On Friday, Stephen Colbert returned to the airwaves 23 hours after the end of The Late Show, hosting a delightful, full-length episode of Only In Monroe, a local access show based in Monroe, Michigan. The show was quickly uploaded to YouTube, which Paramount, seemingly totally unconcerned with maintaining any public goodwill, started issuing copyright takedown notices over. Now, after some backlash, the company has confirmed that it will stop doing this, at least for now.
This is per Variety, which reports that CBS’ stance is that the copyright notices look worse than they are. The material is copyrighted by CBS and intended for Colbert’s new YouTube channel. “Stephen Colbert’s return to Monroe in the ‘Only in Monroe’ episode was financed and produced by CBS Studios and was posted on Stephen Colbert’s YouTube channel in collaboration with Monroe Community Media and ‘The Late Show’s’ YouTube channels,” says the company in a statement. Though issuing a takedown notice for unauthorized uploads is the “regular practice,” “we have decided to waive further enforcement of this standard industry practice until additional review.”
It’s not totally clear why Colbert created the segment with CBS Studios. That being said, Colbert was always pretty careful on his farewell tour to not go full burned-bridge when he was talking about the network, usually offering the conceit that he felt the abrupt cancellation was definitely strange but that he was grateful for his time at the network, leaving the sharper criticism to his guests. CBS will presumably want to start enforcing the copyright on its property sooner or later, but we’ll have to wait and see if there’s more collaboration between the two in the coming weeks.
