Shakedown Street
- Liam F.
- Jul 22
- 8 min read
Late night television used to be the heart of the TV Guide. For most, legends like Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno were the only voices one would allow into their bedrooms at eleven-thirty on a weeknight. The people who helped birth the careers of Jerry Seinfeld, Norm Macdonald and Louis C.K.. Passing the torch down to Conan and the Jimmys with the intent of keeping the American staple as such.
Unfortunately, because of the unwinnable competition for people’s attention, the COVID pandemic and other broadcast TV headwinds, the format is dying a slow death. What once was is no longer. Kimmel takes long vacations, Fallon is only on four nights a week and Seth Myers had to can his band.
Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart, you just gotta poke around. Taking a look at Letterman’s brainchild on CBS, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert just completed another ratings book at the top, something he’s steadily done in his timeslot for years. (At least since Fox News’ Gutfeld moved to the 10p slot in 2023)
On Thursday, Colbert announced the show will end in May of 2026.
Statement from Paramount Global:
"This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,"
"Our admiration, affection, and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult," -- Paramount Co-CEO and CBS CEO George Cheeks, CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach and CBS Studios President David Stapf
So now there’s nothing shakin’ on CBS. Will there just be paid programming directly after the local news? Reruns of The Late Show? The Price is Right?
For now, no one knows. But it’s very understandable that Paramount is forced to make tough “financial decisions." They just settled a $16 million lawsuit.
$16 million is a lot of money! Surely there can be no ulterior motives. Let’s ask Stephen Colbert what he thinks about the settlement. He’s a company guy, he knows what's up. What do you think, Stephen?
“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended,” he said. “And I don’t know if anything will ever repair my trust in this company. But just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16m would help.”
“You may take our money, but you will never take our dignity. You may, however, purchase our dignity for the low, low price of $16m. We need the cash.”
“I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles, it’s a big fat bribe.”
-- Colbert’s Full Monologue from Monday, July 14
Three days later, Colbert announced the end of The Late Show. Just when you think you’ve seen this town clear through.
Paramount Global is in the midst of an $8 Billion merger with Skydance Media. Since CBS owns television stations that fall under FCC regulations, they must get approval from the FCC before the deal can go through. The president selects their own FCC chair and in the case of Brendan Carr, he’s a Trump loyalist who has already waged attacks on CBS.
Former 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft called the settlement a “shakedown” on The Daily Show. Any other word wouldn’t do the situation justice.
And now, the cancellation of The Late Show just proves that. Unlike The Tonight Show or Late Night, there were no preliminary cost cutting measures taken. All reporting indicates that Colbert was never asked to take a pay cut, tape one less show a week or anything related to easing the reported $40 million loss the show took this year.
That is a lot of money. However, smoke doesn’t just appear out of thin air. There usually has to be a fire to generate it.
The Trump lawsuit was never meant to be settled. This was the original statement from 60 Minutes when the suit was filed last October:
Former President Donald Trump's repeated claims against 60 Minutes are false.
• The interview was not doctored; and
• 60 Minutes did not hide any part of Vice President Kamala Harris's answer to the question at issue.
60 Minutes fairly presented the interview to inform the viewing audience, and not to mislead it. The lawsuit Trump has brought today against CBS is completely without merit and we will vigorously defend against it.
Scholars called it “frivolous and dangerous,” and unlike the lawsuit Trump filed against ABC and George Stephanopoulos, there wasn’t really any ground to stand on.
Sidebar: The ABC suit was a sham too. If what Stephanopoulos said was truly defamatory, by that standard Bongino and Patel are also liable for anything false they spread about Jeffery Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell, since the FBI now affirms there is no list.
So CBS isn’t the only guilty party, Disney bent the knee too. Amazon hasn’t been mentioned yet, but they agreed to finance and produce a Melania documentary.
Why is that important? Well for starters, no one asked for it. Secondly, it came after a dinner at Mar-A-Lago where Jeff Bezos joined the then president-elect and promised a $1 million donation to Trump's inauguration. Just a few weeks later, the documentary was announced. Amazon reportedly paid $40 million for the project.
Trump has instilled some ridiculous level of fear into big tech and now media executives. Mark Zuckerberg was once a critic, but now he’s a donor. Big tech’s influence on information and public discourse might be even more impactful than what the legacy media currently provides.
So what’s the point in getting wrapped up in the ABC, CBS and Colbert stuff?
It’s because of what the legacy media represents. What once was the beacon for truth and unbiased information, CBS was the home of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, two of the most revered newsmen ever. 60 Minutes was the final representation of a lost art. Now, the president believes it’s an “enemy of the people.”
