00:00All the news teams are on the ground in China to cover this epic and historic summit.
00:04All except one, because our CBS News colleague Tony DeCoppel is being forced to broadcast from
00:11Taiwan after failing to get a Chinese visa in time.
00:15Stephen Colbert took a multitude of scathing digs at his own network in one of his last
00:20episodes of The Late Show, even enlisting the help of talk show legend and founder of
00:24the program, David Letterman, to get revenge on CBS for canceling the show of 33 years.
00:31From destroying company-owned property to openly mocking CBS brass and on-air talent, here
00:37are all the biggest parting shots from Thursday night's blistering episode.
00:42Right from the get-go, the episode opened with a wild skit ridiculing CBS News' controversial
00:47editor-in-chief, Barry Weiss, and its new evening news anchor, Tony DeCoppel, who head-scratchingly
00:54failed to obtain a Chinese visa to cover President Trump's meeting with his Chinese counterpart.
00:59Tony, what's that on your head?
01:01Pumpkin.
01:02Here comes the head of CBS News, Barry Weiss, to help.
01:06Colbert didn't stop there with the mocking of Weiss and DeCoppel, who's been forced to
01:10broadcast the network's coverage of the event in Beijing all the way from Taiwan, issuing
01:15CBS News with a new slogan, When events happen, we're at most one country away.
01:21Shortly after a grand introduction, Letterman also got straight to business and followed
01:25suit in mocking the network for canceling the show he created back in 1993.
01:30Boy, you know what happened backstage.
01:32I'm standing backstage, a guy comes over, and he says he's from CBS, and then he fired
01:36me.
01:38Letterman went on to say he had, quote, every right to be pissed off, but reassured Colbert
01:43that while you can take a man's show, you can't take a man's voice.
01:46The show then took an unexpected turn when the former host suddenly asked whether the
01:51network owned the furniture on the set, before crew members hauled couches, props, and even
01:57a wedding cake to the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, where they were hurled onto a giant
02:01CBS logo.
02:08The segment seemed to be one of nostalgia for Letterman, who throughout his career would
02:12drop random objects from buildings, including the Ed Sullivan Theater, just for the heck
02:17of it.
02:18Letterman closed out the segment with a pointed message of CBS in the famous, albeit slightly
02:22altered, words of their legendary former broadcast journalist, Edward R. Murrow.
02:28Anything you'd like to say to the audience before we go?
02:30Well, not necessarily to the audience, but to the folks at CBS, in the words of the great
02:34Ed Murrow, good night and good luck, mother-
02:39CBS' decision last summer to pull the plug on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after
02:44an 11-year run stunned the entertainment world.
02:47The move came just after Colbert had criticized the company's $16 million settlement in a lawsuit
02:52from the president.
02:54And during the high-profile merger of Trump-aligned David Ellison's Skydance Media with CBS' parent
03:00company, Paramount Global.
03:02CBS insisted the decision was purely an economic one, claiming the show was losing $40 million
03:07a year, a notion that Letterman has openly criticized, even blasting the company's owners
03:13as lying weasels earlier this month.
03:16Colbert's final episode is scheduled to air Thursday, May 21st.
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