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    Why Is Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Getting Canceled?

    Maybe the “Late Show” decision is purely financial. But after Paramount’s cave over “60 Minutes,” it is hard to trust.In 2005, on his satire “The Colbert Report,” Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness,” meaning a statement that was not actually true but represented a reality that the speaker wished to inhabit.In 2015, Colbert replaced David Letterman on CBS’s “Late Show,” which under him became one of the biggest and most prolific launchers of satirically guided missiles during the Trump era. In 2024, President Trump — who has repeatedly bemoaned his late-night coverage — said CBS “should terminate his contract.”Now, in 2025, CBS has said that it is canceling Colbert’s show at the end of its season, next May. Executives stressed, in the announcement, that the cut was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.”Is that the truth, or merely truthy?There is good reason that CBS would need to offer that assurance. The network’s parent company, Paramount, just this month settled a lawsuit from President Trump, over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris, for $16 million. At the same time, Paramount was hoping to close a multibillion-dollar merger with the company Skydance, which required the approval of the Trump administration.Many legal experts said the deal was an unnecessary concession in a frivolous case. At minimum it undermined one of TV journalism’s most accomplished independent voices. Some people called it “a big, fat bribe” — actually, those were Colbert’s words, in a blistering monologue a few days ago, which also mentioned speculation that CBS’s future owners might try to rein him in.Talk show hosts have bitten the hand that signs the contracts before; Letterman needled NBC and its then-parent, General Electric. But back then, the issues did not involve conflicts with a president willing to pull any necessary levers to punish and influence media outlets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Fans React to Colbert ‘Late Show’ Cancellation With Puzzlement and Anger

    Many questioned the timing of and motivation for the announcement, noting that Mr. Colbert hosted the most-watched show in late night television.The first people to hear that CBS was canceling “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” reacted to the news loudly, and viscerally, with a chorus of “No!” that turned into a sustained round of boos.They were sitting in the audience in the Ed Sullivan Theater in Midtown Manhattan when an emotional Mr. Colbert announced the decision at the conclusion of the taping of his Thursday night show.Among those who were watching was Claire DeSantis, 29, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. After the show concluded, she said, Mr. Colbert told the audience there would be an alternate taping of the cold open.“I thought it was going to be a fun surprise,” she said.Instead, Mr. Colbert stumbled a few times on the opening line — “Oh hey, everybody!” — before delivering the announcement about the cancellation in a single take. Ms. DeSantis, who does not regularly watch the show and wanted to go for the experience, said she cried, but not everyone in the audience was in tears as they left the theater. She called her mother and roommate to tell them what had happened.“I thought this was a legacy show,” Ms. DeSantis said. “I was just really surprised that it’s just going away completely.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Is Being Canceled by CBS

    The show will end in May, the network said, calling it “a purely financial decision.”In a decision that shocked the entertainment industry and comedy world, CBS said on Thursday that it was canceling the most-watched show in late night, “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and ending a franchise that has existed for more than three decades.Mr. Colbert’s run — and “The Late Show” itself — will end in May after his contract expires.CBS executives said in a statement that the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”“It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” said the executives, who included George Cheeks, the president of CBS and a co-chief executive of Paramount, CBS’s parent. “Our admiration, affection and respect for the talents of Stephen Colbert and his incredible team made this agonizing decision even more difficult.”Paramount is in the midst of closing a multibillion-dollar merger with the movie studio Skydance, a deal that requires approval from the Trump administration. Paramount recently agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over an interview on “60 Minutes,” a move Mr. Colbert criticized on his show as “a big fat bribe.” The merger still requires the approval of the Federal Communications Commission.Mr. Colbert said during the taping of “The Late Show” on Thursday that he was informed of the decision on Wednesday night. When his studio audience unleashed a chorus of boos upon hearing the news, Mr. Colbert said, “Yeah, I share your feelings.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    When Americans Agreed on History, for 60 Seconds

