Clay & Buck on Late Night?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show – "Clay & Buck on Late Night?"

Episode Details:

• Title: Clay & Buck on Late Night?
• Release Date: July 19, 2025
• Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
• Description: Clay Travis and Buck Sexton delve into the most pressing news, politics, and current events with intelligence and humor. This episode explores the recent cancellation of the late-night show phenomenon, examining its implications for broadcast television and the broader media landscape.

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1. Introduction to the Late-Night Show Cancellation

The episode opens with Clay Travis and Buck Sexton discussing the surprising news that CBS is discontinuing its late-night programming, including The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. This marks a significant shift in the late-night television landscape, which has been dominated by such shows for decades.

Notable Quote:

• Jimmy Kimmel: “Love you, Stephen. F. You and all your Sheldon's CBS.” [03:26]

2. Analyzing the Reasons Behind the Cancellation

Clay and Buck delve into the multifaceted reasons behind CBS's decision to end the late-night show. They highlight the financial strains, including high production costs and declining ratings, as primary factors. Additionally, they discuss the cultural shifts and changing audience preferences that have influenced the network's strategy.

Key Points:

• High Production Costs: Reports suggest the show cost CBS around $100 million annually, with losses of approximately $40 million each year.
• Declining Ratings: Stephen Colbert's viewership has plummeted from over 3 million households to just above 2 million, significantly impacting daily profits.

Notable Quote:

• Les Moonves (CBS CEO): “Late night is a very important part of our culture. It is not as economically profitable as it used to be.” [10:29]

3. Insights from Industry Experts

The hosts reference historical insights from media personalities like Rush Limbaugh, who predicted the diminishing importance of ratings in television programming. Clay and Buck compare Limbaugh's observations to the current state of CBS, suggesting that executive decisions are increasingly driven by cultural cachet rather than traditional metrics.

Notable Quote:

• Rush Limbaugh: “I think we've gotten to the point... television executives... are more influenced by what the media says about a talent or a show than what the ratings are.” [09:23]

4. Stephen Colbert’s Declining Popularity

The discussion shifts to Stephen Colbert's tenure as the host of The Late Show. Clay and Buck analyze how Colbert's increasingly pointed critiques of former President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement have alienated a significant portion of his audience, leading to a steady decline in viewership.

Key Points:

• Host’s Shift in Tone: Transition from satirical humor to more aggressive political commentary.
• Audience Alienation: Colbert's stance against Trump and MAGA supporters has driven away viewers who favored a lighter, more bipartisan approach.

Notable Quote:

• Bill O'Reilly (via email blast): “Stephen Colbert has lost more than a million viewers... the primary reason is Colbert's hatred for Trump and the MAGA Brigades.” [13:16]

5. Cultural Implications: The Death of Broadcast Television?

Clay and Buck explore the broader implications of CBS’s decision, contemplating whether this signals the decline of broadcast television as the primary medium for late-night programming. They argue that the rise of digital platforms and streaming services may be contributing to traditional networks' struggles.

Key Points:

• Generational Shift: Younger audiences are increasingly favoring on-demand content over scheduled programming.
• Economic Viability: Traditional advertising models are under pressure from new media consumption habits.

Notable Quote:

• Rodney Williams: “Broadcast television is dead.” [06:34]

6. Future of Late-Night Television

Speculating on the future, Clay and Buck suggest potential avenues for late-night content, including the possibility of transitioning their own show to a late-night format. They encourage listeners to engage with CBS through emails and talkbacks, humorously proposing that The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show could fill the void left by Colbert’s departure.

Key Points:

• Potential New Formats: Ideas include transforming their current show into a late-night staple.
• Listener Engagement: Encouraging audience participation to influence network decisions.

Notable Quote:

• Greg: “Clay and Buck would make a great late night show.” [16:10]

7. Conclusion: Reflecting on the Shift

The episode wraps up with Clay and Buck reflecting on the rapid changes in the media landscape and the uncertain future of broadcast television. They emphasize the importance of adaptability and audience connection in navigating these transformations.

