By Joshua Tyler
| Published
Two of the biggest and most opposite stories in entertainment this week involve the same company: Paramount Global, owners of both Paramount Pictures and CBS television. On the one hand, they’ve cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. On the other hand, they’ve filled a truck with money (some of which probably used to go to Colbert) and given it to South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
In response, the media has become bogged down in bizarre conspiracy theories attributing both decisions to secret government deals or corporate political bias. But the only question anyone should be asking about both is: What took so long?
There’s nothing wrong with The Late Show, except that it’s a show format people stopped watching 10 years ago. The Late Show has no ratings and is a money loser. Not specifically because Colbert is bad, but because talk shows are stupid and no one cares about them. They should all have been permanently cancelled during COVID.
The entire format is ridiculous in a world where celebrities routinely do three-hour, unscripted sit-down podcasts. Watching a celebrity sit awkwardly on a couch and tell a prepared story for three minutes while the host pretends to laugh is now an embarrassing experience.
It made sense when this was the only way for the public to gain access to famous people they admire, but now we have something called Instagram. Watching a talk show would be like giving up TikTok for MySpace.
If there’s an exact opposite to the geriatric and dead talk show format, it’s probably South Park. Though it’s now aging, South Park was always made for the social age. Every episode is a viral meme waiting to happen.
South Park is a multi-media juggernaut. Amazon is full of South Park shirts, video games, action figures, and more weird ancillary related products than anyone can name. Cartman masks have been a top Halloween seller for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, your grandma falls asleep watching Colbert, and when asked about it, confuses him with one of the Jimmys.
Better than South Park are its creators, Parker and Stone. They may be the two most unconventional thinkers in the history of entertainment. Over the course of their careers, they’ve proven they can do anything.
Turn making fun of Mormons into one of the biggest ever Broadway musicals? They did that.
Make a blockbuster action movie using only Marionettes? They did that.
Video games? Music? Books? Deepfake AI startup? Yes, yes, yes, and apparently yes. Trey Parker is now running a restaurant theme park in Colorado, and he made a popular documentary about it. Casa Bonita is a real place, and it really is that awesome.
Stephen Colbert won’t be pulled off the air until 2026. Please note I said AIR because, yes, there are still people watching him on over-the-air broadcast rabbit ears. That’s his demographic.
So tomorrow, Stephen Colbert will put on the same boring suit that looks like the one talk show hosts have been wearing for 50 years, the kind of suit even lawyers stopped wearing ten years ago. Then he’ll tell a few terrible stand-up jokes he didn’t write himself, followed by a cringy skit paid for by a Pharma company, followed by a guest no one knows and who will only be asked boring, safe questions.
He’ll do the same thing again, and again, like he always has, like they always have, until cancellation.
It’s a mockery, a pantomime of a format invented by more creative and motivated people in a different era. People like David Letterman, who, if he were still doing it and in his prime, would have drastically changed the show to keep up with the times.
These current talk show frontmen are creatively bankrupt puppets cashing in on the goodwill left over from geniuses like Letterman and Carson. They are incapable of change, even in this hour of desperation.
So get out of here, Stephen Colbert, you boring sellout. Jimmy Kimmel, you’re next, unless you somehow convince Adam Carolla to come back for a Man Show reunion. It’s long past time to close the book on this entertainment chapter.
Enjoy the $1.5 billion Matt and Trey, you’ve earned it.
