Tonight! Like Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Arsineo Hall, Whoopi Goldberg, Dennis Miller, Connor O'Brien, Craig Kilbourne, Craig Ferguson, Kenyver, Waynes, Juan Assykes, Carson Daly, Chelsea Handler, George Lopez, James Corden, Larry Wilmore, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, Amber Ruffin, and many more before him, Stephen Colbert will say goodbye to late night television. He's going out with a little help from his friends, Amy Sedaris, Billy Crystal, Weird Al, Mark Hamill, Tiffany Haddish, Jeff Daniels, Martha Stewart, Ben Stiller, Josh Brolin, James Taylor, Abbey Plaza, and Robert De Niro. And that was just last night. One of them spoke about the highly unusual circumstances in which Stephen's leaving CBS, but last night's musical guest took a swing at it. I'm here in support tonight with Stephen because you're the first guy in America who's lost his show because we got a president who can't take a joke. We're going to say goodbye to Stephen and late night TV on Today Explained from Vox. Anyway, Stephen, these are small-minded people. They got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about. This is for you. Support for Today Explained comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. A mess, ServiceNow turns that mess into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. Oh, what it's doing, what it's done, what it's about to do, so you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. Wow. Thanks, Hoddy. Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg News is here to remind us what happened to Stephen. Colbert is the highest rated on television of the late night shows, but when he debuted that show, I think eight million viewers, it's now averages more like two. And the amount of money advertising dollars pumping into late night has dropped by more than 50%. So it's just a declining part of the business. So it wasn't Colbert's fault necessarily. It was more just a sign of the times. And a situation? I'd say both. So broadcast networks have been looking for ways to cut costs, right? They re-air shows from streaming, CVS is showing Yellowstone. Brand isn't something you earn, something you live up to. NBC is putting on traders. Are you faithful? What a traitor. And especially as these networks spend more money on sports every year, they're having to pull back on things like entertainment. UFC has struck a deal with Paramount. Paramount is paying some big bucks here, an average of $1.1 billion a year. It has come out now that the NFL has signed an 11-year, 110 billion dollar media rights deal. But I would say that Colbert, as successful as he's been on linear television, which is where a lot of the money is made, he's also sort of the least web forward of the late night shows. So he has the smallest footprint online of any of the hosts. And then there's the White House shaped elephant in the room. Trump has called on the companies to basically fire all the late night hosts. The timing certainly didn't look good for Paramount. You know, CBS announced it was killing the show while Paramount was in the middle of negotiating or finalizing its merger with Skydance. The FCC been dragging its feet to approve that deal. Trump was suing CBS over the editing of the 60 Minutes interview. Trump said that those facts were unrelated. Nobody really believed them. The Ellison family super tight with Trump. So there's been this perception that Donald Trump and politics had a big role in the firing of Stephen Colbert. Have we found a smoking gun or anything of the sort that suggests that this was just a hit job? No. And that's part of the problem with the political argument is that we haven't seen anyone make a direct tie. Now that being said, it's always often very hard to find that smoking gun with President Trump. What he's really good at is sort of acting a little bit like a mob boss where there's always one level of deniability so that he can say out loud what he wants to happen. But there's not going to be like that email that people unearth that lays it bare. So no, we have not seen any smoking gun. OK. And since the cancellation of Colbert in July of 2025, which is being realized this week in May of 2026, have we seen any indication that this is going to be a trend, that Seth Myers is shaking in his shorts, that Kimmel, who's under threat again from this administration, is ready to throw in the towel and give up the fight? We haven't seen any indication that any of those hosts are getting canceled. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them lost their jobs in the next couple of years. Right? So Kimmel, who got in a lot of trouble with Trump, an FCC chair, Brendan Carr, and some of the local station groups that own the stations that carry the ABC feed and carry Kimmel. Two of the largest station ownership groups that Sinclair and Nextar say they won't carry the program on their ABC affiliates nationwide. It follows his on-air comments related to the killing of Charlie Kirk. I think Jimmy Kimmel is terrible. You know what suspended him? His talent. They tried to take him up the air last fall and it ended up backfiring. Jimmy Kimmel received a standing ovation after returning to ABC last night. Last night's show was a ratings bonanza, 6 million live TV viewers, online clips of this monologue are going viral. Our freedom to speak is what they admire most about this country. That's something I'm embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates to take my show off the air. That's not legal. That's not American. That is un-American. When Trump tried to come after him again because of a recent joke, it just didn't go anywhere. Now Kimmel re-upped his deal for one year. His contract is up next year. I would not be surprised if this were the end. I don't think Kimmel wants to go. I think he's probably now reached a point where he would like to stay until Trump is gone so that he can essentially declare victory. Had the last word. But if you're Disney and if you're the new CEO, Josh Tamaro, do you want your late night show to constantly be causing you problems with the president, especially if it's a show that doesn't really make much money? So I think there's a very interesting Kimmel negotiation to come. Seth Meyers, I assume that show's on borrowed time. I don't have any reporting to say when it's going to end. My gut tells me that Fallon is the last to go. But that's just a hunch. We'll all be dead in God and Jimmy Fallon will still be there looking like he's 35 throw into quest love, playing games. We are about to play Box of Lies, True Confessions. Lip Sync Battles, the Whisper Challenge, a water war. Well, that's, but the games are the thing, right? Is that late night became all about formats. It became about how can you get something that's going to go viral on YouTube, on Instagram, online, that people are going to share with their friends. Because the number of people who are actually watching the show's lives kept going down and down and down. The hosts have been pretty open about the fact that a lot of what they do now is just geared towards virality online, which is great for the customer, not so good for the networks because you make a lot less money from a YouTube clip than you do from a 30 second spot on CBS. Which I think is the justification on some level for what the network is replacing Cole Bear with. Can you help people understand what they might see if they turn on the TV at 1130 on CBS? How familiar are you with the name Byron Allen? Every time it comes up, I have to look him up to figure out who he is again, because not really, but he's a very powerful rich man. Yeah, he's got one of the more unusual careers, CVs you'll find in media. He was a stand up comedian out of never really an A-lister, but you know, a comedian that people knew throughout the 80s and 90s. I'm glad you're in a real good mood tonight because we have a young comedian who's making his first appearance on national television. Make him feel welcome, would you? Byron Allen. I guess I'll tell you a little about myself first. Just turned 19, had to register for the draft. How many people had to register for the draft? All right, I'm not worried about it though, because the post office is handling the paperwork. Then he decided he wanted to kind of use his money to become a media mogul. And all like respect to him, he looked around and was like, there are not a lot of black media moguls out there. Like, I should take that spot. I'm just always on the hunt. Win is enough enough, I guess, in terms of buying. When we're the biggest company in the world and there's no close second. That's it. That's the goal. That's the goal. And so he's mostly cobbled together sort of second and third rate media asset. The biggest deal he's done today was for the Weather Channel. Allen seemingly came out of nowhere back in 2018 with an all cash offer for the Weather Channel. He paid $310 million, making him the first black American to own a 24 hour mainstream cable news network. Okay, what's he going to do with this time slot that Colbert is unwillingly donating? Well, first of all, it's important to note that he is actually buying the time slot. He's essentially paying CBS to put his show on the air. So the spot that used to be James Corton, which was the late, late show, or I think that's what it's called, he put in a show called Comics Unleashed, which is a comedy show. So comedic institutions to round table of comics on couches and they, you know, you pitch your jokes and you get to run your bits. Like I was thinking the other day that I want to start my own emergency rescue service called rescue nine one. And our motto would be you really can't help but call us first. That now moves up to 1135 and another Byron Allen show called Funny Should Ask. The show where every question has a funny answer. Slot sand that James Corton slot. Wow. So Byron Allen just owns what two hours of late night on CBS now. Late night and late late night. And he's paying tens of millions of dollars for the rights and he's betting that he can make enough money from the advertising sales that it'll be worth it. I mean, what does it tell us that CBS is leasing this once illustrious time slot to, I guess, kind of like a freelancer essentially that late night comedy is a dying act and that these broadcast networks are in somewhat precarious financial situations. Right. And CBS executives, I think said anonymously that they were losing like $40 million a year on Colbert. Now, some people don't believe that number. Jimmy Kimmel in particular has come out and said he doesn't. But if you can go from losing $40 million a year to potentially making tens of millions of dollars a year from Byron Allen, why wouldn't you do that trade? I was going to ask you what we lose when we no longer have these traditional late night shows. But I feel like all the hosts have been on a sort of publicity tour. I think late night is one of those things that's been around our whole lives. We're kind of, it's just, you know, it's part of our lives. I never thought it was a job when I was growing up. I just thought Johnny Carson came with the television set. I didn't know. Look at the figures. And the fact of the matter is more people are watching late night television now and people watch us on YouTube now and people have a lot of different options. And yet they still, they keep coming to us. On the one hand, what you see with the loss of late night is the decline of monoculture. Right. We used to have, when the late night shows started, most people watched CBS, NBC, ABC, Peter Fox, right? Then cable came