By Alicia Powell and Lisa Richwine
NEW YORK, May 21 (Reuters) - Comedian Stephen Colbert signed off from his late-night talk show on Thursday after 11 seasons with a sentimental chat with Beatles musician Paul McCartney and pointed jokes about his forced departure from CBS.
The final installment of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" began with the comic thanking the in-person and television audience for watching his nightly take on current events, often punctuated by verbal jabs at Republican President
Donald Trump.
"We were here to feel the news with you, and I don't know about you, but I sure have felt it," Colbert said to laughter in the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.
CBS announced last July that it was cancelling the "Late Show," citing financial reasons. Late-night television, an American tradition since the 1950s, has been losing viewership and advertising dollars for years.
The decision to end the top-rated late-night talk show sparked an outcry, however, from Democrats and other critics who saw it as a move to silence political satire in violation of the First Amendment's free speech protection.
The show's cancellation came as Paramount Global, at the time the owner of CBS, was seeking the government's approval for a merger. The deal was approved, and CBS is now a unit of David Ellison-led Paramount Skydance.
Colbert's show ranked as the most-watched among the broadcast networks' late-night TV talk shows since the 2017-2018 season, according to Nielsen data. This season, the "Late Show" averaged 2.1 million viewers.
On Thursday's finale, Colbert left his desk and walked backstage to find a glowing green circle. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, a frequent Colbert guest, joked that it was a wormhole caused by "two conflicting realities," which were "a show that was number one on late night, and it also gets canceled."
"Your cancellation has created a rift in the comedy-variety-talk continuum," Tyson said. "If it grows, all of late-night television could be destroyed."
Fellow talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and Jon Stewart then appeared to offer advice.
'HELLO, GOODBYE'
Earlier, Colbert suggested he had secured an interview with Pope Leo as his final guest. A staffer then said, in jest, that the pontiff had canceled because he did not like the snacks in his dressing room.
At that moment, McCartney wandered onto the stage and said he was available. "I was just in the area. I was doing some errands," the musician quipped.
McCartney had appeared in the same theater in 1964, when the Beatles were introduced to Americans on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Colbert asked McCartney what he remembered from that performance, what Sullivan was like and how the Beatles viewed the United States at the time.
The singer said he and his young bandmates, in their early 20s at the time, saw America as "the land of the free, the greatest democracy."
"That's what it was, and hopefully still is," McCartney said.
The finale ended with McCartney singing the Beatles classic "Hello, Goodbye" with Colbert on background vocals.
When the show concluded, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Colbert had "no talent."
"You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk," the president said. "Thank goodness he's finally gone!"
Before Thursday's show, fans outside the theater lamented the end of not just Colbert's run but also the "Late Show" as an institution. Colbert, 62, took over the show from David Letterman in 2015.
"This is the end of an era. The late night show is a staple. David Letterman, Johnny Carson, it's upsetting," said fan Mike McGillicuddy.
Another fan, Sarah Thompson, said she was "very sad that Stephen's leaving."
"It's just going to leave a big hole in America because you need to laugh at the end of the day from all the trauma that we're facing," she said.
(Reporting by Alicia Powell in New York and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Jamie Freed)
