Colbert's Cancellation - It's Not Political, Our Culture is Fraying

Outrage over Stephen Colbert's cancellation is omnipresent over social media. For me, it's yet another reminder that I really do need something in my life to get my blood boiling. Why didn't I get up this morning, tell my son that breakfast and getting him to school are on hold because I need my indignation to be cemented on X? 

Granted, I don't watch "The Late Show," but 2.4 million people do on most nights. That sounds like a respectable number, until you put it into context.   

• 2.4 million people are less than 1% of the country. It’s also a much smaller fraction of Johnny Carson’s viewership at a time when the country was considerably smaller
• Digging deeper, Colbert's audience has plummeted more than 30% in the past five years, registering just 9% of the coveted 18-49 demographic.
• "The Late Show" costs just north of $100 million a year to produce and lost $40 million last year. 

Figures and facts like these appear to be all management would need to warrant a major move. The political angle aside, as Americans (and the world over), we tune into commonly watched shows or events less and less as the years pass. Twenty years ago, a Saturday Night Live skit would engender raucous conversations at the office coffee lounge. Granted, the Super Bowl, to some extent, still draws in viewers from varied demographics, but the only thing I could conjure up over the last couple of weeks that has "connected" people across age, race, gender, socio-economic status, etc was the Coldplay kiss-cam couple.

Yet, that exact event, twenty years ago, would have a sizeable group of the nation eagerly awaiting Conan O'Brien, David Letterman, or Jay Leno's take on the event that evening. In 2025, X, TikTok, YouTube, etc, churn out memes instantaneously that we all share and re-post, but do so in a siloed fashion, and worse yet, is "old news" by the time we get to the coffee lounge at work.

I have admittedly fallen into the same algorithm hole as many others. I won't lose sleep over the cancellation of "The Late Show," but I am concerned when a culture's connectivity threads begin to fray.