Late night TV certainly faces an uphill battle. Most industry insiders acknowledge that Colbert’s show probably was facing financial issues (Cheeks declined to specify, but said the show was losing “tens of millions of dollars”). However, with Donald Trump’s FCC overseeing the Paramount-Skydance merger, most of those same insiders agree the timing of the cancellation indicated that Paramount saw Colbert as an easy sacrifice to grease the wheels with the thin-skinned president.
Obviously, Paramount’s not going to come out and admit that the move was (arguably a second) bribe. Instead, Cheeks spun a different story regarding the timing. “We were at a period from a production standpoint where every year seasonally, this is [when] we negotiate new deals for writers and producers,” he said. “In addition, this is going to be the third season of Colbert’s three-year deal. So, in order to do those deals, we were going to have to change the terms from what they traditionally are, September to August to September to May. It was incumbent upon me and us to make it clear to Stephen and his reps that this is where we were.”
Interestingly, Cheeks suggested that Taylor Tomlinson’s disinterest in continuing to host After Midnight was a sign to Paramount that the company “couldn’t stay in that daypart.” He said it’s “too early to speculate” what content will replace The Late Show‘s timeslot, but insists that it “wasn’t sustainable to continue” in the late night space. Now that Cheeks isn’t in charge of the whole Paramount Global operation, he’ll be focused on the company’s broadcast and cable businesses—an umbrella that includes Trump-critical programs such as The Daily Show and South Park, so we’ll see what the future holds for those shows. “I know [Skydance] is going to invest, but they’re going to invest cautiously and wisely, so for me, managing this business is really important for me to double down [in] primetime and sports,” he said at the press conference.
