CBS suspended further copyright takedown notices targeting uploads of Stephen Colbert's surprise return to the Michigan public access show Only in Monroe on Sunday after backlash erupted online over the move. The backlash came over unofficial uploads of the episode, which aired Friday night, just 24 hours after Colbert's Late Show finale aired. Several clips and full uploads posted by third-party accounts had already amassed hundreds of thousands of views before Colbert launched an official YouTube channel carrying the episode.
“I'm here in support tonight for Stephen because you're the first guy in America who lost his show because we got a president who can't take a joke,” said the Boss. “And because Larry and David Ellison feel like they need to kiss his ass to get what they want. Anyway, Stephen, these are small-minded people. They have got no idea what the freedoms of this country are supposed to be about.”
Truthiness. Colbert highlighted it on the very first episode of his Colbert Report, a spinoff of The Daily Show which featured him as a blown-up parody of TV pundits like original Fox News Channel star Bill O'Reilly championing the idea of believing something because it feels true, regardless of the facts. "I don't trust books," he says in a segment from that first show. "They're all facts and no heart."
Colbert mocked the further extension of the ceasefire as proof that the war wasn't ending anytime soon, quipping, 'I'm beginning to think this war might not be over by Memorial Day.'
The Nielsen ratings for his speech are in, and Trump's talk-a-thon saw an 11% decrease from last year. Donald Trump is really dragging down broadcast television. I mean, if I were CBS, I'd cancel him.
It's true that Cooper has a ton of other jobs to keep him busy, most notably hosting a weeknight show on CNN. And, in his statement about leaving the news magazine show, Cooper said he wanted to spend more time with his family. (Don't people always say that?) But Status' Oliver Darcy also reported that "Cooper had grown increasingly uneasy with the rightward direction the network has charted under" CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and David Ellison's ownership of CBS' parent company, Paramount.
Meanwhile, the network has decided to retain a controversial health expert who was brought in by the new leadership, despite the fact that he is now under fire for his ties and gross emails with Jeffrey Epstein. He recently apologized for those ties and isn't accused of criminal wrongdoing. But others have faced consequences for just associating with Epstein. I mean, given all of that, it's no wonder that CBS made the decision to bow to Trump's FCC.
Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert said that an attorney from the CBS network said "in no uncertain terms" that his show could not broadcast his interview with pro-LGBTQ+ state Rep. James Talarico (D), who is running for U.S. Senate, after a threat from Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an ostensibly independent federal agency that President Donald Trump has used to intimidate broadcasters.
When Stephen Colbert said CBS spiked his interview with Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D), it drew swift and sharp condemnation from Democratic members of Congress, many of whom vowed to launch investigations into the Federal Communications Commission and President Donald Trump's appointed chair, Brendan Carr. Talarico is running in the Democratic primary for Senate in Texas against Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX). On the GOP side, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is facing challenges from Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX).
"He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network's lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast," Colbert said on his program, "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert." "Then I was told, in some uncertain terms, that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on. And because my network clearly doesn't want us to talk about this, let's talk about this."
