The Last Show with Stephen Colbert
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2026/05/21/the-last-show-with-stephen-colbert/
Tonight is the last night for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I’ll watch it tomorrow on Paramount+. I canceled my annual subscription, which would have renewed in early June.
I never used to be a late night TV watcher. It is a nice format, though. Especially when the news has become such a grind. A friendly face samples the day’s crimes, chews a few bites into a bolus of rage, breaded in wry humor with a tangy glaze of hopeful frustration, and pops it down my exhausted, slack-jawed maw. Between All the Star Treks and Stephen Colbert, the Paramount+ subscription made sense for me. But I have watched All the Star Treks and tomorrow I will have watched All the Colberts.
Thank you for the past decades of entertainment, Stephen Colbert!
I am going to miss you!
Here’s my gripe with how the show has been distributed. I’m not staying up late to watch. I’m not sure I can even get CBS on my antenna. I know we do get NBC because I “stay up late” to watch Saturday Night Live during the national broadcast at 8:30 pm Pacific. If late shows did that … I mean it is pre-recorded anyway … maybe just post the episode to the paid streaming service at air time?
… I wait until the next day. But why, as a paying customer of Paramount+, can I watch clips of the show on YouTube for free tens of hours before I can watch the show on Paramount+? Why the delay? Why? And what I would really really have enjoyed, since the show on Paramount+ has no commercials, why not let me hear the band play through the breaks? I assume that was a hassle with potential royalties if they played covers. “Move On Up” …
On Monday, they did at last let the band play on, by posting a full, un-cut episode, which you can watch for free … on YouTube. The band improvised and jammed and it was wonderful:
