Elon is stuck with Twitter. He over paid and can’t offload it even if he wants too. Plus his ego will never admit to making a mistake in buying it.
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Byron Allen gets the Colbert timeslot
- Thread starter michael hagerty
- Start date
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
He is also well-known for taking that philosophy to an extreme.
When Comics Unlimited had the 1:35am slot after the Late Late Show on the CBS-owned stations, they were repeats of six- and seven-year old shows. And whenever a guest said something topical, it was obvious because the reference was outdated.
He has been running Funny You Should Ask on CBS-owned KCAL/9 here in L.A. for several years now, and he keeps recycling shows from the first few seasons ... including the ones with the late Louis Anderson as one of the panelists. (And again, the dated references become "WTF?" moments.)
I hope CBS has some kind of clause limiting those repeats, or this idea is going to wear out quickly with the audience and the affiliate stations.
Yes. Colbert would've been axed no matter who was in office. The show was losing money. He's not completely responsible, the business underpinnings that really allow for multiple host driven late night shows have greatly eroded. He didn't help matters much by being primarily political either. So here we are.
Nah, Colbert was axed purely to get the merger through.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
No. He was not. You are reading more into this than the facts prove. @umfan is correct; CBS simply cannot afford the expense of doing a late night show from the Ed Sullivan Theater for an audience whose numbers have declined significantly from the days of David Letterman.
Let's assume you're 100% correct, KM. CBS could have rescued the situation by locating a smaller, more intimate theater for the Colbert show to originate in, then sold the Ed Sullivan (which they intend to do anyway). They could have trimmed the house band by a couple of musicians. Shaved the writers' room by a few comedians, trimmed the other departments each by a little, brought the budget into alignment with the economic realities. Colbert is still the #1 late night program in the 11:35 slot, and you don't kill off the golden goose, you give it a haircut (or would that be a feather fluff?) to bring it back into profitability. The idea that some third-rate show that parachutes in from Dayton (or wherever Byron Allen produces it) will do anywhere near as well is exposing CBS to a huge risk.
Once you accept that premise, it becomes difficult to dispute that CBS saw Colbert and his entire team as expendable , the quid-pro-quo for the Ellisons to score their white whale, the much bigger prize.
Essential pull-quote:
“There’s no way it’s even close to that. I know how the finances of late night television shows work and it’s just ridiculous,” he continued. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. So when you hear things that are obviously lies, you have to assume that there are more lies behind it, right? And that’s what I think.”
Jimmy Kimmel Says ‘There’s No Way’ Colbert Is Losing CBS $40 Million a Year: ‘It’s Just Ridiculous’ | Video
Jimmy Kimmel says the idea that Stephen Colbert is losing CBS $40 million a year is "just ridiculous" and "obvious lies"
Unfortunately, that wasn't possible under the terms of the original deal using The Late Show brand.
There was a similar problem for The Late, Late Show. Which is why that show no longer exists with another host.
Do we have the actual budget from CBS for how much the show brings in vs overhead. They own the theatre so they are not paying rent or a lease. Sure they have utilities to pay but I’m sure that is jn their facilities budget for all of their buildings.
Colbert is still number 1 in ratings. So he’s pulling in ad revenue. He is most likely paying his staff off of his show budget. If they cut his budget he would deal with his staff.
To be fair when James Corden took over WWP was not producing the show.
Had the writers strike not happened would TLLS have continued.
CBS pays taxes on the building. The building maintenance people are CBS employees. There's a lot of overhead.
WWP doesn't produce the Colbert show either. But Letterman gets money from the use of the name.
I always thought that WWP licensed the brand from CBS and the network owned the trademark.
It was a co-production that was renegotiated a bunch of times. Letterman has a "created by" credit.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that credit. I’ll have to look for it.
CBS might also be paying mortgage payments on the building. Although they have owned it for a while, like many individuals they may have taken out a 2nd mortgage or other loans using the building as collateral. I would also think the utility bills for s theater and office building can be very high.
If CBS’s deal with Letteman prohibited them from downsizing the show by moving it to a smaller venue, CBS could have tried renegotiating the contract. Letterman may have been agreeable to doing that to saving the show and his licensing fees.
At some point after the show ends I’d expect Colbert to give his take on this.
If CBS’s deal with Letteman prohibited them from downsizing the show by moving it to a smaller venue, CBS could have tried renegotiating the contract. Letterman may have been agreeable to doing that to saving the show and his licensing fees.
At some point after the show ends I’d expect Colbert to give his take on this.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And there is the fact that no one has taken into consideration, even Jimmy Kimmel (who I still watch).
You can crunch the numbers, but if it results in a breach of contract with Worldwide Pants, then you would have to factor whatever settlement to Letterman results.
I think Dave cares just enough about cashing the checks and keeping the deal in force to take legal action on a breach if CBS had been stupid enough to do as @Weiserguy suggested, but also enough of a realist to know that he's been gone for over a decade now and the golden egg-laying goose had to stop laying sometime.
As to the idea of a "smaller, more intimate theater" ... I know zero about NYC and whether such a facility exists, much less one that can be on a semi-permanent lease, is available. And if so, do we know whether the revenue from a show that -- regardless of ranked status -- has declined in audience since Dave left makes such a deal viable?
Whatever they did, it would still be more expensive than the deal they just made with Byron Allen. Nothing is cheaper than that.
You get what you pay for, especially with that guy.
Sure. Minimal income isn't zero. But the point was that a whole show's worth of Colbert revenue can be made up with as little as one 30" spot in prime time or 2-3 in daytime. It is rarely the case that there would be advertisers who *only* spend on The Late Show, so that revenue can be salvaged in many cases.
Not that different than W.R. Hearst or some of the other newspaper magnates of a century ago.
Hearst in particular was known for advocating in his papers for seizing Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain. He used to brag that he was responsible for starting the Spanish-American War. He was at one time a key player in Democratic party politics in New York, and was a backer of William Jennings Bryan, who became the Democrats' nominee for President three times, losing all.
His papers became insolvent in 1937 and he was forced to sell, which largely ended his role in politics. But for a solid 40 years, he used his papers to advocate his political viewpoints.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong with one owner using their playthings, so long as there are other voices. And, circa 1900, there were plenty of newspapers where Hearst did business, in cities like NYC, Chicago and Detroit.
But in the present, there is legitimate concern about the diversity of US media.
Except that the audience, perhaps because of that, is moving towards other things, mainly owned by tech companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Netflix. In the same way that tech companies of the 1920s provided alternatives from Westinghouse, RCA, and GE. Radio companies thought they could buy up the competition. Then all of a sudden, there was competition beyond towers & transmitters.
To me, that's the bigger story about the Colbert situation. The audience for traditional TV networks isn't what it once was.