Notable Quote:

• Rodney Williams: “This is the day after, it encapsulates the entire problem... why Colbert is off the air.” [13:35]

---

Final Thoughts: In "Clay & Buck on Late Night?", Clay Travis and Buck Sexton provide a comprehensive analysis of the recent upheaval in late-night television. Through insightful discussions and expert commentary, they shed light on the economic and cultural forces reshaping the media industry. This episode serves as a crucial resource for listeners seeking to understand the broader implications of CBS’s decision and the future trajectory of broadcast television.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Jimmy Kimmel: “Love you, Stephen. F. You and all your Sheldon's CBS.” [03:26]
• Rush Limbaugh: “...television executives... are more influenced by what the media says about a talent or a show than what the ratings are.” [09:23]
• Les Moonves: “Late night is a very important part of our culture. It is not as economically profitable as it used to be.” [10:29]
• Bill O'Reilly: “Stephen Colbert has lost more than a million viewers... the primary reason is Colbert's hatred for Trump and the MAGA Brigades.” [13:16]
• Rodney Williams: “Broadcast television is dead.” [06:34]
• Greg: “Clay and Buck would make a great late night show.” [16:10]

---

This summary encapsulates the core discussions, insights, and conclusions of the episode, providing a clear and engaging overview for those who haven't listened to the podcast.

Transcript

[Greg]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Greg]

Welcome to this edition of After Hours.

[Rodney Williams]

With producer Ali and producer Ally. I mean, I'm producer Greg.

[Greg]

You're producer Greg.

[Rodney Williams]

Yes. It's been a minute.

[Greg]

It has. We haven't done one of these in a while, Greg.

[Rodney Williams]

No.

[Greg]

We got into a pretty spirited conversation this morning, so we thought, you know, let's do another one of these and put a little Easter egg into the podcast feed.

[Rodney Williams]

Absolutely. And we haven't had one in a while, but it was a great discussion. And it all centered around CBS putting an end to the late show. Not just canceling Colbert, but they're getting rid of the whole show all together, which I find really interesting.

[Greg]

I thought the story was really interesting for a whole bunch of reasons. But also the reaction, like Jimmy Kimmel, what he said in his Instagram post, love you, Stephen. F. You and all your Sheldon's cbs.

[Rodney Williams]

Okay, what does that even mean?

[Greg]

I took that to mean Young Sheldon, which we talked about. The show this morning is doing a lot amazing.

[Rodney Williams]

And they keep. Yes, and they keep spinning off that. That Big Bang theory. So there was the original and then there was the Young Sheldon.

[Greg]

And they're making a lot of money for cbs and it's been such a big hit. It's the most watched comedy, TV or streaming since its debut in 2017. That's according to Nielsen. But what I thought was interesting about that is the content on Young Sheldon. I've only seen Full Disclosure, only about half a dozen episodes. My parents love it. All their pickleball friends love it. Their whole generation loves it. And I asked why because I don't particularly care for it. It's really not my kind of tv. But I asked them what they loved and they said it's wholesome, it's funny. They kind of like that. They're like a church going family, almost like a Leave it to beaver. But the 90s version.

[Rodney Williams]

Absolutely. And I. That's one of the things that I think that we like about it as well. We watch it at our house because it is a real look at a churchgoing family and they poke fun a little bit because it's still, you know, liberal television Hollywood. But they take it seriously enough. I mean, yes, they do make the mom to be kind of a Christian wacko.

[Greg]

Woo hoo. But there's something endearing about that.

[Rodney Williams]

There is, exactly. Because the family sticks together even though they each all have their quirks and their foibles and that sort of thing.

[Greg]

Imperfectly perfect family.

[Rodney Williams]

No, absolutely. And I think I mentioned this earlier. The daughter, the sister Missy, the twin of young Sheldon, is the one who steals the show for us all the time. So she's the best. She's the best part of the show, in our opinion.

