The Network That Blinked

CHAPTER I: THE CANCELLATION SEEN AROUND THE WORLD

They didn’t fire him. They didn’t move him to midnight. They didn’t even float a replacement. They just said it’s over. Next May. The curtain falls. The lights go out.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—nine seasons at number one, the most-watched show in its slot since a certain reality star became president—is being quietly, surgically removed from the CBS schedule. And not because it was failing. Not because the audience left. And not because the host wanted out. Stephen Colbert didn’t leave CBS. CBS left him.

The network says it’s a “purely financial decision.” That’s the kind of phrase that sounds like it graduated summa cum laude from the University of Corporate Bullshit and went on to do its MBA in Plausible Deniability. Because what it leaves out is that this same host—this Emmy-winning, ratings-dominating host—used his monologue last week to eviscerate the network for settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump. A $20 billion lawsuit. Over a 60 Minutes interview. That Trump didn’t like.

And now the show is done.

This isn’t about whether Stephen Colbert was expensive. It’s about whether CBS thinks truth-telling is worth jeopardizing a multibillion-dollar merger in front of a Trump-controlled FCC. Because the stakes aren’t just financial—they’re regulatory. And they’re personal. It’s about whether a network, once known for Cronkite, Murrow, and 60 Minutes, is selling off the last pieces of its soul for merger approval and a clean license renewal.

This is about timing. It’s about motive. And it’s about the difference between “coincidence” and “capitulation.”

Because when you cancel your top-rated show days after the host calls out your deal with the President of the United States, don’t tell us it’s just business. We’ve seen this movie before. It still ends the same. And the sequel’s worse.

CHAPTER II: THE HOUSE THAT MURROW BUILT

Before we talk about what CBS has become, let’s remind ourselves what it used to be.

This was the network that put Edward R. Murrow in a war zone with a mic and a mission. The man who didn’t just report the Blitz—he let Americans hear it in real time. The man who stared down Senator Joe McCarthy on national television and made the country blink first. The man who, when he signed off with “Good night, and good luck,” meant both.

CBS was Walter Cronkite calling Vietnam a stalemate. Dan Rather taking heat in the firestorm. Mike Wallace and Lesley Stahl redefining investigative reporting every Sunday night on 60 Minutes—a program that ran so deep in the American bloodstream it might as well have come with the utilities.

This was the network that made journalism look like a public service and television feel like the Fourth Estate. It stood for something. And not the kind of corporate “stand for something” that comes with a hashtag and a mission statement. It stood for the idea that the truth is something you defend, even when it’s inconvenient. Especially when it’s inconvenient.

Now? It’s defending a balance sheet.

And here’s where the Sorkin in me gets loud: You don’t get to inherit the house that Murrow built and then lease it out to the highest bidder during an election year.

You don’t get to wear Cronkite’s legacy like a brand badge and then yank the mic from the one guy still using it the way they did.

Because legacy isn’t a logo. It’s a debt. And right now, CBS looks like it’s defaulting.

CHAPTER III: FOLLOW THE PAPER TRAIL

The story of how CBS got here doesn’t start in a newsroom—it starts in a boardroom.

In 2016, Sumner Redstone, the aging patriarch who held the reins of CBS and Paramount Global, stepped aside. Control passed to his daughter, Shari Redstone, a woman determined to reshape the empire her father built. And reshape it she did.

By 2023, Shari was openly shopping the company. Paramount was bleeding cash, its stock price was plummeting, and CBS—once the flagship of the entire operation—was being treated like excess inventory. In July 2024, after months of talks, a deal was struck: Skydance Media, the production company founded by David Ellison (son of Oracle founder and Trump confidant Larry Ellison), would merge with Paramount Global. Price tag: around $8 billion.

It’s the kind of deal that comes with a ribbon-cutting, champagne, and—unfortunately—a visit to the Federal Communications Commission. Because mergers like this don’t just close. They get reviewed. They get scrutinized. And in a second Trump term, they get personal.

By law, the FCC has to approve the transfer of broadcast licenses. In practice, that means President Trump and his allies—like Brendan Carr, now chairing the commission—hold the keys to the kingdom.

