CBS may have canceled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” but its legacy will live on at the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.
“The Late Show” set – desk, chairs and all – made a day-and-a-half sojourn in the back of a truck from a New Jersey warehouse, arriving last week at the Randolph Street museum for permanent display in Chicago, the city where Colbert cut his comedy teeth.
“It’s a very big deal,“ said David Plier, a former retailing executive and current part-time radio host at WGN who serves as chairman, president and CEO of the museum.
“The Late Show” was at the top of its game when CBS pulled the plug on the franchise, and the star-studded May 21 finale drew 6.74 million viewers, according to Nielsen, the most in Colbert’s 11-year run on the network. His furniture will become the crown jewel of a collection that previously focused on Chicago broadcast history, but now aspires to be the Smithsonian of late-night TV.Donated by the network, “The Late Show” set was delivered Thursday at noon, a large white truck dodging lunchtime pedestrians as it pulled into an alley east of the museum, swinging open its rear doors to reveal the seat of late-night TV humor.
Getting the complete set seemed unlikely after the May 14 episode, when former host David Letterman joined Colbert in gleefully dropping guest and desk chairs from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater.
“Even though there were chairs thrown off the Ed Sullivan Theater, those were extras,” Plier said.
Colbert’s actual desk, chairs, credenza, stage columns and other set pieces arrived an hour late but intact Thursday. They sat in the truck for another half hour as Plier paced the busy sidewalk like an expectant parent, waiting for a separate moving team.
The most challenging piece was an enormous crate containing Colbert’s desk. Two movers somehow maneuvered it out of the truck and down the busy sidewalk, wedging it through the front doors, waiting for reinforcements to help bring it down to the main floor.
Colbert helped steer “The Late Show” set to Chicago, Plier said, where it will be displayed in perpetuity at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, an eclectic and itinerant 40-year-old institution that itself seemed close to cancellation in recent years.
Launched by the late Bruce Dumont in 1987 at River City on South Wells Street, the museum moved to the Chicago Cultural Center in 1992, where it became a major tourist attraction with exhibits from Chicago TV shows.
The museum temporarily closed in 2003 amid ambitious plans to move into a four-story building it bought at State and Kinzie streets. But it took nearly a decade to raise funds and remodel the $27 million River North space, which finally opened in 2012.
Struggling financially, the museum sold its third and fourth floors in 2019 to real estate firm Fern Hill. In 2023, the developer exercised an option to take over the entire building, kicking out the museum.
In October, after going dark for more than two years, the museum reopened in a pop-up space at 440 W. Randolph St. in the West Loop.
Plier is hoping to make it a permanent home with the help of a $2.5 million grant from the city of Chicago, and a new $12 million capital campaign. He is also planning to rename the museum “after a very famous Chicagoan” while broadening its mission going forward.
“We want to be a national museum, we want to attract visitors from all over,” Plier said. “We will always keep Chicago as part of it, but we see ourselves absolutely as a national institution.”
The late-night TV exhibit features everything from Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” set to the saxophone Bill Clinton played on “The Arsenio Hall Show” during his 1992 presidential campaign. There’s even an original “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog,” as first seen on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.”
The museum still has exhibits devoted to Chicago broadcast history, such as “Bozo’s Circus” and “Svengoolie.” It also houses the National Radio Hall of Fame.
CBS relegated the top-rated “Late Show” to broadcast history last July, saying it was losing $40 million a year. Some analysts contend then-CBS owner Paramount was seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration for its pending acquisition by Skydance. The FCC approved the $8 billion merger one week after the Colbert cancellation announcement.
“The Late Show” exhibit will likely be the star attraction when it opens to the public later this summer. Plier is hoping to get Colbert himself to cut the ribbon on his old desk and chairs.
“Whether you’re a Democrat or Republican, whether you liked that show or not, it’s still television history, and now it’s here,” Plier said.
WGN-TV sued for airing ‘Mr. Finance’
A class action lawsuit was filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court against WGN-TV and owner Nexstar Media, as well as several Chicago-area radio stations, for platforming Brandon Ellington, who allegedly used the airwaves to swindle hundreds of Chicagoans out of $15 million through a Ponzi-like investment scheme.
