Unless you have spent the past 48 hours living “off the grid” we’ll assume that you are familiar with the kerfuffle that blew up on Monday evening when word first emerged that the Columbia Broadcasting System (contemporarily known as CBS) had “ordered” its host of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” not to air a scheduled interview with Texas State Representative James Talarico. Talarico is a candidate in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas, currently held by four-term Republican incumbent John Cornyn.

The original story was that lawyers for CBS told Stephen Colbert and his team “in no uncertain terms” that they couldn’t air the planned interview with Talarico, because they feared being in the same position that ABC found itself in after Talarico appeared on that network’s morning talk show “The View” some weeks ago. ABC then received word that the Federal Communications Commission was “launching an investigation” into whether the network had intentionally ignored the FCC’s recently stated position that talk shows like “The View” were no longer exempt from the “equal time” provisions of the commission’s rules (as they have been for decades) and therefore might be subject to some unspecified penalty.

A quick reminder: the FCC has no regulatory authority over any network, as networks themselves hold no federally issued license to operate. But the broadcast networks, in the form of ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, each also own and operate a number of broadcast television stations in markets around the country. Those stations are licensed by the FCC, and those licenses, along with those of all the affiliated TV stations for each network in the country, can be threatened with fines and even the loss of their broadcast licenses—and, in turn, their ability to stay in business.

Even though no television station has ever lost its license for any such reason.

Early Monday evening, as “The Late Show” was recording its 11:35 pm show, CBS lawyers told host Colbert and his producers that the interview with Talarico couldn’t be broadcast. The lawyers also told Colbert, according to his telling of the episode, which DID air in the second segment of the broadcast, that he couldn’t even talk about the matter on the show.

Of course, Colbert did talk about it—in great detail. Even going so far as to detail that the lawyers had told him that he couldn’t even show a picture of Talarico. This, as the graphic over his shoulder showed a generic man’s photo with the title “Not James Talarico.” Given the strength of Colbert’s comedic talents, backed up by his killer writing staff, the segment was both funny and defiant at the same time.

Colbert announced in that segment that he would do the interview and that it would be available to watch on “The Late Show” YouTube channel.

By Tuesday morning, the whole episode was a major news story, and the press was detailing both the latest free speech crackdown by the FCC and Stephen Colbert's defiance of his network, which, as you’ll recall, has already told him it is ending his show this May.

And because CBS, now under the ownership of Paramount-Skydance since David Ellison’s company took over last year, has turned into “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” (with apologies to the 1972 movie of the same name), the network thought it could help the situation by putting out a statement on Tuesday afternoon that completely contradicted Colbert’s version of events. In CBS’s version of what happened, the network’s lawyers “merely provided legal guidance” and did not ever say that the interview could not air. The statement added that the lawyers suggested options on how the interview could avoid running into any issues with the FCC’s equal time concerns, by merely scheduling interviews with other candidates for the U.S. Senate race in Texas (namely with U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett, who is Talarico’s opposition in the state’s Democratic primary)

In a final flourish, the CBS statement said: “THE LATE SHOW decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.”

With that, it was “on like Donkey Kong,” and Stephen Colbert promptly made the statement the focus of another “Late Show” segment on Tuesday night. He spelled out how the negotiations with the network’s lawyers were taking place during the commercial breaks of the show’s taping on Monday evening, and how the same lawyers had approved his entire script for that night’s show. Colbert went on to stress, as only a true gentile southerner, born and raised in our very own hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, would, that he “wasn’t angry,” and certainly did not want “to have an adversarial relationship with the network.” Even though the network has already told him he is out of a job hosting the number one show in late-night after this May.

Colbert then made his position clear by mimicking the ritual known to any urban-dwelling dog owner—he pulled out a plastic bag, put his hand in it, and picked up the paper with the network’s statement, crumpled it up, tied off the plastic bag, and deposited it in a trash can under his desk. His audience roared with approval.

As one might imagine, coverage of this talent vs. network standoff has continued into a second full day. There have been many words written about all of it, and to keep up with all of it, we’re grateful for the new staple in our daily morning news read-in ritual, The Mediaite One Sheet.

If you are unfamiliar with this electronic publication, it’s the recent creation from the Mediaite.com website, part of the growing media empire founded by Dan Abrams, the ABC News legal analyst, host of Reelz Channel’s “On Patrol:Live” weekend show (formerly known as “Live PD” when it was airing on A&E Network until 2020.) Abrams also owns the digital Law and Crime network that just acquired CourtTV from Scripps.

Mediaite, which has been “appreciating the celebrity of the media” since it launched in 2009, recently added “The One Sheet” to its offerings. The daily emailed newsletter serves as a summary of what the growing community of online newsletters covering the media business is reporting. Offering the headlines and snarky commentary on what is being covered in outlets like Status, Reliable Sources, Breaker, The Poynter Report, Newsbusters, etc. (For some inexplicable reason, The One Sheet has not included any coverage of our work here at The Topline, but we assume that is just a temporary oversight that will be corrected someday.) That slight aside, we are big fans of “The One Sheet” here and recommend it to anyone trying to keep up with the machinations in the media world each day. (And no, this isn’t a sponsored message—we just like the offering.)

