Fellow late night host and former TV executive Andy Cohen is calling out CBS for abruptly pulling the plug on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying the network’s actions suggest more than a budget crunch.
On Monday morning’s episode of his SiriusXM show Andy Cohen Live, Cohen questioned both the timing and CBS’s explanation for canceling its top-rated late-night franchise, pointing to alternatives the network could’ve pursued.
“So suddenly this show is losing $40 million a year and they’re gonna cancel it,” Cohen said. “Typically what would happen if a show is losing money that is also super important to the network… what they would probably do is say, ‘Listen, Stephen, your show is losing X amount of money a year. There’s two things we could do. We could cut the budget in half… maybe move out of the Ed Sullivan Theater, do the show in a small studio.’”
“Cut down on staff,” he added. “You have 200 people working here. We need it to be 100 or 60. And instead of you doing your show five days a week, we’re gonna do your show four days… pre-tape your Thursday show, so you’re actually in production three days a week. That’s a way right there to cut the budget at least in half.”
“As opposed to saying out of nowhere, as [Colbert] portrayed it, they called him in and said, ‘Your show’s losing money. We’re canceling it in a year,’” Cohen said. “Instead, they’re turning the lights out completely at 11:30, which says to me… CBS is just cooked. I mean, it is cooked. They are saying, ‘We are done.’”
Cohen, who hosts his own late-night show on Bravo, Watch What Happen Live with Andy Cohen, has made more than a dozen appearances on Colbert’s Late Show over the years. He joins a growing list of late-night peers and industry figures reacting to the show’s cancellation, including Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, and John Oliver.
Hear Cohen’s full remarks in the clip at the top of this post.
Get stories like this in your inbox: Sign up for LateNighter’s free daily newsletter.
