{"id":123,"date":"2026-05-27T13:12:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=123"},"modified":"2026-05-27T13:12:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:12:32","slug":"stephen-colbert-gets-the-last-laugh-on-cbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Colbert gets the last laugh on CBS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Donald Trump prematurely took a victory lap to celebrate Stephen Colbert\u2019s ouster from CBS. On Friday, the president posted an artificial intelligence-generated video from the official White House account featuring Trump grabbing Colbert from his late-show set and throwing him into a large dumpster while dancing to the Village People\u2019s \u201cY.M.C.A.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Trump will regret endorsing Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cColbert is finally finished at CBS. Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person,\u201d Trump <\/span>wrote on Truth Social<\/span>. \u201cYou could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he\u2019s finally gone!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But less than 24 hours after signing off on his 11-year run as host of CBS\u2019s late-night broadcast, Colbert <\/span>returned<\/span> for a guest appearance on \u201cOnly in Monroe,\u201d the community access show broadcast in southeast Michigan, which he <\/span>memorably hosted<\/span> shortly before taking the reins of \u201cThe Late Show\u201d from David Letterman in 2015.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV,\u201d Colbert said on Friday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Colbert\u2019s \u201cOnly in Monroe\u201d guest appearance was chaotic and funny and warm in a way that no corporate product can be. He crackled with the energy of someone who had nothing left to lose and a great deal left to say.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The episode became an instant viral phenomenon online, featuring appearances from Jack White, Jeff Daniels, Steve Buscemi, Byron Allen and Eminem, who appeared as \u201cMarshall, the Fire Marshal\u201d to authorize burning down the set. Colbert\u2019s \u201cOnly in Monroe\u201d guest appearance was chaotic and funny and warm in a way that no corporate product can be. He crackled with the energy of someone who had nothing left to lose and a great deal left to say. One single bootleg upload by <\/span>independent journalist Matthew Keys<\/span> amassed well over 600,000 views in a matter of hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then Paramount sent the copyright lawyers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the weekend, the media giant began mass-blocking every single reupload of the \u201cOnly in Monroe\u201d episode worldwide. The blocks targets independent, verified journalists and everyday people alike who were merely sharing a public-access broadcast.<\/span><\/p>\n

A CBS spokesperson rushed to the defense of the network\u2019s censorship apparatus, giving <\/span>statements to industry trade publications<\/span> like Variety and Deadline, claiming that CBS Studios had actually financed and secretly produced the public-access episode in collaboration with Monroe Community Media. \u201cAs is our regular practice, we send copyright notices to unauthorized websites that post copyrighted content from CBS and our network\/studio talent,\u201d the spokesperson asserted, insisting the copyright enforcement was simply routine intellectual-property protection.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that explanation raised more questions than it answered. Nothing in the broadcast identified CBS or Paramount as producers. There was no corporate copyright message at the end of the hour; instead, an independent, Chicago-based studio was listed as the production company. Colbert also spent much of the episode openly mocking Paramount and CBS in ways that strongly suggested they were not exactly thrilled with the project. So viewers were understandably skeptical that the corporation had lovingly funded an anti-corporate guerrilla comedy special only to immediately suppress its circulation online.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more You\u2019ve been trying to get around Amazon \u2013 but it\u2019s not that easy<\/a><\/p>\n

After a backlash erupted, CBS quickly retreated, announcing it would \u201cwaive further enforcement\u201d pending additional review.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: They got caught.<\/span><\/p>\n

Media consolidation has made American entertainment extraordinarily vulnerable to political intimidation. So when a handful of conglomerates control news divisions, broadcast networks, streaming platforms, movie studios and telecommunications infrastructure simultaneously, political pressure applied in one area quickly infects every other division.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Paramount, the parent company of CBS, was seeking approval for an $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media \u2014 a deal that required a green light from Trump\u2019s Federal Communications Commission \u2014\u00a0David Ellison, Skydance\u2019s chief executive, met personally with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and promised that CBS would embrace \u201cvaried ideological perspectives\u201d under his watch. Trump, meanwhile, had filed a lawsuit against CBS over its \u201c60 Minutes\u201d editing of a 2024 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, a lawsuit the network itself had previously called \u201ccompletely without merit.\u201d In the spring of 2025, Paramount settled that lawsuit for $16 million, payable to Trump\u2019s future presidential library. Shortly thereafter, the FCC approved the Skydance merger. And just days after Colbert called that settlement \u201ca big fat bribe\u201d on his own show, CBS announced it was canceling \u201cThe Late Show.\u201d For financial reasons, they said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The new regime brought in David Rhodes, a longtime Rupert Murdoch lieutenant, and Bari Weiss, editor of the Free Press, as part of the Tiffany Network\u2019s ideological renovation. CBS News president Wendy McMahon resigned, saying publicly that \u201cthe company and I do not agree on the path forward.\u201d The longtime executive producer of \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d Bill Owens, had already walked out the door, saying he had \u201clost the independence that honest journalism requires.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The irony is that the attempt to silence Colbert appears to have dramatically amplified him instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

His final \u201cLate Show\u201d episode drew 6.74 million viewers, reportedly the most-watched weeknight broadcast of his tenure. The Monroe appearance then ricocheted across the internet with the kind of viral intensity traditional late-night television has not generated in years. If CBS wanted to erase him from the corporate media machine, Colbert would simply route around the machine itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a textbook Streisand effect. The harder CBS tried to contain the moment, the bigger it became.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Arkansas\u2019 abortion ban made a life-threatening miscarriage worse<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBS filed copyright notices against Colbert’s viral “Only in Monroe” comeback. It backfired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[208,63,5,249,250,215,251,252,253,60],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-analysis","tag-cbs","tag-donald-trump","tag-federal-communications-commission","tag-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-media","tag-paramount","tag-paramount-skydance","tag-skydance","tag-stephen-colbert"],"yoast_head":"\nStephen Colbert gets the last laugh on CBS - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=123\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stephen Colbert gets the last laugh on CBS - Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"CBS filed copyright notices against Colbert's viral "Only in Monroe" comeback. 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