'Late Show With Stephen Colbert' gets ready to call it a day

Ken Waldmann and I go way back, nearly 33 years, to a soupy late August evening in 1993, under the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theater, in "The City So Nice They Named It Twice."

This Syosset native, who now lives in North Bellmore, was walking out of the theater when approached by a reporter (me) who wanted to know what had just happened inside:

"What did David Letterman say? What color suit did he have on? What were the gags?"

A superfan who had waited months to attend the first "Late Show With David Letterman" taping, Waldmann rattled off answers with relish and (better yet) clarity. A story was filed, a memory forged, and — I'd like to think — a professional kinship born.

We've stayed in touch the past 30 years, and usually reconnect around "Late Show" anniversaries or milestones. A big milestone is now approaching — you might say the biggest one yet — so there's a lot to talk about, or maybe just a lot to lament.

Until July, CBS' "Late Show" franchise — like the Chrysler Building, or 30 Rock — was beginning to seem like it was built to last forever. Thirty-three years of late-night TV glory does have a way of conferring an illusion of permanence. When "Late Show" wraps for good May 21, a big part of New York City entertainment history comes to an end and a part of television history, too.

Not to mention a little personal history. Waldmann is a blunt Long Islander who gives the impression of someone with neither the time nor inclination to linger over what's done, or over the fate of a TV show he once cherished. His wife, Karin, died in 2019 and she's always on his mind. What's the death of a late-night TV franchise by comparison?

"I lost my bride six years ago, and I have 80-plus pictures of her up in the living room," Waldmann said in a recent phone interview. "My son says, 'Dad, why do you have 80 pictures?' And I say that's because those are my memories. I have memories with these shows [Letterman's and Stephen Colbert's] too. But it's like death. They're ending now. Gone, dead. You have to accept what we had."

Losing an institution

What we had should be obvious to anyone else who cared about this TV institution for 33 years — 22 of those with Letterman, the last 11 with Colbert. There were the guests and the music and the laughs, all filtered through the comic lens of what was going on in New York City or the rest of America at any given moment. There were the Top Ten lists, the Stupid Pet Tricks, Dave's mom, Mujibur and Sirajul and Rupert Jee, Paul Shaffer and the "CBS Orchestra." Colbert had his "Midnight Confessions," and "The Colbert Questionert" and "Rescue Dog Rescue" (tied in with the North Shore Animal League in Port Washington). Jon Batiste and his band, Stay Human, then Louis Cato and the Great Big Joy Machine, were "Late Show" staples, which became treasures in their own right.

On May 21, all of that's gone, with at least some remnants dumped on YouTube. And the fate of the Sullivan, one of New York's most beautiful venues? Back when Letterman and his producer Peter Lassally were scouting this historic space on Broadway — the old Hammerstein theater from 1927, renamed the Ed Sullivan in 1967 — they were shocked by what they saw. The rats, the dust, the general decrepitude. It's almost painful to imagine this is what lies in the Sullivan's future again (no plans have been set for the theater's next chapter, while a long-running syndicated show from California, "Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen," will take Colbert's slot).

When CBS officially canceled "Late Show" in July, it ended a franchise that had emerged from the ashes of utter futility. Those efforts began in 1969 with Merv Griffin, followed by the "whatever" years (movies or whatever else would stick to the wall) and finally a woebegone Pat Sajak talk show from January 1989 to April 1990. Nothing worked because Johnny Carson wasn't going anywhere. Only when he did, in 1992, would CBS finally escape the wilderness.

It's fashionable now to dismiss late-night programs like "Late Show" as monoculture relics, best consumed the following morning along with coffee and headlines. But that wasn't the case in the '90s, or in 2015 when Colbert launched, as the time-shift revolution was just getting underway. Late night was still appointment TV for millions, an escape before sleep, or the place to process emotions that needed processing. When Letterman returned to the air a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he said, "If we are going to continue to do shows, I need to hear myself talk," and viewers needed to hear him talk, too.

Far more than "Saturday Night Live," Letterman's "Late Show" was a celebration of New York City back when that wasn't particularly fashionable either. Those countless jokes about Central Park squirrels, Times Square professionals or Mayor Michael Bloomberg's height were reminders that this was happening right here, right now, in the world's greatest city. New York had never had such a TV champion, and may never have one like him again.

