Fringe spotlight: Crosswalk's The Birdcage
Director Mitch Krohn and actor Sadie Kornovski talk about their inclusive take on The Birdcage at this year's Fringe.
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Globe and Mail
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- Globe and Mail
Colbert cancellation a ‘purely financial decision,' says Paramount CEO while Writers Guild calls for investigation
CBS says its decision to end Stephen Colbert's late-night comedy show is financial, not political. Yet even with the ample skepticism about that explanation, there's no denying the economics were not working in Colbert's favor. The network's bombshell announcement late Thursday that the 'Late Show' will end next May takes away President Donald Trump's most prominent TV critic and the most popular entertainment program in its genre. The television industry's declining economic health means similar hard calls are already being made with personalities and programming, with others to be faced in the future. For the late-night genre, there are unique factors to consider. As recently as 2018, broadcast networks took in an estimated US$439-million in advertising revenue for its late-night programs, according to the advertising firm Guidelines. Last year, that number dwindled to $220-million. Late-night TV was a particular draw for young men, considered the hardest-to-get and most valuable demographic for advertisers. Increasingly, these viewers are turning to streaming services, either to watch something else entirely or catch highlights of the late-night shows, which are more difficult for the networks to monetize. More broadly, the much-predicted takeover of viewers by streaming services is coming to pass. The Nielsen company reported that during the last two months, for the first time ever, more people consumed programming on services like YouTube and Netflix than on ABC, CBS and NBC or any cable network. Networks and streamers spent roughly $70-billion on entertainment shows and $30-billion for sports rights last year, said Brian Wieser, CEO of Madison & Wall, an advertising consultant and data services firm. Live sports is the most dependable magnet for viewers and costs for its rights are expected to increase eight per cent a year over the next decade. With television viewership declining in general, it's clear where savings will have to come from. Wieser said he does not know whether Colbert's show is profitable or not for CBS and parent company Paramount Global, but he knows the direction in which it is headed. 'The economics of television are weak,' he said. In a statement announcing the cancellation, George Cheeks, Paramount Global's president and chief executive officer, said that 'This is 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.' Cheeks' problem is that not everyone believes him. Colbert is a relentless critic of Mr. Trump, and earlier this week pointedly criticized Paramount's decision to settle Mr. Trump's lawsuit against CBS over a '60 Minutes' interview with Kamala Harris. He called Paramount's $16-million payment to Mr. Trump a 'big fat bribe,' since the company is seeking the administration's approval of its merger with Skydance Media. On Friday, the Writers Guild of America called for an investigation by New York's attorney general into whether Colbert's cancellation is itself a bribe, 'sacrificing free speech to curry favor with the Trump administration as the company looks for merger approval.' CBS' decision made this a pivotal week for the future of television and radio programming. Congress stripped federal funding for PBS and NPR, threatening the future of shows on those outlets. Journey Gunderson, executive director of the National Comedy Center, called the decision to end Colbert's show the end of an era. 'Late-night television has historically been one of comedy's most audience-accessible platforms — a place where commentary meets community, night after night,' Gunderson said. 'This isn't just the end of a show. It's the quiet removal of one of the few remaining platforms for daily comedic commentary. Mr. Trump, who has called in the past for CBS to terminate Colbert's contract, celebrated the show's upcoming demise. 'I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,' the president wrote on Truth Social. 'His talent was even less than his ratings.' Some experts questioned whether CBS could have explored other ways to save money on Colbert. NBC, for example, has cut costs by eliminating the band on Seth Meyers' late-night show and curtailing Jimmy Fallon's 'Tonight' show to four nights a week. Could CBS have saved more money by cutting off the show immediately, instead of letting it run until next May, which sets up an awkward 'lame duck' period? Then again, Colbert will keep working until his contract runs out; CBS would have had to keep paying him anyway. CBS recently cancelled the 'After Midnight' show that ran after Colbert. But the network had signaled earlier this year that it was prepared to continue that show until host Taylor Tomlinson decided that she wanted to leave, noted Bill Carter, author of 'The Late Shift.' 'It is a very sad day for CBS that they are getting out of the late-night race,' Andy Cohen, host of Bravo's 'Watch What Happens Live,' told The Associated Press. 'I mean, they are turning off the lights after the news.' Colbert, if he wanted to continue past next May, would likely be able to find a streaming service willing to pay him, Wieser said. But the future of late-night comedy on the entertainment networks is genuinely at risk. Mr. Trump, in fact, may outlast his fiercest comic critics. Jon Stewart, once a weeknight fixture, works one night a week at 'The Daily Show' for Paramount's Comedy Central, a network that seldom produces much original programming any more. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, who was chided on social media by Mr. Trump on Friday — 'I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next' — has a contract that also runs out next year. Kimmel, 57, openly wondered in a Variety interview before signing his latest three-year contract extension how long he wanted to do it. He's hosted his show since 2003. 'I have moments where I go, I cannot do this anymore,' Kimmel told Variety in 2022. 'And I have moments where I go, what am I gonna do with my life if I'm not doing this anymore?' It's a very complicated thing ... I'm not going to do this forever.' Colbert, Kimmel and Stewart were all nominated for Emmy awards this week.
