No laughing matter: Colbert exit sparks fears for political satire in America

TOI correspondent from Washington: American late-night television, that unique, risque institution where presidents are mocked, celebrities flattered and the audience applauds on cue, is preparing for a funeral. After 33 years, CBS is pulling the plug on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, with its eponymous host taking his final bow this week – ending not merely a show, but perhaps an era when comedians doubled as the political opposition.

CBS insists the decision is “purely financial,” which, as one wag remarked, may be true in the same way the Titanic had a “water management issue.” According to the network, late-night television is bleeding money in the streaming age, with younger audiences migrating to social media memes, clips, and podcasts hosted by hosts broadcasting from basements and bunkers . Advertising revenues for late-night TV have plunged dramatically in recent years even as production costs have soared.

Yet few in America believe money alone explains the demise of the top-rated late-night franchise. Suspicion hardened after Colbert blasted Paramount Global – CBS’s parent company – for settling a lawsuit brought by President Trump, calling the payout “a big fat bribe” on air. Days later, CBS announced the show’s cancellation as Paramount sought regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance Media amid scuttlebutt that that late night shows had become politically and commercially radioactive.

In MAGA USA, comedians are now treated less like jokesters and more like hostile political actors. Trump has long viewed late-night hosts as enemies, routinely attacking Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers on social media. All three, along with Jon Stewart and John Oliver, have leaned into political satire after Trump’s rise, turning monologues into nightly prosecutorial summations. Critics called it liberal kvetching, but for fans, it was therapy.

As the end approached this week, the late-night fraternity closed ranks with surprising tenderness. Kimmel and Fallon reportedly opted for reruns rather than compete with Colbert’s farewell episode, and they appeared, along with Meyers and Oliver, in a symbolic on-air group hug. They joked that Jon Stewart, who was not with them, was a “designated survivor.” Even David Letterman, the patron saint of sardonic late-night television and Colbert’s predecessor, joined him recently in gleefully tossing CBS office furniture off a rooftop in mock rebellion. American television executives, apparently, can cancel shows – but not their endearing theatrics.

Colbert himself has alternated between gallows humour and visible bitterness, noting with some disbelief that his staff would effectively be cleared out immediately after the final show. And what next for the 62-year-old host? Amid reports that he will be co-writing a Lord of the Rings film with his son Peter, he is also expected to migrate to streaming and podcasting.

India, interestingly, has often featured in Colbert’s comic universe. During Trump-era outsourcing anxieties, he once joked that American jobs were “being sent to a call centre in Bangalore where even the scam calls have better customer service.” He often ribbed Indian-Americans for their academic nous, joking that spelling-bee champions sounded “less like children and more like junior tax consultants.” When PM Modi visited the US, he quipped that Trump and his bonding over big rallies was “the geopolitical version of two DJs comparing crowd sizes.”

But the larger resonance with India may lie elsewhere. As political polarisation deepens globally, comedians on both sides of the world are discovering that satire now comes with legal notices, troll armies, and ideological surveillance. Indian stand-up comics know this pressure intimately from police complaints, cancelled venues, and legal cases. America’s late-nighters are only now discovering what they have long understood: power laughs loudest at jokes aimed downward, not upward. Late-night television once promised Americans catharsis before bedtime. Soon it will be the morning after.