WGN-Ch. 9 featured Ellington, a convicted mortgage-fraud felon who rebranded himself as “Mr. Finance,” on several broadcasts last year, including its daily lifestyle show “Spotlight Chicago,” which airs weekdays at 1 p.m. with hosts Sarah Jindra and Ji Suk Yi.
“WGN-TV’s own hosts endorsed him in the station’s voice,” the lawsuit states. “The hosts asked no probing question about Ellington’s background and disclosed nothing about it; they presented a convicted federal mortgage-fraud felon to their viewers as a model of financial success.”
Ellington’s on-air interviews are still posted on WGN’s YouTube page.
A spokesperson for Dallas-based Nexstar declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The alleged scheme was marketed by Ellington on various media as a passive income real estate investment program promising high returns through his south suburban company, Access Capital Today. Instead, it collapsed, failing to make payments and leaving hundreds of Chicagoans holding the bag, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed by Chicago attorney Alexander Loftus on behalf of Milton Harris and Byron Crawford, who invested and lost money after tuning into Ellington’s on-air pitches. The station’s endorsement essentially closed the deal, Loftus told the Tribune.
“He’s Mr. Finance, and he’s on TV, so he must be legit,” Loftus said.
In May, Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias issued a temporary order prohibiting Ellington and Access Capital Today from acting as investment advisers, calling the promoted program a “Ponzi-like scheme” that ensnared more than 300 clients.
Ellington, who is not a registered investment adviser, pleaded guilty in 2009 for his role as a loan originator in a sweeping mortgage fraud case in Chicago federal court.
In addition to WGN-TV, the lawsuit names several Chicago-area radio stations as defendants for promoting and airing Ellington’s investment advice programs, including iHeartMedia-owned WGRB-AM and WVON-AM, and Crawford Broadcasting-owned WSRB-FM.
Chicago sports TV mourns passing of Stacey King
Chicago sports fans are mourning the passing of Stacey King, 59, a role player on the Bulls early ’90s championship teams who became a star in the broadcast booth.
After a coaching stint for the Rockford Lightning in the CBA, King started at Comcast SportsNet as a studio analyst in 2006, joining Bulls’ TV announcers Tom Dore and Johnny “Red” Kerr as a color commentator during the team’s playoff run that season. In 2008, King was paired with TV play-by-play announcer Neil Funk, becoming the team’s lead color announcer.
Kerr, the Bulls inaugural head coach and longtime broadcaster, died in 2009.
King made a name for himself with his colorful catchphrases, knowledge and enthusiasm during a long run at the regional sports network, which was rebranded as NBC Sports Chicago in 2017. He and play-by-play partner Adam Amin joined the successor Chicago Sports Network at its launch in 2024.
“He was such a huge presence,” said Chuck Swirsky, who has been the Bulls’ radio play-by-play announcer since 2008. “He was more than an analyst. He was a showman, he was an entertainer with basketball as his foundation.”
While Chicagoans might be hard-pressed to name players on the current Bulls roster, King’s exclamations, from “gimme the hot sauce” to “mouse in the house,” have become part of the local sports lexicon.
But it was King’s “basketball IQ” that set him apart, demonstrating a knowledge of the game that Swirsky said would have made him a successful coach, if he had followed that path. Instead, for many fans, King may have been the best reason to watch the Bulls over the past two decades.
“There will never be another Stacey King,” Swirsky said. “They talk about generational talents in basketball as players. Stacey was a generational talent as a basketball analyst.”
CBS 2 sports anchor leaving for nonprofit youth golf organization
Veteran Chicago sports and news anchor Ryan Baker is hanging up his mic this month after nearly two decades at WBBM-Ch. 2 to become the president and CEO of First Tee-Greater Chicago, a nonprofit organization that mentors youth through golf.
A south suburban native and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate, Baker joined CBS 2 in 2008 as lead sports anchor after five years at NBC 5 Chicago.
In 2019, Baker shifted to morning news anchor before returning to the sports desk in 2024. His last day on the air will be June 25.
“Having grown up in the south suburbs watching Channel 2 every night and idolizing the legendary Johnny Morris, it’s been an indescribable dream come true to sit in his sports anchor chair for the bulk of the last 18 years at WBBM-TV,” Baker said in a news release.
Send tips about Chicago media moves and news to rchannick@chicagotribune.com.
