David Letterman Says ‘Gutless’ CBS Did Dirty Work for ‘Bottom Feeder’ Buyers

“Did you guys hear about the Stephen Colbert thing?”

That was David Letterman’s opening salvo to Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay on his YouTube channel this afternoon, speaking from a remote part of Indiana where he’s on a solo vacation. The question wasn’t meant to be answered, however. It was merely an excuse to take off the gloves and start ripping his old bosses a new one. 

First, Letterman laid out the situation as he saw it. After he retired from CBS 10 years ago, Colbert took over his Late Show franchise and “pretty quickly established himself as a precise, crisp, witty political satirist,” Letterman said. “And often, his target has been the current administration.” 

The show attracted a sizable audience (especially by 2020s standards), and Colbert became the prominent face of the CBS network. 

Letterman also understood CBS and its parent company, Paramount, were for sale. Skydance Media and David Ellison, son of ultra-rich billionaire Larry Ellison, were eager to buy, but he didn’t want trouble. So, according to Letterman, Ellison called CBS and told them to settle their 60 Minutes issues for millions of dollars. 

What happened next? Letterman speculated that Ellison asked CBS, “What about that kid, Steven Colbert? He's always shooting his mouth off about the administration. We don’t want any trouble from that guy. So the CBS people say, ‘Hey boys, here’s what we’re going to do. Not only are we going to get rid of that guy, we’re going to get rid of the entire franchise, so you don’t have to worry about another guy. It’s gone, buddy.’”

At this point, Letterman admitted, “I’m making some of this up.”

The part that really irked Letterman? That was CBS saying it didn’t fire Colbert for his satire. Instead, CBS claimed Colbert was fired for losing the network so much money. Cough. Yeah, right. Cough. 

“Here’s what I know,” Letterman explained. “If they were losing this kind of money, you’re telling me losing this kind of money happened yesterday? I bet they were losing this kind of money a month ago. I’ll bet they were losing this kind of money six weeks ago. Or they have never been losing money.”

The bottom line: CBS “did not do the correct thing,” Letterman said. “They did not handle Stephen Colbert, the face of that network, in the way he deserves to have been handled.”

But don’t cry for Colbert. “For Stephen, I love this,” Letterman insisted. “He’s a martyr. Good for him. And if you listen carefully, you can hear them unfolding chairs at the TV Hall of Fame for his induction, right?” 

But Letterman is concerned about CBS’ likely new owners. “They don’t want any trouble along the lines of freedom of the press or free speech or freedom of expression. They don’t want to get their hands dirty,” he said. “They don’t want the government going after them because, you know, that concept of freedom of the press is so old-fashioned.” 

Letterman was just picking up steam at this point. “These guys are bottom feeders,” he argued. “What the fuck is Skydance? Honest to Christ, is it a discount airline?” 

“This is pure cowardice,” Letterman concluded. “The people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this, they’re going to be embarrassed because this is gutless.”