[Greg]

Yeah. So I found that Jimmy Kimmel's little tweet or Instagram post about that was very telling because I think they're not being honest also about why it's going away. It's going away for a bunch of reasons. And you had a really good point about the end of an era.

[Rodney Williams]

Well, I think that the idea that we're going to flashback and we're going to talk about this and we're actually going to play you a flashback clip in a few minutes about the idea that ratings don't matter anymore and the whole reason that this is being gotten rid of. Yes, there's a merger coming and CBS is, is merging and the lawsuit and the lawsuit and all of that. Rush talked about the fact that ratings don't matter anymore. We're gonna play that in a little bit and that it's all about cachet. But what we really are seeing with the removal of the whole show entirely, this is the first domino, if you will, in the end of broadcast television.

[Greg]

I think you're right.

[Rodney Williams]

I think this is going to be a fast. I don't know how fast it's gonna come, but it is going to be the point where people turn back and look and go, aha, there it is right there. That's when broadcast television died. So yeah, broadcast television is dead.

[Greg]

And I think also some media executives were just looking at the books. They kind of doged a little bit. They looked at the books, they saw the expense sheet. They did not see the value proposition coming back in the form of advertisers or whereas a young Sheldon show is doing amazing.

[Rodney Williams]

Do you think that piece that was going around today is real about that? The show costs $100 million a year to make and they were losing $40 million a year. Do you think that that's accurate? It certainly seemed, I mean, if you looked at the breakdown of what it cost Colbert salaries right around 15. And then, you know, the writers and the staffs and the legal, you know, from.

[Greg]

You sent that to us today where what was that on? What was the source?

[Rodney Williams]

You know, to be honest with you, I forget off the top of my head, I happen.

[Greg]

But Colbert himself said, I have a team of 200.

[Rodney Williams]

200 people.

[Greg]

Which of course, if any of you listening here, that made Greg and I laugh, because our Clay and Buck show, we have a production team. I'll emphasize production team of three. If you count our board op, four.

[Rodney Williams]

Right. And then so you add the digital team, that's another four or five. And then if you include our bosses and immediate bosses, I think you're maybe in going all the way up to the CEOs of the company, I think you're looking at maybe a dozen people.

[Greg]

Right?

[Rodney Williams]

Or, you know, 16 people at the outside. 200 people is just ridiculous.

[Greg]

Right. They said they had a team of writers. I think There was about 10 to 15 writers.

[Rodney Williams]

Could you imagine trying to write for the Clay and Buck?

[Greg]

Well, all of it is improv and just going off the cuff.

[Rodney Williams]

It is. I mean, that's not to say that they're not doing their homework and they're. Because they are. I mean, they're always doing show.

[Greg]

Right. It's just not scripted.

[Rodney Williams]

It's not scripted. Just like this show isn't scripted. We're not sitting here, we're not reading. I mean, we discussed this earlier ourselves and got into a really interesting discussion, which is why we're bringing it to you now.

[Greg]

Right. I want you to go and pull up that Rush clip, though, because that does go into the Wayback Machine. And I thought it really, really shined a light on the real reason this.

[Rodney Williams]

Goes back to 2011. I'm sorry, 2014. So it goes back 11 years. And he was talking about at that time, this, the president of cbs, Les Moonves, said that ratings don't matter anymore. And Rush actually did a whole big thing on it. And take a listen to this right now. It's really interesting.

[Rush Limbaugh]

This sets up a giant. See, I told you so. This is me, February 19th, right here behind the golden EIB microphone. I had a instant message flash going back and forth about ratings late night. And. And I offered the following opinion to the person I was talking with. I said, it's obvious that ratings don't matter anywhere near as much as they used to. Otherwise there wouldn't be a cnn, there would not be an msnbc. If ratings mattered, they wouldn't exist. Nobody's watching. And I proffered this opinion. I think we've gotten to the point in not just media, but our culture, I think television executives management Types, programmers are more influenced by what the media says about a talent or a show than what the ratings are. Amen. Who can dispute that? Nobody can. Okay, so let's go to Les Moonvest, now, the CEO of the CBS Tiffany Network empire. This was yesterday in Los Angeles at the Milken Institute Global Conference.

