Reel Entropy

CBS, weeks after parent company Paramount agreed to donate $16 million to the Trump presidential library to settle a nonsensical lawsuit it would easily have beaten had it fought, announced this week it would not renew the contract of leading late-night host Stephen Colbert and that “The Late Show,” which has aired since 1993 and Colbert has hosted since 2015, would be cancelled.

“The Late Show” was the highest-rated late-night show in the nation at the time of this announcement. Colbert, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, had also criticized his parent company for its capitulation. CBS lied and called it a purely financial decision. Multiple U.S. senators and the Writer’s Guild of America, on behalf of “The Late Show’s” staff writers, have all called for an investigation.

Trump had already extracted a similar commitment from Disney over a similarly laughable lawsuit, and the same week this was happening, began the process anew with a shocking public threat to sue The Wall Street Journal and parent company Dow Jones, which he followed through on the next day.

I set out to write about why there’s more nuance to this situation, and there is, but that nuance doesn’t change the calculation. This is exactly what it looks like, and exactly what Colbert said it was days before being told his contract wouldn’t be renewed: a big fat bribe.