{"id":11462,"date":"2025-07-18T21:21:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/scarborough-suggests-something-is-fishy-with-colberts-late-show-cancellation\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T21:21:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T21:21:24","slug":"scarborough-suggests-something-is-fishy-with-colberts-late-show-cancellation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/scarborough-suggests-something-is-fishy-with-colberts-late-show-cancellation\/","title":{"rendered":"Scarborough suggests something is fishy with Colbert&#8217;s &#8216;Late Show&#8217; cancellation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-testid=\"byline-container\">\n<div data-testid=\"byline-thumbnail\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/hayley-miller-ncpn1277202\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2024_45\/3668003\/miller.jpg\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p><time datetime=\"Fri Jul 18 2025 14:05:35 GMT+0000 (UTC)\" data tests=\"timestamp__datePublished\" itemprop=\"datePublished\" content=\"2025-07-18T14:05:35.000Z\">July 18, 2025, 9:57 AM EDT<span>\/<\/span>Updated&nbsp;July 18, 2025, 10:05 AM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n<p><meta data-testid=\"timestamp__datePublished--meta\" itemprop=\"datePublished\" content=\"2025-07-18T13:57:15.000Z\"><meta data-testid=\"timestamp__dateModified--meta\" itemprop=\"dateModified\" content=\"2025-07-18T14:05:35.000Z\"><\/div>\n<p data-testid=\"byline\">By <span data-testid=\"byline-name\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/hayley-miller-ncpn1277202\">Hayley Miller<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p id=\"anchor-d35b87\">CBS announced Thursday that it will air its final season of &ldquo;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert&rdquo; next year, and BLN&rsquo;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/texas-flood-response-greg-abbott-football-rcna218000\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Scarborough<\/a> finds the timing to be especially curious.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-4e6f2d\">Though the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2023\/04\/28\/late-night-tv-corden-ratings-decline\" target=\"_blank\">economics of late-night talk shows<\/a> are &ldquo;making less and less sense&rdquo; for TV networks, the timing of Colbert&rsquo;s cancellation is &ldquo;very bad,&rdquo; Scarborough said on Friday.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-2c9fe3\">The &ldquo;Morning Joe&rdquo; co-host pointed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/rachel-maddow-show\/maddowblog\/paramount-settles-trump-cbs-news-60-minutes-lawsuit-rcna203667\" target=\"_blank\">the recent settlement<\/a> CBS&rsquo; parent company, Paramount, agreed to with Donald Trump in a lawsuit he filed over a 2024 &ldquo;60 Minutes&rdquo; interview with then-Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Colbert had denounced the settlement on his show, calling it a &ldquo;big fat bribe&rdquo; as Paramount seeks to merge with Skydance &mdash; a move that requires Trump administration approval.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-6a71bf\">&ldquo;It&rsquo;s terrible because you had the settlement with Donald Trump and then you had Colbert and Jon Stewart criticizing that decision, and then a week later, they&rsquo;re saying, &lsquo;Oh, unfortunately, we don&rsquo;t have the money to continue this,&rsquo;&rdquo; Scarborough said on Friday&rsquo;s episode of &ldquo;Morning Joe.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-d0496e\">&ldquo;You can make that economic argument, but that economic argument should have been made weeks before this or should have been made a couple months down the road,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;This just makes it look completely connected with the &lsquo;60 Minutes&rsquo; settlement.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-7fbc73\">In a statement Thursday, top Paramount and CBS executives said the cancellation &ldquo;is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show&rsquo;s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-3ad3ac\">Still, many of Colbert&rsquo;s supporters were skeptical, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-76f75d\">&ldquo;CBS canceled Colbert&rsquo;s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump &mdash; a deal that looks like bribery,&rdquo; she <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SenWarren\/status\/1946003619821580369\" target=\"_blank\">wrote on social media<\/a>. &ldquo;America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-9fce17\">On Friday morning, Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/114874392904679623\" target=\"_blank\">expressed glee on Truth Social<\/a> over the &ldquo;Late Show&rdquo; cancellation. &ldquo;I absolutely love that Colbert&rsquo; [sic] got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-a9537e\">&ldquo;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,&rdquo; which premiered 10 years ago, is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/07\/17\/arts\/television\/stephen-colbert-late-show-fans.html\" target=\"_blank\">most watched<\/a> show in late-night television.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-09ee9e\"><em>You can watch Scarborough&rsquo;s remarks about the cancellation in the clip at the top of the page.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-activity-map=\"expanded-byline-article-bottom\">\n<div data-testid=\"byline-thumbnail\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/hayley-miller-ncpn1277202\" tabindex=\"-1\"><picture data-testid=\"picture\"><source media=\"(min-width: 320px)\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-60x60,f_auto,q_auto:best\/newscms\/2024_45\/3668003\/miller.jpg\" alt height=\"48\" width=\"48\"><\/source><\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n<p><span data-testid=\"byline-name\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/author\/hayley-miller-ncpn1277202\">Hayley Miller<\/a><\/span><span><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/hayleymiller01\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span><\/span><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/mailto:hayley.miller@nbcuni.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Hayley Miller is the senior blog editor for BLN. Previously, she was a senior reporter on HuffPost&#8217;s breaking news team. Before she was a reporter, she was a senior editor on HuffPost&#8217;s blog team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/top-stories\/latest\/colbert-late-show-cancellation-cbs-trump-morning-joe-rcna219456\" class=\"button purchase\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 18, 2025, 9:57 AM EDT\/Updated&nbsp;July 18, 2025, 10:05 AM EDT By Hayley Miller CBS announced Thursday that it will air its final season of &ldquo;The Late Show with Stephen Colbert&rdquo; next year, and BLN&rsquo;s Joe Scarborough finds the timing to be especially curious. Though the economics of late-night talk shows are &ldquo;making less and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}