In April, the executive producer of the show Bill Owens resigned after he said he “would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.” A producer of 60 Minutes said this to CNN’s Jake Tapper:
“It‘s like a guy who has been battling for months against an attack,” they said. “He sacrificed himself hoping it might make our corporate overlords wake up and realize they risk destroying what makes 60 Minutes great.” -- An anonymous 60 Minutes producer
The President of CBS News Wendy McMahon resigned as well, reportedly due to how much she opposed a settlement. The writing was on the wall months ago.
Last week, two major developments in Trump’s attempt to control or totally shut down legacy media companies took place. One may have been a massive blunder.
We’ll start with the one we saw coming: just after midnight Friday, Congress passed a $9 billion cut in public media funding and foreign aid. This is an attempt to “end taxpayer subsidization of biased media,” in the White House’s words.
What Trump is unable to understand is that only 1% of funding goes directly to NPR, while PBS gets 15%. The majority of the money goes to local and rural stations at risk. The same people who will be losing Medicaid and SNAP benefits from the Big Beautiful Bill might also lose their local news coverage.
What does that mean? The next time a giant flood hits rural Texas, because of inadequate funding, people won’t have any idea of what to do, because the message can’t get out. Local stations carry the Emergency Alert System, which in emergencies, provides evacuation orders and instructions transmitted to both television and radio stations.
Cell service is nowhere near as reliable as terrestrial radio in emergency situations. Without funding however, local stations are doomed. What would come from that in the event of a natural disaster?
But to Trump, it’s the destruction of everything he opposes. The truth. Unfortunately for him, now the truth might be the thing that takes him down.
On Thursday night, the Wall Street Journal published an exclusive article about a birthday letter Trump sent to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. It contained the outline of a naked woman with an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein inside.
For the sake of my own embarrassment, I’m not going to write what Trump wrote. You can read it yourself, but be ready for the heebie jeebies.
In response, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the paper, its owner, and Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, as well as the article’s two writers, Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo. Trump is already thinking ahead, saying he “looks forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify.”
One problem: Trump is alleging the entire story is false. So Trump must turn over his records and, yes, likely testify proving that he and Epstein never had a relationship and that he never wrote the letter.
That, if the suit gets that far. This is a litmus test for where the government’s full fledged war against the media is. If it’s settled and Trump gets another donation to his presidential library, we might be doomed.
But Rupert Murdoch is still in control of the Republican mouthpiece, Fox News. Unlike what its name implies, Fox News is not news. Murdoch basically admitted that during the Dominion Voting System lawsuit. If they need to take an editorial turn against Trump, they likely will. Murdoch still signs the paychecks, not Trump.
Murdoch wouldn’t have allowed the Journal to publish it without coming to the definitive conclusion that Trump wrote the letter. Trump said “I don’t draw pictures,” but auctioned sketches suggest otherwise.
It was also reported that Trump called Murdoch prior to the release to try and stop it from coming out. Obviously that didn’t work. So the favor seems to sit with Murdoch.
Unlike most situations, Trump won’t get the benefit of the doubt from the base. The MAGA crowd is fractured by the Epstein issue. For the first time in ten years, he has a true crisis on his hands. Lest we forget he’s a convicted felon and incited a riot at the Capitol in that span.
An issue that hardcore MAGA “conservatives” have been obsessed with is the Jeffrey Epstein case. The island has been talked about for over a decade and Trump helped fuel that.
So either the justice system and the freedom of the press prevails, or, we have a real problem on our hands. In a true act of defiance, the owner of the biggest and most recognizable Republican propaganda machines allowed the publishing of a giant hit piece against the party’s leader.
But like how Bezos caved on displaying tariff prices on Amazon, CBS and Paramount caved on their fight against Trump’s suit, Murdoch and the Journal may just end up settling. There are even more examples of legacy brands bending the knee to Trump and his demands.
Google, Target, McDonald’s and loads of other companies have rolled back DEI programs under the second administration. Almost a dozen law firms have made deals with Trump for pro bono work to help defend the president.
No one likes ringing alarm bells. No one wants to say that we’re barreling towards authoritarianism faster and faster by the day. But what else is there to say? What can you say when the legacy media is settling phony lawsuits with a sitting president?
Trump is one phone call away from making executive decisions for any company he wants. Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, but that didn’t stop Trump from getting his Cheeto dust on their site. It’s not that cut and dry for Amazon and other companies just yet, but the government’s “golden share” of the new U.S. Steel-Nippon Steel partnership shows where his mind is really at. As much control as humanly possible.
So will this WSJ suit spell the end of Trump’s era of extortion? Or is this just the next location on Shakedown Street?
Well, well, well, you can never tell.
