CBS is not just pushing out Stephen Colbert, it’s retiring the iconic Late Show brand altogether. That’s the buried lede getting lost amidst frenzied speculation over politics and palace intrigue. If cutting Colbert is a bid to juice Paramount’s pending merger or to punish him for criticizing it, as Democrats are now arguing, CBS just stumbled right into the future.

Colbert’s time at the helm of The Late Show perfectly illustrates the most important trend in media and culture. One might fairly wonder how Colbert, a man who leaned so far into #Resistance comedy he could hardly get up, has dominated the late night wars throughout Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of American politics. Johnny Carson, for example, famously skewered both political parties without fear or favor.

Carson won the late-night wars when networks faced less competition, meaning his goal was to appeal to as wide a swath of the American public as possible for the sake of selling more ads. By the time Colbert took the helm from David Letterman, late night ratings had collapsed from their high watermark. This is partially why Greg Gutfeld is able to actually beat Colbert’s ratings on a cable network, a feat that would have been unthinkable in the 1990s.