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Winnipeg Free Press
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- Winnipeg Free Press
Fringe needs you more than ever
Opinion There's lots to love about the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. For one, it's not on your phone. Fringe is a chance to be entertained by art that isn't being blasted into your retinas by a relentless, algorithmic feed on a small screen, often while you're watching something else on a big screen. It's a chance to reconnect with your attention span and be moved to laughter or tears, in the dark, with other people — while your phone is blissfully turned off (I hope) and tucked away. This is the magic of live theatre. For another, it's a chance to be exposed to art and ideas you might not see anywhere else. The theme at this year's festival is Choose Your Own Adventure and, as most frequent fringers will tell you, this festival is always an adventure, for better or worse. But a feature which might get overlooked sometimes, despite the fact a recording reminds us before each and every show, is that 100 per cent of ticket sales go back to the performing companies. This has always been true of the fringe, but it feels extra important in an era in which being an artist — of any kind — feels particularly crushingly hard owing to a host of new existential threats such as the casual use of ChatGPT and generative AI that not only steals designs from graphic and visual artists but now threatens to steal their livelihoods. Or the public's over-reliance on streaming giants such as Spotify that barely pay musicians. Or even the Manitoba government's recent decision to ask local makers and artists for free product to be included in gift bags for — and I wish I were making this up — a 'Buy Local'-themed event (!) being hosted in the province in September. ('The province has received multiple positive responses from businesses and entrepreneurs that appreciated the opportunity to showcase their work to a potentially new market,' reads an unattributed emailed statement provided to CBC by the province.) We all love art. We all love local art. It just seems like sometimes people have an awful lot of trouble putting money where their mouth is when it comes to 'supporting artists.' Fringe's format, then, is a welcome corrective, an easy way to tangibly, directly support artists who, by the way, still might lose money or barely break even on this festival. It's expensive and hard to be any type of touring artist, especially in the current economic climate, and a fringe performer is no exception. Many fringe artists sell merch at their shows; at a performance I caught yesterday, one said it's so she can buy coffee on the road. So, you might ask, why are reviewers so harsh sometimes? I still maintain, as I have argued before, that it is not a reviewer's job to make sure a performer sells tickets to their fringe show — that is the artist's job. Our job is to be fair. We all understand that this festival is a uniquely pro-am event, but we can still expect a certain level of quality. Wednesdays Columnist Jen Zoratti looks at what's next in arts, life and pop culture. Luckily for everyone involved, this is subjective: I have seen polished must-sees from amateur theatre companies and hot messes from professional ones. I have also loved shows my fellow reviewers have hated, and vice versa. Life's rich pageant. (Plus it's not as if fringe reviewers don't also have to actively convince people to support our work. People tell me all the time, to my face, that they just get their news 'online.') Art is a labour of love, to be sure — but it's still labour. It deserves to be recognized, supported and compensated as such, not through 'exposure' or the promise of opportunities that never come. Otherwise, all our art will be fed to us via an algorithm on a screen and, without artists, won't look much like art at all. Jen ZorattiColumnist Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen. Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print – part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