in and with the internet, things just got more and more fragmented. And so much as the, you know, nightly news is no longer the only place people go to get news. Like what I think part of what made the late night show special was it's one of the only places to hear and see from some of the most famous people in the world, right? But that's obviously gone away. And the closest thing to late night we have now or what sort of replaced it in a lot of ways is basically podcasting YouTube, right? There are other comedy podcasts on a smart list. Call her daddy. Daddy gang, welcome back. Hot ones, more of a YouTube show, whatever, that are essentially playing the role that late night once did. It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings. There's been a lot of heartfelt tributes to Colbert over the past few weeks on his show and elsewhere. How long do you think people hold up before they just like forget he existed and switch over to Kimmel? Not long because you see this anytime like restaurant in your neighborhood closes. If more people cared about Colbert and actually watched his show, he'd still be on the air. It's much easier to express frustration or outrage online or just with friends. But when it comes to how you're spending your time, how you're spending your money, are you doing it with that person? Right. Right? That's the third of the audience on YouTube that Fallon has. Lucas Shaw is a managing editor at Bloomberg News and the author of its screen time newsletter. Check it out if you want to read more about the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Larry Wilmore replaced Stephen when he left Comedy Central way back when we're going to ask him what he thinks of Stephen's departure when we're back on Today Explained. Support for the show today comes from Hymns. 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It's easy to get started. Right now, ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two-year plan when you go to ProtonVPN.com slash explain. That's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com slash explain. For 70% off your two-year plan, that's ProtonVPN.com slash explain. Support for today's explain comes from ServiceNow. ServiceNow says AI was supposed to handle the parts of the job that you hate. Instead, it just describes them, suggests what to do about them and then leaves you to do it. What? That's not help. That's homework. ServiceNow's AI specialists are different. They say they're not a tool. Think of them as digital teammates who actually do the work from start to finish. Cases get resolved. Requests get processed. Loops get closed. And most importantly, they say no extra work for you because when you can truly delegate to AI, you can get back to the work only you can do, the work that requires a person with ideas and judgment and, you know, a pulse to learn how to put AI to work for people. Visit ServiceNow.com. As we all understand, you can take a man's show. You can't take a man's... Today's explain. So that's the good news of the day. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Cheers. Larry, you worked at The Daily Show. You hosted The Nightly Show, which replaced Colbert when he left Comedy Central for his now canceled late show. Have a lot of people been asking you how you feel about what's going on with Stephen right now? You are the only one, Sharer. For me, it's a little different because I look at television very soberly, I guess, Sharer. I go, well, you know, a lot of trends come and go on TV. The variety show had an amazing run on television, you know. Even the sitcom has changed a little bit. It's come in and out of favor. And this particular late night format, if you think about it, they started in the mid-50s with Steve Allen. That's a long run. That's a really long run to have that particular form stick around for that long, you know. So I think it's probably past its due date, to be honest with you. And that's got nothing to do with the hosts so much as the format. Well, let me ask you about the hosts. You know, one of my favorite things from your show, The Nightly Show, was a segment called Keep It 100, in which you challenge your guest to be completely honest about something. Can I ask you to keep it 100 about something? I always keep it 100. Are you kidding me? My man. Okay. You talk about keeping it above. Yes. Why doesn't Z-Way have Seth Slott after Fallon? Z-Way's hilarious, by the way. So if we could talk to Kim Roha, what can you do better to uplift the black community and black women? Should billionaires exist and are there any billionaires in particular, you pray take a merciful trip to the Titanic? How many black friends do you have? Oh. Z-Way's incredible. And she's taking the format to a new place. A place you could argue inspired by what Colbert used to do, maybe on the Colbert Report. And yet, she's relegated to a podcast, YouTube kind of space. Why doesn't Lauren give her some love on NBC Late Night? So Z-Way, very talented. I've known Z-Way for a long time. She was a writer on Robin Thede's show. So I identified her talent very early on. But here's the thing. What Z-Way does is niche. The Late Night shows are broadcasting. Z-Way is involved in niche casting. It's narrow casting. That's kind of the world we're in right now. Her show isn't meant for a broad audience. But I'm with you. I'm a huge fan of Z-Way. She's hilarious. But I doubt if what she's doing, if CBS, honestly, she'll think about it. CBS? Well, that's why I said NBC. I just feel like, I mean, to push back on your assessment that she's too niche, you know, you got to be a little more of a generalist with broad appeal. I mean. Well, her show is very niche. Her show is very niche. She's being ironic and she's playing a character and all these things. Correct. That's exactly. And