Curtains down: Stephen Colbert bows out of 'Late Show' after Trump pressure • FRANCE 24 English

[0:00] now hey what about me thank god you're here and he needs you the most we came to say we're gonna [0:12] miss you late night is not gonna be the same without you and there it is we have the curtain [0:37] coming down on uh the tv host steven colbert's the late show on cbs doug a big moment for american [0:45] television going out with a bang paul mccartney turning out the lights on manhattan's ed solvin [0:50] theater uh look you know the new york times chief television critic uh he basically quipped the end [0:55] of an era but maybe the era ended him him being stephen colbert um when future historians look [1:03] perhaps for exhibit a a singular moment um as evidence of donald trump's full frontal assault [1:09] on u.s democracy they might look no further than this moment the final episode the swan song the [1:16] cancellation by cbs uh the owner of the of the late show the network on which it ran for uh 33 years [1:23] 11 of which stephen colbert was the host um they might see this moment as sort of seminal as a real [1:29] marker in the in the media landscape under trump and why do i say that um stephen colbert yeah there are [1:36] many late night uh show hosts in the u.s it's a phenomenon in the u.s there's a whole galaxy of [1:41] them but his star shone especially bright and the reason is because he really redefined the genre of [1:46] political satire he started out way back when uh in the days when uh basically he satirized politics [1:54] but in this era it's more like politics has started to satirize itself um he started out with a show on [2:00] cable news called the colbert report in which he played a character called stephen colbert who was [2:05] not himself it was supposed to be a conservative commentator who was really this bombastic right [2:10] wing blowhard who basically was mocking um what he called truthiness it's this sense of the truth [2:18] is really more about what feels right than what is actually factually right and true um and he evolved [2:24] from there and he ended up taking over the late show from a man who had the the spot for 22 years [2:29] david letterman he took it over in 2015 and colbert's coming to the helm of the of the late show [2:35] coincided with another man coming to the helm power that was donald trump going up that escalator first [2:41] in manhattan and so the trajectories in a sense really coincided what colbert the reason he struck [2:47] a note a note with so many americans beyond partisanship it's because he was as one person put [2:54] it he had a unique ability to be human he brought a sort of compassion and empathy it wasn't [2:59] a nastiness uh to the air it wasn't vainglory it wasn't about himself and people really felt [3:05] connected in a very fragmented media age as a lot of the critics put it um where people were [3:10] disconnected they no longer had a gathering spot anymore everyone's in their own little uh media [3:15] bubbles colbert still offered that sort of platform where he didn't just uh comment on politics and [3:21] culture but as one critic put it he expanded uh the space of what could be said there so he was really [3:28] an amalgamation of so many different things and i'll just i just want to give our viewers this one [3:33] thing he was interviewed by the new york times and he was asked about the partisanship the fact that he [3:38] was just a partisan this anti-trump partisan and i want them to see this is what he told the new york [3:43] times he always rejected the partisan label um what he says um he said i don't have any problem with trump [3:48] being a republican i have a problem with trump being a complete narcissist who's only working for his [3:54] own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns that is not a partisan position [3:58] so he rejected uh a lot of the critics who just said this is about the far left media and people [4:04] like stephen colbert taking it over this was really about right now a pivotal moment right now and the [4:09] question going forward is after colbert's exit will there be room for anyone like a colbert cbs doesn't [4:14] have a late show anymore it's replacing with something that's very dissimilar and so suspicious [4:20] timing doug this uh cancellation of the late show a lot of people not accepting the official reason [4:25] given by cbs many people including some of the the big tv critics in america who very closely have [4:31] followed the industry look look at the timing you know a lot of people actually did a timeline of [4:36] the timing of what it is when cbs announced and this was last july that it was that it was going to [4:40] cancel the late show after 33 years but especially after 11 years of colbert of colbert uh the reason [4:47] they found this timing suspicious the announcement came just three days after uh stephen colbert had [4:53] used a monologue on his show to ruthless ruthlessly mock paramount's 16 billion dollar uh settled million [5:02] dollar excuse billion would be amazing 16 million dollar legal settlement with paramount cbs's parent [5:07] company at the time paramount was going through an acquisition um and it needed approval from the trump [5:13] administration so it was a week before paramount it's eight billion dollar merger with skydance and [5:20] that was approved by federal regulators the federal communications commission a trump body so a lot [5:25] of people see this cancellation of this show and booting stephen colbert off the air as a lot of people [5:30] see it as just a confirmation that right now a lot of the corporate moguls in america and cbs's parent [5:36] company are doing the bidding of trump in the name of endearing themselves to this administration [5:40] they're getting all the people off the air that trump doesn't like critical voices dissenting voices [5:45] voices for open and free speech and extra space but this isn't just a u.s phenomenon some people say [5:51] that we're seeing such tendencies elsewhere in europe as well in france let's bring it right home here [5:56] to france absolutely the u.s is not in a media bubble of its own in the same what we're seeing here in [6:01] france is a lot of uh sort of right-wing far-right politics are now fusing in a sense with a lot of the [6:09] corporate interests and and one of the big names right now in the french media landscape is uh is [6:14] the ultra conservative uh billionaire vincent bolleray he has an empire which he's been sort of [6:19] building up in media and other empire but it includes uh big french media outlets such as europe one [6:24] such as uh the biggest sunday uh weekly paper also say news which is sort of like a fox news a french [6:31] equivalent to fox news and they say that more and more a lot of these media uh institutions are being [6:36] influenced by right-wing far-right populist politics in france similar tendencies to what we're seeing [6:42] thank you doug that's all we have