As Frontiers Are Opening, Protestants Must Act
Stephen Colbert’s cancellation might have been the first time he made David Letterman laugh. News of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert being shelved—not just Colbert getting canned but the entire Late Show franchise being shut down—is yet another sign of our political and cultural realignment continuing apace. For Protestants, this is not simply another insider media industry story we can safely ignore: the fall of a key member of the late-night Resistance signals the opening of a new frontier that we must take full advantage of.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this news is that CBS made the right decision. Though Colbert and his backers in the media would have you believe his dismissal is more retribution from Donald Trump after Paramount gave him $16 million to settle a lawsuit over manipulative editing of a 60 Minutes interview featuring Kamala Harris, that’s pure cope.
It’s being reported that Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks made the decision to cancel The Late Show after months of discussions among top executives. The show costs $100 million per year to make and has over 200 staff members—but it loses an astonishing $40 million every year. (The Late Late Show With James Corden was cancelled in 2023 after losing $20 million a year.) This comes as David Rhodes, the brother of Obama administration official Ben Rhodes and the former head of CBS News, is in talks to return when (or if) the sale of Paramount to Skydance, a California-based media company, is completed.
Savvy observers have rightly noticed that evangelicals always seem to be 10 years behind the times. But the legacy media is in a far worse condition. And late-night hosts are perhaps the most blind to current realities.
They and their media lackeys act as though their contracts and shows are written directly into the First Amendment, and that even a rumor of cancellation is an attack on democracy. But the people have clearly spoken: streamers on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms get far, far more views than The Late Show’s paltry 2.5 million viewers per night. Even worse, the average age of its audience is 68—beyond retirement age.
Late night, of course, has a history in America going back before the Boomers, but it is a world that the Boomers and their heirs have shaped decisively for decades, for better or worse. After all, as Aaron Renn has astutely noted, “we [are] living in the shadow of the Boomers.”
Although the current crop of hosts is almost all from Generation X, Jon Stewart, the only major Boomer late-night host left, has been a major influence on them. The Colbert Report, which poked fun at Fox News and was based around a humorous caricature of Bill O’Reilly, got its start through the Stewart-anchored Daily Show. But unlike the sunny, affable—and humorous—elements that once suffused late-night shows of previous decades, Stewart helped unleash cynicism and ideological politicization that has slowly morphed into the abolition of comedy altogether for nightly in-kind donations to the Democratic Party.
Since taking over for the beloved David Letterman, Colbert has become a court jester for the regime. His monologues regularly devolve into a one-sided Punch and Judy show—where one character (Trump and his voters) is always getting clobbered. They are usually rage-fueled political rants, sometimes laden with expletives, that are a terrible public witness for someone who has claimed Christ.
Colbert, along with fellow host Jimmy Kimmel, has essentially ceased doing comedy altogether. Rather than using humor to skewer the pretensions of the establishment, Colbert works on behalf of the establishment to attack its enemies and keep its phalanxes marching in perfect formation. He hosts “stars” like the tedious Senator Adam Schiff and other dreadful liberal luminaries who have nothing to offer but hot takes on the president. And when Colbert’s not doing politics, he takes part in cringeworthy skits like the infamous dancing needles during the COVID pandemic.
The Late Show’s demise shows some stress fractures in the Boomer world. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reports that ad revenue for all the late-night shows has dropped 50%, or around $200 million, since 2018. Other Boomer totems like CNN will likely no longer be around by 2035, or even sooner.
Political talk radio has rapidly diminished with the death of Rush Limbaugh, but new voices have risen on different platforms that have an even bigger reach. And like Rush, they have their finger on the pulse of American politics and culture in a way that Rush’s peers who are still trudging along simply do not possess.
All of this should be a signal to Protestants that now is the time to build—a time to ground our efforts in the solid traditions, theology, and practices of the historic church. As the old things are falling away, vistas are opening for a new Protestant elite class that can have real influence on the country. Protestants should look to renovate existing institutions and create new ones that seek to have the kind of impact on our civil life as our great Protestant founding fathers and others throughout the history of America.
In an important speech at the Reindustrialize Summit in Detroit earlier this month, Michael Needham, the Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, argued, “We need that swashbuckling American spirit that does what must be done and does not take no for an answer—it neither asks for permission nor begs for forgiveness.” Protestants must take this message to heart. We need to be able to deliver wisdom and guide new generations in ways that confront the chief challenges of our day.
“The time for timidity has long since passed,” said Needham. “Small groups of audacious men built our nation. Now, it falls to us to reindustrialize it—and in doing so, to carve out a new American century.” Protestants should be the ones leading the charge.
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