[Les Moonves]

Late night is not what it used to be. During the days of Johnny Carson, even the early days of David Letterman, it was much more of a profit center.

[Rush Limbaugh]

For all of us.

[Les Moonves]

The last few years, it's been more about bragging rights. And clearly we're at a point where there's a real generational change. Late night is a very important part of our culture. It is not as economically profitable as it used to be. So they make a lot about the ratings, you know, and that really doesn't affect the bottom line. So I'd rather have the best guy, maybe that doesn't quite have the ratings of the other guy.

[Rush Limbaugh]

Well, folks, I mean, there you have it. This is the guy that hired Colbert. The ratings don't matter.

[Rodney Williams]

Rush, of course, was right, as always. He had that. It's great how he talks about. I was having this conversation with a friend and then I, like, I don't know if you noticed, we went from Rush and then we played the older clip of Rush and we changed the audio so you could tell it was a little bit different. And then the audio of Les Moonviz. The idea that ratings don't matter anymore, if that's the case, and if you take that as still the truth, because I think that that pretty much is because Russia's point is ratings don't matter. Otherwise CNN would be off the air. MSNBC would be off the air. If that's still the case, then something changed at the Colbert show and for them to just deep six all of it. And I think that something is Trump.

[Greg]

I literally was going to tell you moments before we jumped on the mics here. I got my email blast from Bill O'Reilly about his column that came out today. And I just want to read a little bit of it because it goes to your point about the ratings. It's titled A Wake Up Call for Late Night. The once dominant network television media is completely falling apart. According to the Nielsen ratings, fewer than 20% of Americans now watch any network programming. Why? Because it's largely boring and traditional Americans resent the liberal culture the networks embrace. All day, all night, woke on parade, Political correctness run amok. And then he adds a little bit later in the column, Mr. Colbert basically committed performance Suicide. When he took over For David Letterman 10 years ago, he was coming off the red hot satire of Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Yes, the boys were left handed pitchers, but they tamped down the malice at least somewhat. I had a lot of laughs debating Stewart. Over the past five years, Stephen Colbert has lost more than a million viewers. His numbers descending to just above 2 million households. Daily profits crashed. The primary reason is Colbert's hatred for Trump and the MAGA Brigades. So exactly what you were saying, Greg.

[Rodney Williams]

Last night's episode is a perfect example. It's encapsulates exact. And when we're recording this, this is the day after, it encapsulates the entire problem because Colbert comes on and announces, hey, this is the end of our show, we're not gonna last beyond next May. And then who does he have on as his primary guest?

[Greg]

And you have the bite. Adam Schiff, Shifty Schiff.

[Rodney Williams]

Oh my gosh, Pencil neck himself. And you gotta hear, you've gotta hear this because this is exactly the problem in a nutshell, why Colbert is off the air.

[Adam Schiff]

I was in Congress for what, I don't know, 20 years before Trump came along or thereabouts. If I got threatened two or three times in 20 years, that was a lot. If I got threatened two or three times in a week during first Trump, it wasn't very much. Ever since I led his first impeachment, he's threatened me with jail and prosecution and called me a traitor, accused me of treason, blah blah, blah. He coerced Republicans into century me in the House and now the latest attack on me. So I just want to direct this. If this is the right camera or maybe that's the right camera. That's the right camera right there. Donald, piss off. But, but Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files?

[Greg]

But come on, I mean, really, really.

[Rodney Williams]

Could you believe that? I mean, pee off. I mean, come on.

