It's a LONG way down from Stephen Colbert to his replacement

Friends,

I watched Stephen Colbert’s last The Late Show episode last night with a mixture of laughter, sadness and anger — anger at the cowardly and craven executives of CBS and its new corporate owner, Skydance. And at Skydance’s robber-baron, Trump suck-ups Larry and David Ellison.

CBS says they canceled Colbert for financial reasons, which is utter bullshit (they made gobs of money from selling the show to affiliates). They canceled because they wanted to sell the network to Skydance and worried that Trump would block the deal unless they got rid of Colbert, who Trump despised because Colbert has been a courageous Trump critic.

Colbert hosted more than 1,800 episodes of The Late Show after taking over the mantle from David Letterman. This week Letterman called CBS’s decision to cancel Colbert a “huge mistake.”

To add insult to this corrupt injury, CBS is putting Byron Allen into Colbert’s 11:35 pm time slot.

Never heard of Byron Allen? Well, besides being a self-described comic, Allen is also a billionaire media mogul who owns the Weather Channel, BuzzFeed, and the HuffPost.

Allen promises that his late-night humor on CBS won’t be “political” — that is, he won’t skewer Trump. He won’t even mention Trump. Allen claims that “people are totally good with not doing political humor. They just want to watch. For me, I don’t care who you vote for and I’m not trying to push an agenda. You’re going to vote for who you want to vote for. Just show up if you want to laugh.” For Allen, it’s just about making money: “This is business show, not show business. You have got to make the numbers work.”

CBS executives claim the deal will provide “immediate profitability” for the network.*

Well, duh. That’s because CBS won’t be paying Allen. Allen will ignominiously be paying CBS for Colbert’s time slot; CBS will “lease” Colbert’s time slot to Allen, and Allen will pocket whatever advertising revenue the show brings in.

Going from Colbert’s trenchant satire of America’s first dictator to billionaire media mogul Byron Allen’s jejune rental agreement is a stunning comedown. It’s also a perfect manifestation of an era in our nation’s history when greed and power have merged into a huge force that’s collaborating with authoritarianism. (For further evidence, look at Jeff Bezos’s insistence that his Washington Post not editorialize against Trump.)

Allen’s rental agreement is also an example of how the media is rapidly shifting from a public-centered model of broadcasting to a privatized anyone-rich-enough model.

That public-centered model was hardly ideal. I’m old enough to remember when, in 1961, then FCC commissioner Newt Minnow castigated TV broadcasters for prioritizing profits over public service. Minnow said that if the media executives watched an entire broadcast day without distractions, they’d observe a "vast wasteland" filled with game shows, mindless violence, formulaic westerns, and endless commercials.

Newt Minow would be turning in his grave if he saw his vast wasteland turn into an arm of neofascist capitalism.

• I strongly suggest you boycott Byron Allen’s show. Hell, boycott CBS.