What we have been amazed at in all the coverage of the standoff between Stephen Colbert and the network is that no one has pointed out the holes in the whole account of what happened and why. First of all, does anyone really believe that CBS had no option other than to allow Colbert’s show to air the “dirty laundry” of what was happening behind the scenes regarding the Talarico interview? The network could have pulled the show at any point during the proceedings and aired a repeat if it truly had a major problem with either the interview or Colbert discussing it. Even Nexstar and Sinclair recognized having this authority when they pre-empted Jimmy Kimmel Live on their ABC affiliates last year, ostensibly because they were offended by Kimmel’s perceived slight in a joke about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Second, CBS owns the rights to “The Late Show.” Those same lawyers who purportedly told Colbert & Co. that they couldn’t air the Talarico interview couldn’t also have said, “Yeah, and you can’t put it on the show’s official YouTube channel either.” We assume that one call to CBS head George Cheeks could have prevented much of this mess. Unless, of course, we are to think that CBS News’s Editor-In-Chief, Bari Weiss, has more power than Mr. Cheeks (who she doesn’t report to), given that she kept a “60 Minutes” story off the air that was scheduled, promoted, and apparently even cleared by the network’s lawyers for broadcast.

Naturally, this whole episode has been great for candidate Talarico. The interview has been watched nearly six million times as of the time of this column's posting. His campaign set a single-day record for contributions, totalling over 2.5 million dollars. To quote an old refrain from the PR world, “You couldn’t buy coverage like this.” Even Talarico’s primary opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, defended Colbert’s interview. Appearing on MS NOW Tuesday night, she noted that she has appeared on Colbert’s “Late Show” on a couple of previous occasions.

Talarico and his campaign inaccurately blamed the FCC for keeping the interview from airing. The decision was entirely CBS’s. Likely made in reaction to the mere threat of an FCC inquiry, which is what happened to ABC. While likely just the kind of “chilling effect” that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr would hope for, the FCC didn’t “order” the “censorship” that the campaign is now calling out.

Meanwhile (as Colbert himself might say in a recurring bit of the same name), CBS’s larger motive in this now textbook case of bad PR management is likely not wanting to create any larger problems for its corporate parent, Paramount-Skydance (known by the ticker symbol PSKY on Wall Street.) You might be aware that PSKY is in the midst of its $108 billion pursuit to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. That pursuit just got a reprieve on Tuesday when the Warner Bros. Discovery board said it would reconsider an increased bid from PSKY for the entire company--after previously rejecting such a bid in favor of an $83 billion offer from Netflix for just WBD’s movie studios and streaming business. Paramount has contended all along that it will have a significantly easier time getting government approval to acquire the entire Warner Bros. Discovery empire, without explicitly saying that this is because of the favorable relations that CEO David Ellison and his father-posing-as-banker, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, have with the Trump administration.

The same Trump administration that doesn’t much care for Stephen Colbert and was pleased to see CBS cancel his show. How pleased? In their coverage of the current situation, CBS News reports in their web story that White House spokesman Davis Ingle called Colbert “a pathetic trainwreck with no talent and terrible ratings, which is exactly why CBS canceled his show and is booting him off the airwaves.”

For the record, Colbert’s ratings have consistently led the time period in recent years, and the network has always maintained that the cancellation of “The Late Show” is “purely a financial decision.” Of course, if you can find over a hundred billion dollars available to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery (including CNN, which would certainly be beneficial to CBS News) then you couldn’t possibly be expected to afford the “loss” of $40 million a year, a figure that various unnamed sources claimed motivated the cancellation of Colbert’s show last August.

We recognize that the whole business of “linear television” ain’t what it used to be, and commercials airing after the late news don’t command the premium prices they once did. But there was never any serious attempt by CBS to save “The Late Show,” just as there was no attempt to save the time period that followed it, once host Taylor Tomlinson said she was going to leave “After Midnight” last year.

Not unless you consider reruns of Byron Allen’s catalog of “Comics Unleashed” to be anything other than filling a network schedule hole on the very cheap.

All of which boils down to this: Traditional network television is in an existential crisis. In its relatively short tenure at CBS, Paramount has repeatedly made that crisis look like a proverbial “dumpster fire” stemming from not making smart decisions. Repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert has become the de facto patron saint of free speech, the First Amendment, and the resistance against those currently in power in Washington, DC. He’s likely to have his pick of platforms to continue his career in the public eye after his tenure at CBS ends in a few months, should he wish to do so.

And like Steve Allen, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, and David Letterman before him, he’ll likely have the last laugh as well.

-30-