“This is pure cowardice,” Letterman said. “They did not do the correct thing. They did not handle Stephen Colbert — the face of that network — in the way he deserves to have been handled.”

Loss of Stephen Colbert’s show is another sign of how we are losing our shared ties.

In 2024, Paramount’s broadcast and cable television business had an operating income of about $4.3 billion, down roughly 9 percent from the $4.8 billion it made the year before.