Which brings us to a dangerous intersection: the constitutional right to a free press meeting the executive branch’s power to approve (or delay) a multi-billion dollar media merger.

So when CBS says Colbert’s cancellation has “nothing to do” with politics and “everything to do” with finances, let me just ask the obvious question:

Which finances?
Because if you’re trading editorial independence for merger approval, that’s not cost-cutting. That’s surrender.

CHAPTER IV: THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

In the fall of 2024, CBS aired a 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, then the Democratic nominee for president. The interview, conducted by veteran correspondent Bill Whitaker, aired without scandal—until it didn’t.

President Donald Trump, back on the campaign trail and already eyeing regulatory leverage over CBS’s merger, claimed the network had “doctored” the footage. He filed a $20 billion lawsuit against CBS, citing the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and accused the network of intentionally editing Harris’s remarks to favor her candidacy.

Legal experts across the political spectrum called the suit meritless. They pointed out that the supposedly incriminating “differences” in footage were simply edits made for time across multiple CBS programs. In other words: standard broadcast procedure.

But Trump didn’t need the case to win in court. He needed it to win in Washington.

By January 2025, Trump was once again president. And now CBS’s merger was under the regulatory microscope—held by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Trump ally who had already made headlines calling for investigations into “news distortion.”

In April, longtime 60 Minutes Executive Producer Bill Owens—a widely respected journalist with decades of experience—stepped down. He told his staff, bluntly:

“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.”

Translation: editorial control was no longer editorial.

That same month, CBS handed over transcripts from the Harris interview to the FCC—reportedly unredacted. Days later, Owens was gone. And CBS News, once known for throwing punches, looked like it had thrown in the towel.

CHAPTER V: SETTLEMENT, SILENCE, AND THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS

On July 2, 2025, CBS settled the Trump lawsuit. The number: $16 million. Not for damages—there were none. Not for libel—the case never reached that far. The money covered Trump’s legal fees, those of a co-plaintiff, and, yes, a contribution to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.

The network insisted the settlement was not an admission of guilt. That’s technically true. But it was unmistakably an admission of leverage.

Trump declared victory, claiming CBS ‘knew they were wrong’ and publicly suggesting the deal included PSA commitments for causes he supports.

The following Monday, Stephen Colbert opened The Late Show with what might now be viewed as a farewell letter wrapped in a monologue. He shredded the settlement on air, calling it “a bribe dressed up as a legal fee,” and asked how many of the network’s founding principles could be sold off before there was nothing left to air between commercials.

And just over a week later, CBS announced the show would end.

On Friday morning, the president made it explicit.
“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “His talent was even less than his ratings.” He didn’t stop there. He mocked Jimmy Kimmel, insulted Jimmy Fallon, and praised Fox’s Greg Gutfeld—whom he’s supported for years.

The president didn’t just celebrate the cancellation. He claimed it. Which makes CBS’s insistence that this was “purely a financial decision” not just unconvincing—but dangerous. Because when a sitting president publicly applauds the disappearance of a critic he tried to get fired a year earlier, the question isn’t whether the network blinked. The question is: how long ago did they start winking?

Let’s not do the network’s job for them by pretending this is normal. You don’t pay off a president, gut your news division, and cancel your most visible critic in the same quarter without raising questions.

You raise them. You amplify them. You turn up the volume.

Because silence is the most expensive thing CBS just bought.

CHAPTER VI: THE HILL RESPONDS—AND NOT WITH LAUGHTER

When news broke that The Late Show was ending, it wasn’t just fans who took to social media. Capitol Hill did too.

Senator Adam Schiff, not known for hyperbole, wrote:

“If Paramount and CBS ended The Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. This isn’t just about one host. It’s about the future of editorial independence in America.”
Schiff wasn’t alone.

Senator Elizabeth Warren demanded transparency, saying:

“We need to know if a popular late-night host was pushed out because he criticized a sitting president. That’s not how democracy works.”

This wasn’t performative outrage. It was a recognition that we’ve crossed a line—again—and that this time, it didn’t take a subpoena or a hacked email to see it. It happened in prime time, in plain sight.