Letterman vs. Colbert

Colbert's "Late Show" has been different because Colbert was so different. Letterman's persona was ironic, casual or (at times) detached. Colbert tends to be whimsical, bemused and (at times) cerebral. Letterman often took the show outside or on the road; Colbert far less often. Letterman had a frat bro base of support at NBC that widened when he came to CBS, to become the late-night everyman — still caustic enough to appeal to the old base but congenial enough to appeal to a new one. By contrast, Colbert had to build a base from scratch because he literally had to recreate himself. 

Both had rough starts before settling in. Letterman's "Late Show" initially beat Jay Leno's "Tonight," which later pulled ahead for good. Letterman chafed at second-class status, then made peace with it, under the pretext that it hardly matters if you're in second place when you're the better show.

Colbert's early editions were oddly disjointed, partly the consequence of Stephen Colbert of "The Colbert Report" learning to become Stephen Colbert of "The Late Show." CBS had buyer's remorse until a new producer (Chris Licht) redirected both franchise and host from his own offbeat instincts. With an idiosyncratic sense of humor honed on the improv circuit and later on Comedy Central shows like "Exit 57" and "Strangers With Candy," Colbert had next honed that bumptious right-wing bloviator alter ego on "The Daily Show," then "The Colbert Report."

Somehow all of this had to be unraveled, but unraveled to what — or rather to whom? Who really was this guy about to replace the most celebrated late-night host since Carson? Obviously smart, with a prodigious memory, Colbert could even recite lines of poetry that he could seemingly match to any occasion. He prayed daily, went to Mass, and told GQ back in 2015 before starting that the "context of [my] existence is that I am here to know God, love God, serve God."

A poetry-quoting, God-fearing, Catholic comic who had suffered great personal tragedy (the loss of two brothers and his father in a plane crash when he was younger and later had a mental breakdown)? Was it perhaps possible Colbert had no plans to replace Letterman at all?

At first CBS wanted a traditional topical monologue — light on politics, heavy on jokes — but that started to go away after the ascension, then presidency, of Donald Trump. It then became a monologue on a mission — a scalding, nightly evisceration of the president, that also happened to fit perfectly with the way late night was increasingly being consumed (the next morning). Ratings soared, but the irony — or perversity — of this success is that it may have also led to the demise of "Late Show."

The end of late-night TV?

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Colbert said he believes the show was canceled because of financial problems (CBS' longstanding claim) but also because of pressure from the Trump White House — the so-called "both things can be true" argument now widely accepted among fans and even TV executives, or at least those who don't work for CBS or Paramount.

For example, Vinnie Favale, a Comedy Central co-founder and CBS' former chief of late night who developed the Letterman edition and launched the Colbert one, told me in a recent phone interview that "younger folks don't care [about the end of 'Late Show'] because their version of late night is four- or five-minute chunks on YouTube.

 However, "while now it might just be one of the late-night shows going away, to hear the constant FCC threats" — Favale cites the Federal Communications Commission's "accelerated" review of the TV licenses of ABC, home to network TV's other Trump nemesis, Jimmy Kimmel — "it looks like we're heading in the direction where all of the late-night shows could be going away. That is so depressing."

What does this impending loss of "Late Show" really mean anyway? We'll always have those YouTube clips, and like Ken Waldmann, those memories. Moreover, to state the obvious, the world of TV is no longer what it was, where "appointment" viewing has ceded the way to factory-line viewing, one Instagram post and TikTok clip after another, to infinity and beyond.

For this reason, it's best to ask those with the most to lose — the loyal fans themselves.

"I think it's really sad," says longtime viewer and Smithtown resident Eileen Comanzo. "This show was not just about bashing Trump, which most people think that's all it was about, but Colbert brought on people, and guests who knew things, who were interesting, who could explain what's going on in the world, and in the world of politics."

"We're losing a piece of America," says Old Bethpage's Bill Sobel, a self-described "huge fan," who adds that "we're losing something that makes us unique in the world — that we can do this stuff because we're Americans, and because we have a First Amendment."

We're losing something that makes us unique in the world — that we can do this stuff because we're Americans, and because we have a First Amendment.

- Bill Sobel, of Old Bethpage

Meanwhile, Waldmann — retired now and "happily spending my children's inheritance" — admits that he doesn't much watch Colbert's "Late Show" anymore because "it's no longer an entertainment show but a political one, and that's where things have changed. If I want 20 minutes of what someone thinks of Trump, I can go talk to my friends."

Nonetheless, he understands how the world is about to change after the last "Late Show" airs May 21, and not for the better. 

"There's nothing to look forward to anymore on TV," he says, "after losing these great shows."