David Letterman is railing against CBS, his former network, for the “pure cowardice” of cancelling the wildly unprofitable Stephen Colbert.
It was May of 2015, a decade ago, that David Letterman retired from the show Colbert took over and drove into the ground. And since then, Letterman has more-or-less dropped off the pop culture radar. But for the occasional tabloid story, he has become an irrelevancy in today’s culture. But now he is roaring back to attack his former network patrons for dispensing with Colbert, the latter of who has been losing more than $40 million a year for CBS practically since he took over for Letterman.
But, as far as Letterman is concerned, CBS is lying when it says it is casting Colbert aside because of the economics of the situation, and he is calling them “cowards” for ending The Late Show, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“The idea that they’re hiding behind money — they’ve given [Colbert] another 10 months, that’s another huge chunk of money they’re gonna lose, according to them,” Letterman told his former executive producer, Barbara Gaines, in a video posted to Youtube late last week. “I don’t think it was money. I think it was all to make sure [Skydance head David Ellison, set to become CEO of Paramount when the two companies’ merger closes in early August] were solid spending dad’s money.”
“If they were losing that kind of money — you’re telling me losing this kind of money happened yesterday?” Letterman railed. “I bet they were losing this money a month ago or six weeks ago. Or they were never losing that kind of money. They did not handle Stephen Colbert, the face of that network, in the way he deserves.”
Though he added that the cancellation was “sad,” he also wondered if it would raise Colbert’s profile by making him some sort of martyr.
Naturally, Letterman also indulged the conspiracy theory that Colbert was fired to make President Donald Trump happy.
“This is pure cowardice,” Letterman exploded. “You’re telling me 60 Minutes, the pinnacle of journalistic excellence and integrity for decades … they decided, ‘Aw, we’re sorry, let us give you $20 million.’ I believe this is in the wake of that.”
He also said that the executives at CBS who made this decision will later become “embarrassed.”
Why this would be is hard to fathom. Colbert rarely reached more than 2.5 million or so viewers a night. And with an audience size that tiny, there aren’t enough viewers to raise any sort of groundswell of support for Colbert. He simply doesn’t have enough fans to make any real waves. He will walk off into the night and be very quickly forgotten. So, it is hard to see where any “embarrassment” would come from for the executives who decided to cut bait with Colbert.
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