We’re down to the proverbial short hairs when it comes to the broadcast network life of THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT. The show’s final week of existence began last night with a clip-laden “worst of” episode. By week’s end the valuable (and still most-viewed) real estate immediately following the most profitable daypart on local affiliates–late news–will be reduced to a time buy with sustaining ratings. Only a scant few will ever know exactly how far COMICS UNLEASHED WITH BYRON ALLEN drags down CBS’ viewership–based on the way Allen Media Group sells its commercial inventory, not even their advertisers will actually be able to figure it out. The fact most aren’t even inclined to care pretty much tells you what the state of broadcasting in 2026 is.
But Colbert is not the only loss that David Ellison’s plaything is enduring this week. Last night 60 MINUTES co-anchor Anderson Cooper bid farewell to his de facto weekend gig, an event that drew as much attention in some circles as some of the stories he’s been reporting on lately. HUFFPOST’s Njera Perking lamented this yesterday last night:
Anderson Cooper’s time is up on “60 Minutes. ”The CNN anchor shared a tearful farewell with viewers on Sunday, stepping away from the long-running CBS news magazine after two decades as a correspondent. Cooper explained that he’s leaving the show so he can spend more time with his young sons, Wyatt and Sebastian, as they grow up…”I don’t think the reality has really hit me that I’m not going to be doing this any longer,” he added. “You know, to give up something you’ve watched since you were a kid. Yeah, I will miss this.” For his final “60 Minutes” appearance, Cooper revisited his career in an “Overtime” segment, reflecting on a montage of sit-down interviews with figures like Prince Harry, Lady Gaga and Adele, along with conversations with lesser-known individuals whose stories also left an impact.
But as PUCK’s Dylan Byers reported last night, he also managed to take a clearly veiled parting shot at his soon-to-be officially continuing employers:
(H)e also took a moment during the 17-minute segment to subtly critique the show’s direction under its new owner, David Ellison, as well as its new leader,Bari Weiss. “I hope 60 Minutes remains 60 Minutes,” he said. “There’s very few things that have been around for as long as 60 Minutes has and maintain the quality that it has. Things can always evolve and change, and I think that’s awesome, and things should evolve and change. But I hope the core of what 60 Minutes is always remains.”
Sure, the Bill Owens–Sharyn Alfonsi resistance set might have preferred a touch less diplomacy. But given Anderson’s blue-blood decorum and aversion to conflict—and, perhaps, the knowledge that he may wind up working with Bari down the road at CNN—this was about as forceful a critique as the anchor was likely to give. In any case, his decision to leave the network was message enough. And yet, because Anderson is genuinely famous—not just TV newsfamous—the dig hit hard, and got a fair deal of traction in both the tabloids and the trades.
Colbert, of course, has been increasingly honest and open about his feelings, as have the bulk of his guests as he heads toward his finish line. The display of solidarity and consternation he shared with the program’s original host David Letterman on the rooftop of the Ed Sullivan Theatre they both restored and rejuvenated over a combined 33 years that culminated with “Good night and good luck motherf-ckers”–a sentiment that soon-to-be colleague John Oliver echoed during the credit roll on Sunday night’s LAST WEEK… installment, was in itself headline and clickbait-creating. And the hurling of several pieces of furniture from said location was a vicariously cathartic release for quite a number of soon-to-be disenfranchised viewers openly declaring they will now “boycott” everything CBS and Paramount. As if any individual’s decision not to watch TV actually is significant enough to matter to any corporate entity. But heck, if it cleanses one’s soul, I suppose making such a declaration on Threads is reasonably harmless.
Besides, an awful lot of those resistance supporters are even more upset about a CBS staple with three times the history of a late night talk show signing off for good the day after. THE AMERICAN THINKER’s Greg Maresca penned a particularly poignant soliloquy on that topic over the past weekend:
With the radio positioned above the refrigerator, WCBS Newsradio 88 was the soundtrack of our kitchen. For much of the 20th century, AM radio news was the country’s heartbeat…I recall helicopter traffic reporter Lou Timolat, calling live updates from the FDR and GWB to the BQE and Major Deegan, decades before GPS or digital traffic sensors existed. Such reporting crystalized WCBS’s “traffic and weather together” format, setting a national standard for all news radio and making Timolat an unforgettable memory over 50 years later.
Despite selling its stations in 2017, CBS still fed news to 700 affiliates, including its historic “World News Roundup,” the longest running newscast in the country. That will end May 22 as CBS News Radio will cease operations. The announcement cited “challenging economic realities” and “shifting programming strategies” corporate verbiage for: the AM business model no longer sustains.
Maresca’s history parallels mine. I had a similar relationship with Newsradio 88; its own demise in the summer of 2024 hit me quite hard. And even though its one-time Los Angeles sister station is for the moment still broadcasting on 1070 AM providing similar information to Southern Californians (and, if you happen to a rare late-night partier in San Francisco, to KCBS 740 as well), its theoretically more listened-too FM simulcaster has also gone the way of the dinosaur. An appropriately nameless “Contributing Editor” to mynewsLA.com dropped his own dime’s worth of lament yesterday:
Audacy will end the FM simulcast of KNX News on 97.1 Monday and launch an all-sports station on that frequency, while KNX will continue its all-news format on its AM signal. The new station, branded as The Fan, is scheduled to debut Monday at 6 a.m., according to the company. Audacy said the outlet will focus on Southern California sports with local talk programming and what it described as an all-live, local weekday lineup.
Audacy apparently feels quite strongly about this necessary evolution. They even shared a deeply researched 34-page document with Ad Age subscribers last week that documents the myriad of success stories already in their portfolio. I for one appreciated it, though I’m honestly not all that sure how much all that applies to the fourth full-time English language all-sports radio station in a market where Spanish language signals and OEM listening to Sirius XM and podcasts siphon off a substantial amount of the substantial freeway-trapped commuting audience from the get-go.
Amidst all of this negative nelliness one has to look far and wide to try and find some good news–let alone an outlet that will still exist to report it. Fortunately, thanks to the largesse of a generous friend and follower who shared the balance of Byers’ PUCK piece from beyond its prohibitively expensive paywall we might just have a smidge:
I’m told that members of the senior leadership team have had informal discussions about changing Bari’s mandate at CBS News—and, eventually, CNN—in ways that would give her less control over the linear product. Paramount would look to bring in an executive who could manage that business.
No plans have been telegraphed or formally enshrined, and it’s unclear how involved David himself has been in the discussions. But sources with knowledge of the conversations said that Bari would likely cede day-to-day control over Evening News, CBS Mornings, and 60 Minutes to this more experienced, as-yet-unnamed executive, shifting her focus to the news division’s digital growth while maintaining broad editorial influence across all the company’s platforms.
The conversations, I’m told, reflect Paramount leadership’s newfound acceptance that Bari was given too broad a mandate for someone without previous experience in television, as well as some irritation with the ceaseless barrage of negative press.
And while I’m not quite as invested in the gossipy and sometimes vindictive nature of the Belloni-verse that defines PUCK, I’m inclined to believe in this case Byers is on to something. It does look like they’re already putting aside a fancy chair for her new office.
Until next time…