“When the witch-hunt has begun and we gather around the funeral pyre, it’s the curse of a cancel culture. No way for adequate defense. On the streets it’s dog eats dog, crucified and banned.” From Cancel Culture, written by Ralf Scheepers, Magnus Karlsson, Mat Sinner, and Thomas Naumann Philipp.

You may have heard CBS cancelled The Late Show Starring Stephen Colbert. They did so two days after Colbert returned from vacation and reamed out his employers at the top of the show for giving Donald Trump a $16 million bribe so they could get his approval for selling the parent company, Paramount Global, to Skydance, a big-ass company owned by the Ellison family. Larry Ellison is a “close buddy” of Trump’s, or as close as Trump has to a real friend who probably is not a pederast.

CBS, of course, does not want to look like they’re going down on Trump a second time so they said The Late Show was not profitable. The fact that Colbert’s contract is to expire next May is just a happy coincidence. Colbert will be on the air until then, or, at least, he will be paid to be on the air.

Eschewing timing and broadcast economics, if this had been true the Tiffany Network would have trashed the show some time ago. Not only does Colbert have the highest ratings in that time slot, his audience is close to being greater than than the two Jimmys, Kimmel and Fallon, combined. Moreover, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been the annual leader in late night for the past nine years.

The remarkable coincidence here is that Colbert’s well-reasoned attack against the way Paramount bribed Trump in order to close the Ellison deal was taped around 6 PM this past Monday, and he was shitcanned two days later. A petty corporation would have watched the tape of the show and, if concerned about the President’s blackballing the Skydance deal, shitcanned that episode.

It’s not like they were afraid of Colbert quitting the show; they were in the process of firing him anyway.

Times are tough for commercial broadcasting. There’s a lots more competition, some of it from streamers but most of it from non-broadcast media: YouTube, internet, gaming, and other such activities. Prices for commercials on these shows are but a fraction of what they had been.

So what do real business people do with a fanatically loyal audience? Having a massive investment in the property in that time slot (“The Late Show” brand has been valuable to CBS since Philo Farnsworth hatched), they fix it by adding material that will grow the viewership while they try to lower costs. This did not happen with Colbert’s show. It’s happened many times in the past with other shows, including the sainted Tonight Show.

Trump also dislikes everybody else on late-night teevee. He thinks Kimmel is worse than Colbert, he loathes Seth Myers, and has said a lot of nasty things about the other late-night Jimmy. I doubt he ever watched After Midnight once he realized the woman who opened the show stays on it for the whole hour.

But the one guy he and his storm troopers truly hate is Jon Stewart… so much so that I wouldn’t buy the house next to his right now.

Here’s the rub: Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert have many things in common, including a strong and supportive friendship. They also have James Dixon in common. He’s their agent. The firm is an autonomous entity within WME-ING, which is run by the most powerful person in show business, Ari Emanuel. Fun fact: in the comedy Entourage the role of Ari Gold, played by Jeremy Piven, was based upon Ari Emanuel. Ari Emanuel has raised a lot of money for various Democratic candidates. His brother Rahm has been running for president most of this millennium.

Okay, now we will rub harder. Jimmy Kimmel’s contract expires just about at the same time as Colbert’s, and he’d been making loud noises about not returning before Trump put his rump on the scale.

And, hey, just for fun, Jon Stewart’s contract with Comedy Central expires at the end of 2025. Did I mention Comedy Central is owned by now-Paramount soon-Skydance.

Shortly after Colbert’s firing, Kimmel posted “Love you Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS.” So it looks like Jimmy won’t be moving over the CBS.

Here’s what I surmise what these guys will not be doing, and I am by no means alone on this. Wherever these guys go next, individually or in teams, it will not be on broadcast television.

And it will make money for everybody but whomever owns CBS/Paramount by then.