yeah, I watch it on YouTube and it makes sense. It's like, this is for the people who want this. They can go find her. That's exactly right. But I have to say at the same time, if they gave her a later slot, like the kind of slot that Byron Allen will now have twice over at CBS, could people not acclimate to her style and thus come around to it? Like Conan was doing weird things. Lederman was doing weird things. I have to discreetly show them because here's what you have to ask. It's not the show. It's the audience. Ask anybody in that demographic if they even watched Linear TV. Right. They do not. The real question is, you know, where is the proper place for these shows now? You know, and TV, Linear TV doesn't seem like it's one of the places. So it's all online all the time. Oh yeah. It's all these other delivery systems, you know. I do wonder though, when you see Strike Force 5 reuniting and it's, you know, more or less five different versions of the same white guy, do you see what may have been a missed opportunity? Maybe not to make really niche weird shows on broadcast linear television, but at least to just, I don't know, offer an audience something different between all these guys. I mean, yeah, John Oliver's British and like, yeah, Jimmy Kimmel's in LA, but there aren't like mage. You just, there's sort of, they're all white guys wearing suits. I will say this, this is going to sound weird, but nobody cares anymore. Honestly, you know, the guy who did that at the bright time was Arsenio. Right. None of these late night hosts hit the airways the way Arsenio did. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr. Bobby Brown, saying, my. Everything about the four young men I'm about to introduce you to is controversial from the name to the music. Let's welcome and talk to NWA. Give it up. He came at a time when the culture was changing. Remember, hip hop was just finding its voice. He was bringing hip hop artists on TV. Carson didn't do that. Letterman wasn't doing that. No one was doing that, you know. So Arsenio was that host you're talking about. It's been done already, but the audience really doesn't care. If they cared enough, it would have happened. So you don't see this so much as like a top down executive decision gatekeeping. You see this as the network give the audience what they want and this is what they want. No, it's both of those things. It's not one or the other. It's absolutely both of those things. You know, the gatekeepers feeling that, you know, it has to be this type of person and the audience going, well, at least the band is black. Jimmy Fallon. They're a pretty good band. I hear what you say. Larry, how come there's not more people of color? How come they haven't done these things? Or women? I have lamented my whole career going up against that and just trying all the things, you know. Like you said, I even did it myself, you know. What do you think of this shift? Do you think the podcast fully fulfills what we got from late night TV or do you think it leaves something to be desired? I think it's just different. I think people want personalized entertainment a lot more now, you know, kind of the a la carte type of thing. Choose off a menu, you know, more than something that feels presented for everybody to enjoy. That's what I mean about the broad versus the niche, you know. Jimmy doesn't have to worry about making sure everybody enjoys this. No, bitch, you got to laugh at the way that I want to do this because that's what you came here for. I think this current generation really enjoys that. Like that's what they want. And here's what it, I think it ties into if we're going to be sociological about this. For me, I think they've kind of associated, you know, podcasts or whatever form we want to say with something that feels more authentic. And so that's the word that they want. Whereas the other form doesn't feel as authentic to them. There's like a barrier between them and the performer, you know. Clearly, yeah. One thing that gets me about this financial argument that this show just didn't make financial sense anymore is it doesn't seem like Colbert was given an opportunity to say make his show much more cheaply. I mean, get rid of the band, get rid of the audience, winnow it down, make it look more like, I don't know, the podcast format where we're bludgeoned over the head with when we turn to social media and still have this American icon at this point interviewing, you know, some of the most prominent people in our culture. Why not do that and save a ton of money and save a ton of face? Because right now, you know, CBS is just the butt of a lot of jokes. So what you're asking me is why doesn't showbiz operate logically? Yes, yes, yes. Oh, okay. Well, that's an interesting question, Sean. I never thought to ask them these types of questions. You know, no, showbiz is the opposite of logic. It is the opposite and the antithesis. It has never followed logic, you know. It and like when people would ask you questions about racism, said, let me be clear about something, the color Hollywood cares about most is green, period. Look to where the money is. And that's going to be your answer most of the time. OK, any advice for your friend? I mean, you've had a show canceled, he's had a show canceled. What do you what does one do after a show is canceled? Take as much time off as you can. Do what you want to do. I mean, I'm not worried about Stephen. Yeah. He's going to be good and we'll be it'll be exciting to see what he does next. You know, as a fan and a friend, I'm looking forward to it. Larry Wilmore, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, Sean Roberts, your host. I want to produce Jenny. And David Tavish or Richard Dunningham mixed and keeping truth in this alive. Thanks to Gabriel. This is today explained.
