Commentary: 'The Late Show' is ending, but not Stephen Colbert or late-night TV

In September 2015, erstwhile Stephen Colbert inherited CBS’ “The Late Show” from David Letterman, its archetypal and lone host, late-night tv was experiencing thing of a aureate age. The net had yet to strangle linear television; it was taken for granted that immoderate self-respecting broadcast web oregon ambitious cablegram presumption would aerial late-night (and adjacent late, late-night) speech shows. Many of these had been connected agelong capable to beryllium considered institutions, and though hosts would travel and go, they would typically inhabit their seat for a bully agelong time.

Each turnover being a uncommon event, astir each caller big has been greeted with a chorus of “Who? What? Why?” earlier clip accords the newcomer a patina of inevitability. It was, I suppose, moderately astonishing that, erstwhile Letterman — the top of them each with the imaginable objection of Johnny Carson — gave up “The Late Show” aft 23 seasons, helium was succeeded by a antheral whose erstwhile job, of 9 years, was playing a blimpish pundit successful an ironic half-hour governmental satire connected basal cable, spun disconnected from Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.”

But arsenic the big of “The Colbert Report,” Colbert’s taste penetration was deep, his fame already substantial. Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Wired, Outside, Sports Illustrated and Dartmouth Alumni Magazine had each enactment him connected their covers. He’d had an crystal pick flavor, a bald eagle, a spider, a turtle and a space-station treadmill named aft him; helium testified earlier Congress successful quality connected behalf of migrant workers; and coined the precise utile connection “truthiness.” One knew to hold and see.

The Colbert who leaves “The Late Show” this week — not of his ain volition — is and isn’t the aforesaid Colbert who took it over. Like a long-serving politician, helium has gone grey successful office, and, similar a fewer politicians, it has seasoned him. He’s integrated the contractual request to entertain a mainstream assemblage with his ain tendency to connection an authentic (if partial) practice of himself: philosophical, thoughtful, spiritual, a Catholic humanist, with a deeper involvement successful eternal verities than the calamitous absurdities of the time — and made a amusement retired of some those things, the highest-rated successful precocious night.

These strands travel unneurotic successful the “Colbert Questionert,” wherein the big poses a bid of questions “honed to aerospace tolerances to penetrate the defenses of immoderate guest, and penetrate to the halfway of their idiosyncratic and person them beryllium afloat known to the American people.” (“I respect you overselling the bit,” Letterman said erstwhile his crook came successful 2024. “I learned it from you, Dad,” Colbert replied, “I learned it from you.”) Questions scope from “What’s the champion sandwich?” (always first) to “scariest animal,” to “What happens erstwhile we die?” to “The remainder of your beingness successful 5 words.” You could play on astatine home.

There are the celebrities, of course, with whom helium talks successful an funny way, listening, responding, getting laughs, getting his guests to get laughs, allowing things to spell off-track oregon to spell long, erstwhile the going is good. (Extended interviews would find their mode onto YouTube.) Conversations could get heavy and personal. Guests whitethorn travel with a merchandise to promote, but that’s conscionable the state connected which speech shows run; the travel was astir thing else.

“I person gotten to a spot wherever I don’t privation a batch from the assemblage different than to marque them laugh,” Colbert told John Mulaney successful 2020, “and to marque a transportation that my interior anxieties, arsenic I explicit them externally done the joke, erstwhile it makes them laugh, I person the consciousness of camaraderie and assemblage that I’m not brainsick to consciousness this mode due to the fact that they wouldn’t laughter unless they recognized it successful idiosyncratic else. And it mightiness beryllium an anxiousness astir life, oregon death, oregon astir what happened contiguous successful the news.”

Colbert’s dismissal, it’s communal cognition by now, followed hard upon Paramount, the network’s owner, settling a Trump nuisance suit for $16 million; Colbert suggested connected aerial that it was a “big abdominous bribe” to get FCC support for its merchantability to the Trump-friendly Skydance Media, and wrong a mates of days “The Late Show” was nary more. (“A screeching halt by different hands,” Letterman called it connected his valedictory quality past week, during which helium directed “the wanton demolition of CBS property,” throwing chairs from the acceptable disconnected the extortion of the Ed Sullivan Theater.) With the decease of the Taylor Tomlinson-hosted sheet amusement “After Midnight,” of which Colbert was an enforcement producer, the web is retired of the late-night business. (They are leasing the abstraction to the independently produced “Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen.”)

Still, the reunion past week connected “The Late Show” of “Strike Force Five,” the podcast squad assembled by Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel during the 2023 writers’ onslaught to payment their staffs, was a reminder that precocious nighttime has beingness successful it yet. It’s existent that the speech ecosystem has changed successful the past decade, arsenic a 100 podcasts person bloomed, including ones helmed by late-night veterans Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, erstwhile CBS late, late-night big Craig Ferguson and Letterman. Nevertheless, arsenic Kimmel noted, “People person a batch of options, but they support coming to us.”

As of adjacent week, Colbert won’t beryllium there. “You tin instrumentality a man’s show, you can’t instrumentality a man’s voice,” Letterman had said; for the infinitesimal that dependable volition beryllium co-writing a “Lord of the Rings” sequel, which successful a sense, to premix movie metaphors, is Tolkien superfan Colbert’s mentation of “If you onslaught maine down, I shall go much almighty than you tin perchance imagine.” We await with interest.

Meanwhile, helium asked impermanent Julia Louis-Dreyfus if she had immoderate proposal for recovering from the nonaccomplishment of a long-running show.

“Do you drink?” she asked.

“I’m beauteous bully astatine it,” Colbert replied.

“You’ll beryllium fine.”