Tim Swarens, the Man Who Turned 27% Into 46% and Called It Journalism, Explains Why First Place Is Actually Last

USA Today: Proudly Serving Opinions to Hotel Lobbies and Dismissive Uncles Since 1982

Tim Swarens is not a smart person. He is a former editor with a grudge and a calculator he refuses to use correctly. In his USA Today send-off to Stephen Colbert, he blames a late-night host for the collapse of broadcast television, invents polling data, and pretends a first-place show somehow finished last. It is a masterpiece of feeling over fact.

Forty-Six Percent Is A Lie, And So Is The Rest

Swarens claims Colbert insulted “the 46% of Americans who identify as Republicans.” That number does not exist in any reputable poll. According to a 2025 Gallup survey reported by Fox News, 27% of American adults identify as Republicans (Sorace, 2026). Not 46%. Another 15% of independents lean Republican, which brings the total Republican-leaning population to roughly 42%. Swarens took the GOP-leaning number, rounded it up, and stripped away the leaners so he could pretend half the country carries a party card. That is not analysis. It is padding.

If we look at registered voters specifically, the gap gets worse. USAFacts reported in April 2026 that there are 39.2 million registered Republicans out of a voting-age population that the Census Bureau estimated at roughly 262 million in 2023 (USAFacts, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau, 2024). That means actual registered Republicans make up about 15% of eligible voters. Swarens inflated that to 46% because it helps him feel like a persecuted majority. The receipts say otherwise.

Johnny Carson Had Three Channels; Stephen Colbert Has Three Hundred

Swarens compares Colbert’s 2.5 million viewers to Johnny Carson’s 9 million and calls it failure. This is like comparing a horse-drawn carriage to a sports car and blaming the car for not producing as much manure. When Carson ruled late night, American television had three commercial broadcast networks. The Big Three captured more than 90% of the audience through the 1970s (EBSCO Research, n.d.). By the early 1990s, cable and VCRs had already eroded that share to 61%. Today, Nielsen reports that streaming alone makes up 44.8% of all television usage, surpassing broadcast and cable combined (Nielsen, 2025). Viewers can choose from Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, cable news, podcasts, and hundreds of other options. Colbert is not drawing Carson’s numbers because no one draws Carson’s numbers. The platform has fragmented. That is not arrogance. That is arithmetic.

Swarens also notes that David Letterman pulled 7.8 million viewers in 1993. He leaves out the part where Letterman arrived before Fox News, before streaming, before smartphones, and when broadcast still dominated. Using 1993 ratings to judge a 2026 show is either deliberate deception or historical illiteracy.

First Place Is A Weird Spot To Call Failure

According to Nielsen data reported by LateNighter in April 2026, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert remained the most-watched program at 11:35 p.m. in the first quarter of 2026, averaging 2.70 million viewers (Rosenzweig, 2026). He beat Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon comfortably. CBS did not fire a loser. CBS canceled a winner. The network explicitly stated the decision was financial, not performance-related. Industry reporting indicates the show lost roughly $40 million annually. But that loss is not unique to Colbert. Late-night advertising revenue across the Big Three networks collapsed from $439 million in 2018 to about $220 million in 2024, per data from the ad firm Guideline cited by the Quinnipiac Chronicle (Angelillo, 2025). That is a 50% drop across the board. The entire format is bleeding money because the ad model broke, not because Stephen Colbert made fun of a politician.

Swarens wants you to believe that Colbert’s “spite-the-right attitude” cost him his job. The truth is simpler. Corporate executives looked at a spreadsheet, saw that broadcast late night no longer pays for itself, and cut the show. It is happening everywhere. James Corden’s Late Late Show was already axed. After Midnight ended in 2025. The 12:37 a.m. slot is dead. This is an industry-wide autopsy, not a personal vendetta.

The Real Echo Chamber Wears A Suit, Not A Monologue

Swarens calls Colbert an echo chamber, but the actual echo chamber is the one being built at CBS headquarters. In July 2025, Paramount Global paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit from President Trump over a 60 Minutes interview. The company needed Federal Communications Commission approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance, and Trump-appointed regulators had made clear that the deal could stall unless Paramount played ball. After the settlement, Paramount agreed to appoint a so-called bias monitor and installed conservative commentator Bari Weiss to help steer news coverage (Fallow, 2025).

By early 2026, veteran CBS producers were leaving with blistering farewell memos. Mary Walsh, a 46-year CBS News veteran, wrote that staff had been told to “aim our reporting at a particular part of the political spectrum” (Barr, 2026). Producer Alicia Hastey warned that stories were being evaluated not on journalistic merit but on whether they matched “a shifting set of ideological expectations.” These are not the complaints of snowflakes. They are the complaints of journalists watching their employer bend the knee to a presidential administration.

CBS did not cancel Colbert because he insulted conservatives. CBS canceled Colbert because his corporate parent needed to keep a president happy, and a high-priced comedian who criticizes power was no longer politically convenient. That is how power works. Swarens should recognize it, but he is too busy pretending that a first-place show finished last.

Stephen Colbert is off the air because Paramount calculated that pleasing Donald Trump was more valuable than keeping its highest-rated late-night host. Swarens celebrates the decision as a market verdict, but the market had already spoken, and it chose Colbert. The only verdict here is political. If Swarens finds joy in that, he is welcome to it. He should just stop calling it math.

If you want to see what happens when a former editor discovers that broadcast television now has to compete with more than three channels and immediately blames a liberal for it, the original masterpiece is here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/21/stephen-colbert-final-show-cbs-conservatives-happy/90179206007/

EDIT: I reworded my pointer to this clowns original article.

Works Cited

Angelillo, A. (2025, September 30). The slow, silent collapse of late night TV is impossible to ignore. The Quinnipiac Chronicle. https://quchronicle.com/90640/arts-and-life/the-slow-silent-collapse-of-late-night-tv-is-impossible-to-ignore/

Barr, J. (2026, February 27). Departing CBS News producer claims political bias as Paramount poised to buy Warner Bros. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/27/cbs-news-political-bias-paramount-warner-bros

Craig, M. (2025, September 12). The highest-paid TV hosts of 2025. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/09/12/the-highest-paid-tv-hosts-of-2025/

EBSCO Research. (n.d.). Decline of the Big Three networks. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/decline-big-three-networks

Fallow, K. (2025, July 9). Paramount’s Trump lawsuit settlement: Curtain call for the First Amendment? Knight First Amendment Institute. https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/paramounts-trump-lawsuit-settlement-curtain-call-for-the-first-amendment

Nielsen. (2025, June 17). Streaming reaches historic TV milestone, eclipses combined broadcast and cable viewing for first time. https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/streaming-reaches-historic-tv-milestone-eclipses-combined-broadcast-and-cable-viewing-for-first-time/

Rosenzweig, J. (2026, April 13). Here are final late night ratings for Q1 2026. LateNighter. https://latenighter.com/news/ratings/here-are-final-late-night-ratings-for-q1-2026/

Sorace, S. (2026, January 12). Gallup survey shows record 45% of Americans identify as independents. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/record-number-americans-identify-political-independents-rejecting-2-major-parties-poll-finds

Swarens, T. (2026, May 21). Colbert’s final ‘Late Show’ brings conservatives joy. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/21/stephen-colbert-final-show-cbs-conservatives-happy/90179206007/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2024, March 29). Estimates of the voting-age population for 2023. Federal Register. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06666/estimates-of-the-voting-age-population-for-2023

USAFacts. (2026, April). How many voters have a party affiliation? https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/