After listening to the buzz on the radio, what stands out to me about Stephen Colbert’s last show on May 21 is the split-screen moment to the Beatles’ arrival in the United States in 1964 on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and the finale on the same stage with Paul McCartney.
Some context: Streaming services took over cable television many years ago in the U.S., and CBS made poor decisions to figure out how late night could appear on streaming services. Their greed got the best of them, and I don’t know about your experience, but they kept playing snatch-back with the audience … changing the price, the platforms, the sign-ups. One wedge in Colbert’s favor — once people knew CBS was in the wrong moment politically, CBS couldn’t stop rolling down the hill, while cultural forces around Colbert, the comedian, rose like a phoenix.
The same thing could happen to sports, because causing streaming confusion on game day is very tiring. And that draft was too bourgeois.
I’m a singer and just accepted a new British company called Talent is Timeless (featuring songwriters over age 50) as producers for my third act album to be completed over the next nine months. I see a parallel, bridging London and American pop culture. Run by gifted women whose time has arrived, I look forward to being “who I am” with them.
A lesson for executives (CBS or otherwise): Never forget that it’s easy for artists to make lemonade out of lemons. That’s our gift, and that’s why we keep rising.
Laurie Scheid
New Kensington