IF you read this after 12:35 a.m. ET on Friday, May 22, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is now just television history.

In fact, the Columbia Broadcasting System’s effort to come up with an entry for late-night TV is over. It began in the late 1960s, when the network realized that the old movies airing on its owned stations as “The Late Show” couldn’t match the juggernaut that was NBC “The Tonight Show.”

But both Merv Griffin and Pat “Wheel of Fortune” Sajak couldn’t puncture the market. It wasn’t until 1993, after Johnny Carson retired and Jay Leno succeeded him, that CBS went all-in. They brought in the man thought to be Carson’s heir apparent, David Letterman, and installed him in the 11:30 p.m. time slot.

It worked. Letterman and Leno slugged it out for ratings. Letterman was the more television-savvy guy, understanding that the key to late-night success was creating a buzz that had people staying up late so they could talk about it at work the next day.

Stupid Pet Tricks. Stupid Human Tricks. Larry “Bud” Melman. Hello, Delly. The Top 10 List.

Letterman revered Johnny Carson, who ultimately is the man responsible for late-night TV being an institution. He hosted “The Tonight Show” for more than 30 years. Letterman did his variations on Carson’s comedic touches for the show – such bits as Carnac the Magician and the Mighty Carson Art Players. 

So did Leno. But “The Tonight Show” is the New York Yankees of late-night television. It occasionally reaches for topical humor, but its bread-and-butter is the a-list and b-list stars who come on to promote a movie or TV series.

Carson was more into interviewing authors and politicians when he hosted the show from 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. When he moved “Tonight” to California in the 1960s, it became much more of an entertainment vehicle.

That was – and is – “Tonight”‘s legacy, and Leno was probably better suited to continue it than Letterman, who had hosted daytime and late-late-night shows on NBC. 

Freed from the “Tonight” constraints, Letterman appealed to a younger audience and his bits were positioned perfectly for the media change from over-the-air to online that mark the early 21st century. How many times have you watched Letterman and his guests as they come up randomly in the reels of your Facebook feed?

After 30 years, Letterman gave up his show, most likely because Stephen Colbert just finished his historic run on “The Colbert Report” and was out there waiting to be plucked.

Colbert gained some of his political sensibilities from working with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.” Those were heightened when Donald Trump – from all indications, diametrically opposite in personality and ethics from Colbert – rose to power in 2016.

Because Colbert and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel are both on legacy networks, something Trump understands, they have been at each other from the beginning of the first term. When Trump regained the White House in the 2024 election, there’s little doubt Colbert and Kimmel were on some sort of hit list.

Trump failed with Kimmel. His sycophants tried to drive Kimmel off the air after he made a less-than-reverent remark about the murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. The flap, which included remarks threatening ABC by tame FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, led to Disney suspending Kimmel’s show indefinitely.

Protests forced Disney to back down and Kimmel returned to the air.

But Trump likely succeeded with Colbert. CBS was taken over by Paramount under the aegis of David Ellison, the son of tech billionaire and general asshole Larry Ellison. His company, Skydance, now wants control of Warner Discovery, the parent of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros.

To get that approval, the Ellisons needed to make nice with Donnie Thinskin. And while Skydance claims “The Late Show” loses oodles of money, most people in the industry call BS.

Letterman, in a recent interview, said “I’m just going to go on record as saying: They’re lying. They’re lying weasels.”

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My soft spot for Colbert goes beyond the fact that we share an alma mater and Northwesterners stick up for one another. He’s not only funny, he’s compassionate, animated and seemingly interested in everything.

More important, he, Kimmel, Stewart, Seth Meyers and John Oliver have done something that the other institutions that we counted on did not.

They stood up to Donald Trump.

The legacy news networks can’t say that. Even the cable networks – CNN and MS Now – can’t. Newspapers like The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times can’t say that. Our universities, with few exceptions and including my alma mater, can’t say that.

But these comedians – and you can add Jimmy Fallon, who walks the NBC tightrope as well as he can – have taken the blows of Trump and his henchmen. Because they’re part of the megamedia, the odds are stacked against them.

They moved late-night television from pure entertainment to becoming the way a whole generation learns what’s going on in the world. They’re trusted more than Bari Weiss’ pet anchorman on CBS or the other non-entities on network news. And no one is taking seriously Fox’s late-night mess, Greg Gutfeld, who is to “comedy” as “poison ivy” is to “vegetable.”

Colbert never flinched. Neither has Kimmel, Meyers or Oliver. They’re out there to reflect the anger that has boiled over from the nonsense Trump has perpetrated since January 20, 2025 – and even those four years before the Biden Sanity Interlude.

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One final point: There’s a good chance you won’t see much of the Colbert archive starting now. The other side in this is petty. They control the rights to his material.. They can bury it – and I suspect that’s what they’re going to do.

So I hope you have some old tapes or Colbert files on your computer. That’s how you’ll remember his fantastic 11-year run on CBS – until his next act surfaces.