent of CBS and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, just cancelled the show as of next May.

Paramount settled a lawsuit by Trump, claiming that a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris had been fraudulently edited. Paramount, without a fight, paid Trump $16 million and made other concessions as settlement.

Trump hates Colbert and has long called for CBS to fire him.

Paramount says the cancellation of Colbert was based completely on financial considerations. The fact that he had referred on air to the settlement as “a big fat bribe” or that Trump hates Colbert had nothing to do with it.

Many are skeptical.

This is a cultural loss. Colbert is part of the team of world-class satirists that Jon Stewart helped assemble for the Daily Show. Among them, Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, also a part of Paramount) and John Oliver (HBO Max) are still making us laugh at absurd, misguided and dangerous power.

There is great news: In the culture of 2025, YOU are Colbert, or can be.

Doing what Colbert and Stewart and Oliver did and do is hard. Just complaining and shouting earnest well-deserved, even crude, criticism of the current regime is easy, may be cathartic, but isn’t effective. Or funny.

The genius of Colbert and company is to be supremely informed, supremely intelligent, and supremely funny in ways that convey that information and intelligence AND make people laugh. With genuine heart. No, that isn’t easy.

But you and others can do it. And unlike the old days, the platforms are available to broadcast that as far as the quality and interest will carry it. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert averages 2.42 million viewers, 219,000 viewers in the key 18-49 demographic. So many videos and posts reach more than that.

It’s hard not to sound like victims, crybabies and scolds. It’s hard to be Colbert, Stewart or Oliver. But if you can be, or can learn to be someone anywhere near that neighborhood, saying and showing something anywhere near that range, do it. Often. Flood the plain.

It will not totally make up for Colbert’s absence, since he is one of a kind, but that absence shouldn’t last long. It will put you on the team as a funny and heartfelt champion of truth.

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September 11, 2015

Biden and Colbert

Whatever your politics, it was TV history last night on The Late Show. Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert talking, just two great guys leaning in and getting real, while millions watched, and many teared up.

It starts with Colbert. The question has been whether and how he would progress from being a character on The Colbert Report to a different character that is more himself. There was that moment on the final Daily Show when Colbert exposed his most sincere and unironic thanks to Jon Stewart, the man who gave him his chance.

But last night’s Late Show interview skipped all the midpoints of developing a Colbert talk show persona to transcending any idea of what a late-night host might be. Beyond showing himself as a man of faith, Colbert served almost as a therapist and priest. He didn’t stay away from the pain. He compassionately went right for it, not for spectacle, but for the healing truth, and to reveal the depths of Biden’s quandary.

Reflecting their shared history of family tragedy, it was like a reunion of two old souls. On top of that, Colbert wore not only his faith but his politics on his sleeve, something that just isn’t done in his position. It was clear that he was urging Biden to run not because it was a good idea, but because Colbert and the Nation needed him.

It doesn’t take much to get Biden to speak from his soul. Hello will usually do. But Colbert brought out an extra dimension of that. Where certain candidates now running make us cringe, Biden made me and plenty of others cry. Where certain candidates make us want to run the other direction, listening to Joe just made me want to be a better person.

In the moment, it didn’t matter that Colbert was in only the third show of his widely-covered new TV venture. Or that Biden was in the final weeks of the will-he-or-won’t-he candidacy drama. It just was what it was, and what it was was good and human, so humbly and nobly human. Something we don’t see much on TV. Or in politics.

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