    Fifty years ago on CBS, the revolution was televised, if only for a minute at a time.From July 4, 1974, through the end of 1976, “Bicentennial Minutes” took 60 seconds in prime time between some of TV’s most popular shows to have celebrities, artists and politicians tell viewers what had happened 200 years ago that day, in the early years of the American Revolution.Charlton Heston kicked off the series, backed by a giant American flag, telling of George Washington’s worries after the Boston Tea Party. Representative Bella Abzug, in her trademark hat and thick New York accent, related a British man-o-war attack on the city’s waterfront. Lucille Ball described “corn-shucking parties” in colonial New England. (Not every day in history can be equally action-packed.) In a twist on the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s famous sign-off, each one concluded, “That’s the way it was.”The series was a simple act of civic education — earnest, unflashy, a little corny and mockable. It was not big on geopolitics, gray areas or the moral failings of the home-team rebels. Writing in The New York Times, the TV critic John J. O’Connor called its early episodes “so insubstantial as to be almost meaningless.” (The series nonetheless won an Emmy in 1976.)But a half-century later, as America prepares to celebrate a bigger mouthful of a birthday, the Semiquincentennial, the “Bicentennial Minutes” series is educational in a different way. It’s a time capsule of 20th-century mass civics, a reminder of how — for good, bad or mediocre — TV once formed a kind of public square that is probably irretrievable.Clockwise, from top left: President Gerald Ford, the actress Dina Merrill, Senator Joseph R. Biden and the activist Gloria Steinem in the 1970s educational shorts “Bicentennial Minutes.” CBS, via IMBDPro“Bicentennial Minutes,” like many American inventions, was a creation of commerce. Shell Oil bought each minute of airtime for two years, its logo ending each star-spangled broadcast. (Other sponsors took over after July 4, 1976.) It was a crossover ad for gasoline and America.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    2025 Tony Awards Predictions: Best New Musical, Best Leading Actress and More

    Expect wins for the musicals “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Sunset Boulevard,” but the races for best play and leading actress in a musical are too close to call.The Broadway season that just ended was the most robust since the pandemic, with record-setting grosses, a plethora of profitable plays and celebrities galore.Serious challenges remain — vanishingly few new musicals are making money — but there is a rich subject and stylistic diversity of offerings. Now, industry insiders face a lot of tough choices as they determine which shows to honor at Sunday night’s Tony Awards ceremony, which airs at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS.Over the last few days, I asked Tony voters which productions, and which performers in leading roles, they deemed the best. After consulting with more than one quarter of the 840 voters, these are my predictions.Expect wins for “Maybe Happy Ending” …Tell people the plot summary for “Maybe Happy Ending,” and they immediately think they don’t want to see it: It’s about two lonely robots in Seoul who go on a road trip and find, well, each other. But over the last seven months, the show has steadily won over fans thanks to strong reviews and excellent word-of-mouth; it has clearly won over Tony voters too.The show has what I believe to be an overwhelming lead over its closest competitors, “Buena Vista Social Club” and “Death Becomes Her,” both of which are based on existing material. That’s one part of what’s working for “Maybe Happy Ending”: Voters over and over say they appreciate that, in an era in which Broadway is dominated by big-brand titles adapted from movies, books or popular song catalogs, this musical has both an original story and an original score.There are, of course, detractors, who find the four-performer show twee, but there are significantly more admirers, many of whom praise the way all the elements of Michael Arden’s production cohere — the performances, the direction, the story and the lavish set, with state-of-the-art automation and technology. “It’s delicate and intimate and engaging,” one voter told me, “and the scenic design came together to support the story in a very unified way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    2025 Tony Nominations Announcement: What to Know and How to Watch

    Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce will announce which performers and which productions from a crowded 2024-25 Broadway season will vie for awards.Broadway has lots to brag about this season: a bumper crop of 42 Tony-eligible plays and musicals, lots of movie stars treading the boards, several productions that are drawing young audiences, and a healthy mix of quirky and original shows alongside big-brand spectacle.On Thursday, the industry begins its annual celebration of the best of Broadway with the announcement of this year’s Tony Awards nominees. Over the next five weeks, Tony voters will finish seeing the latest shows, and will then cast their ballots for the productions and performances they admired most. On June 8, the awards ceremony will take place at Radio City Music Hall.The Tony Awards are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing. Here’s what to know about the nominations:When is the announcement?The Tony Award nominations will be announced Thursday morning in New York by the actors Sarah Paulson and Wendell Pierce. A few marquee categories will be announced at 8:30 Eastern on “CBS Mornings,” and then the full slate will be revealed at 9 a.m. on the Tony Awards YouTube channel. (We’ll publish the list of nominees, along with news and commentary, at nytimes.com/theater.)Which shows are eligible?The 21 plays and 21 musicals that opened on Broadway between April 26, 2024, and April 27, 2025, are eligible. (This season also included a two-week concert run by Ben Platt; that show is not Tony-eligible.)What show and which actors are the leading contenders?Keep an eye on “Maybe Happy Ending,” “Dead Outlaw” and “Buena Vista Social Club” in the best musical category, and “Purpose,” “John Proctor Is the Villain” and “Oh, Mary!” in the new play category. (There will be at least five nominations in each of those categories.)There are a number of strong contenders for best actress in a musical, but the front-runners seem to be Audra McDonald, already a six-time Tony winner, for “Gypsy,” and Nicole Scherzinger, a former member of the Pussycat Dolls, for “Sunset Boulevard.” The race for best actor in a musical is more open, but is likely to feature Darren Criss of “Maybe Happy Ending,” Andrew Durand of “Dead Outlaw,” Tom Francis of “Sunset Boulevard,” Jonathan Groff of “Just in Time” and Jeremy Jordan of “Floyd Collins.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Bill Belichick’s Girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, Shuts Down Question About Their Relationship

    The legendary football coach has never shared much with the news media, but on Sunday it was Jordon Hudson who shut down a line of questioning.When Bill Belichick, one of the country’s most famous football coaches, appeared on “CBS Sunday Morning” over the weekend to promote his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons From My Life in Football,” he touched on a number of topics, including his apparent disdain for inspirational halftime speeches.Football, Mr. Belichick said in his interview with Tony Dokoupil of CBS, is really about strategy: What is his opponent doing? How does his team need to adjust?“Identifying a problem,” he went on, “figuring a solution and then executing that plan to make it work.”Jordon Hudson, Mr. Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, tried to do exactly that at one point in the interview, when Mr. Dokoupil asked Mr. Belichick, 73, how they had met.“We’re not talking about this,” Ms. Hudson interjected off camera from the producer’s table.“No?” Mr. Dokoupil asked her.“No,” Ms. Hudson said.A spokesman for Mr. Belichick and the University of North Carolina’s football team declined to comment on the interview, but Mr. Belichick’s relationship with Ms. Hudson — and, of course, their nearly 49-year age difference — has been a source of intrigue since the couple went public last year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Jay North, Child Star Who Played ‘Dennis the Menace,’ Dies at 73

    Mr. North was best known for playing the towheaded Dennis Mitchell on the television series, which ran on CBS from 1959 to 1963.Jay North, who played the well-meaning, trouble-causing protagonist of the popular CBS sitcom “Dennis the Menace” from 1959 to 1963, died on Sunday at his home in Lake Butler, Fla. He was 73.His death was confirmed by Laurie Jacobson, a friend of Mr. North’s for 30 years. The cause was colorectal cancer, Ms. Jacobson said.Mr. North played the towheaded Dennis Mitchell, who roamed his neighborhood, usually clad in a striped shirt and overalls, with his friends, and often exasperated his neighbor, a retiree named George Wilson, who was played by Joseph Kearns. Herbert Anderson played Dennis’s father, and Gloria Henry played his mother.Dennis winds up causing lots of trouble, usually by accident.In one episode, a truck knocks over a street sign, and Dennis and a friend stand it up — incorrectly. Workmen then dig a gigantic hole, meant to be a pool for a different address, in Mr. Wilson’s front yard.The show, which was adapted from a comic strip by Hank Ketcham, presented an idyllic, innocent vision of suburban America as the 1950s gave way to the tumultuous ’60s.But things were not easy for Mr. North behind the scenes.Many years after “Dennis the Menace” ended, Mr. North said that his acting success came at the cost of a happy childhood.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More