Jimmy Kimmel—no stranger to Trump’s crosshairs—didn’t mince words. Shortly after Colbert’s announcement aired, Kimmel posted to Instagram: “Love you, Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons, CBS.” The profanity wasn’t the point—it was the fury. The unspoken understanding among his peers: this wasn’t just another cancellation. It was a warning shot.

Television writer and producer Mike Schur (Parks and Recreation, The Good Place) took it further. Posting to BlueSky, he wrote: “When media companies cancel late-night shows to appease fascist presidents, America f---ing ends. The number one way to explain America working properly is by saying ‘comedians can make fun of the president on TV.’ A good way to explain fascism is ‘the president forces companies to fire those comedians as a condition of allowing them to conduct business.’”

That wasn’t a partisan jab. That was an obituary notice.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart, never one to sit quietly when the guardrails come off, tore into the situation with surgical precision, calling CBS’s settlement and Colbert’s cancellation “the worst look for a network since the first time someone said ‘Weinstein’s coming by.’”

Inside the CBS Newsroom, morale reportedly cratered. Longtime producers described the mood as “funereal.” One anonymous staffer told The Hollywood Reporter, “We’re not just losing a show. We’re losing the last piece of who we thought we were.”

And that’s the truth of it. Trump had already called for Colbert’s firing in 2024—long before the merger was announced, and long before CBS agreed to settle. So when CBS finally pulled the plug, it didn’t feel sudden. It felt scripted. Because when a network silences its clearest voice to protect a business deal, the question stops being, “Why did you cancel him?”

It becomes: “What won’t you cancel next?”

CHAPTER VII: THE PRICE OF CAPITULATION

If this story feels familiar, it’s because it is. The names change. The logos change. The capitulations do not.

Last year, Columbia University—an Ivy League institution that once defined academic independence—faced pressure from the Trump administration over campus protests and speech policies. Rather than stand firm, the university’s leaders struck a conciliatory tone. They tried to appease, to offer just enough cooperation to avoid a fight. It didn’t work.

Trump demanded more. More oversight. More access. A judicial consent decree was floated. Negotiations continue. But the message was clear: show weakness, and you don’t get peace—you get escalation.

That’s how authoritarians operate. They don’t just want compliance. They want precedent. And institutions that compromise their core values for regulatory relief or political survival don’t just lose credibility—they invite takeover.

What happened at Columbia is now happening at CBS.

A network built on journalistic defiance has begun editing itself in real time. It has paid off the president. It has pushed out its newsroom leadership. It has handed over transcripts. And now it has canceled its most visible, most vocal critic of the administration—all while awaiting FCC approval of a merger linked to the president’s allies.

If you think these events are unconnected, you haven’t been paying attention. If you think they’re acceptable, you shouldn’t be in the business.

Because this isn’t about The Late Show. It’s about every newsroom, every university, every publisher and producer who thinks playing it safe will let them keep the lights on.

The lights will stay on. But the truth won’t.

CHAPTER VIII: WHAT WILL YOU STAND FOR WHEN IT COSTS YOU SOMETHING?

Here’s what I think.

I think CBS knew exactly what it was doing. I think it knew the settlement would be seen as a surrender, that canceling Colbert would look like a payoff, and that gutting 60 Minutes would trigger an exodus of institutional trust. I think they did it anyway. And I think they told themselves the same story every crumbling institution tells when it trades courage for convenience: “We didn’t have a choice.”

They did.

They had a choice to fight the lawsuit. They had a choice to stand by their journalists. They had a choice to let Stephen Colbert do what he was hired to do: speak truth, especially when it made the boardroom uncomfortable. They had a choice to remember the house they inherited and the names etched into its foundation.

Instead, they chose the merger.

Maybe it gets approved. Maybe the deal goes through. Maybe the stock goes up. But CBS won’t be the winner. Because when a network spends its credibility to buy silence, it doesn’t matter what the balance sheet says. You’re bankrupt.

There’s still time to stop this slide. But it starts with refusing to normalize what just happened. It starts with saying this isn’t fine. This isn’t neutral. This isn’t business.

This is a warning.

And if your answer is ‘we stayed silent,’ don’t expect history to return the favor.