[Greg]

Yeah, it's just, and here's the thing, to O'Reilly's point in the column, I actually loved Jon Stewart in the Daily Show. I listened all the time. I thought it was really funny and it was witty and it was clever. I can't even stomach two minutes of Stephen Colbert. I can't. I just can't. It's angry, it's mean spirited.

[Rodney Williams]

When Colbert was doing the Colbert rapport before he came over, he was totally poking fun at George W. Bush and he was poking fun at conservatives and that was fine, it was done. He was poking fun, but it wasn't done in a vicious way. Vicious, kind of. Thank you. That's exactly the word I was looking for. Yeah, exactly. So I think, yeah, he's definitely lost something. I don't know where he's gonna go after this.

[Greg]

Oh, he's gonna go to Hollywood's gonna take care of him. They're gonna circle around and circle.

[Rodney Williams]

So what is CBS gonna do with that real estate, though? All of a sudden there's an hour prime time that's gonna open up. I mean, I can't imagine that they're not going to fill it with something else along those lines. I just don't know. They're not gonna do like a Nightline news sort of a program. I just can't imagine what they do with that spot.

[Greg]

It's an interesting question and audience, what do you think they're going to do? Send us an email.

[Rodney Williams]

What should they do? Maybe we could get the Clay and Buck show in over there.

[Greg]

Send us.

[Rodney Williams]

Yeah, send us talkbacks. Go on that iheartrade.

[Greg]

Oh, my God, Clay and Buck would make a great late night show.

[Rodney Williams]

Could you imagine?

[Greg]

Oh, they would be hilarious.

[Rodney Williams]

We should totally pitch that.

[Greg]

Let's pitch that.

[Rodney Williams]

Yeah, you and everybody. You get on the emails and get on the talkbacks and call the show CBS and you suggested as well and absolutely, call cbs. Let's see if we can get Clay and Buck to take that over the Too late night.

[Greg]

Oh, that would be wonderful.

[Rodney Williams]

It'd be a lot of fun.

[Greg]

Yeah, definitely. All right, Greg. Well, I think we've covered it. This is a little episode. Yeah, a little Easter egg there. And let's see, what sponsor should we talk about?

[Rodney Williams]

Oh, we didn't.

[Greg]

Oh, I got one for you. Yes, I got one because I just got it yesterday in the mail. I got my Cozy Earth.

[Rodney Williams]

Oh, did you really?

[Greg]

Cozy Earth is our newest sponsor. And. And it's basically apparel and in true form to the title Cozy Earth. It is cozy and it is cotton and it is comfortable and organic. I got my husband a pair of shorts, a T shirt, a bunch of socks and some joggers and he loves it all. It's wonderful.

[Rodney Williams]

Oh, that's great.

[Greg]

I'm going to get myself some stuff next.

[Rodney Williams]

I'm going there this afternoon because I need some new running shorts. So this is perfect. And I'll head there and pick some.

[Greg]

Up and make sure you put Clay or Buck's name into the promo code section when you're ordering so you get a little discount.

[Rodney Williams]

That's great. That's all I want. Yeah, perfect. Well, thank you.

[Greg]

All right. Well, that is it for this episode of After Hours with producer Ali and producer Greg.

[Rodney Williams]

Let's not wait so long before we do this again next time.

[Greg]

I know, I know. We gotta get on that.

[Rodney Williams]

We'll do this a little more frequently.

[Greg]

Yes. All right.

[Rodney Williams]

Until next time.

[Greg]

Thanks for tuning in.

[Elahei Izadi]

When I listen to the news, here's what I want to know why this story matters, who's at the center of it, and how the reporters uncovered it. And as a journalist, I want to make sure that's what you get, too. I'm Elahei Izadi, co host of the podcast Post Reports. Every weekday, my colleagues and I at the Washington Post give you the context you need on the biggest stories. Healthcare tariffs, artificial intelligence. We've got you covered. Look for Post Reports wherever you listen to podcasts.

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