When the comedian Stephen Colbert hosted the final episode of “The Late Show” on CBS on Thursday, he told his viewers that the next place they would most likely see him was on public-access television in Michigan.
Turns out, that was no joke.
On Friday night, Colbert hosted an episode of “Only in Monroe,” which covers the happenings of Monroe, Mich., a town of about 20,000 people roughly 40 miles southwest of Detroit.
“It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV,” Colbert said near the beginning of the hourlong program, “so I am grateful to be able to be here on Monroe Community Media before they also get acquired by Paramount.” (The cancellation of “The Late Show” coincided with the purchase of Paramount, CBS’s parent corporation, by the media company Skydance.)
Friday’s episode of “Only in Monroe,” which aired at the same time that “The Late Show” did, shared a similar structure. Colbert opened with a monologue full of jokes about the show’s small-scale operation and the town’s experience with a Big Foot sighting. At one point, Colbert asked if the beer Milwaukee’s Best was a sponsor. “They’re not,” Colbert said to someone off camera. “And we don’t have any sponsors, and we actually lost a lot of money making the show tonight? Now I know how CBS felt.”
The show’s regular hosts, Michelle Baumann and Kaye Lani Rae Rafko Wilson (a.k.a. Miss America 1988), were his first guests. Jack White, who grew up in Detroit, served as the musical director, playing songs on a boombox and a reel-to-reel player. Byron Allen, the comedian turned entrepreneur whose show “Comics Unleashed” took over the “Late Show” time slot, made an appearance, as did the rapper Eminem. Both are from Michigan.
The actor Steve Buscemi made a cameo in what he called a public service announcement for a local restaurant: Buscemi’s Pizza & Subs (no relation).
Colbert dished with guests throughout the show, took shots of an alcohol distilled nearby, taste-tested Monroe-style chili dogs (though the show appeared to forget which hot dog came from which restaurant) and made peanut butter, potato chip and barbecue sauce sandwiches with the actor Jeff Daniels, who lives in Michigan.
Colbert, for his part, was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in South Carolina. But his appearance on “Only in Monroe” was actually a homecoming. He first hosted an episode of the show in 2015, a couple of months before taking the reins of “The Late Show” from David Letterman. That time, he also interviewed the regular hosts of “Only in Monroe,” and also welcomed Eminem, whom he introduced as “a local Michigander who is making a name for himself in the competitive world of music.”
Colbert had not forgotten about that experience more than a decade later. During his final “Late Show” episode on Thursday, he reminded his viewers of that appearance, telling them that the show had attracted an audience of a dozen people. “Show business being what it is these days,” he said, “that’s probably where you’ll see me next.”
Friday’s version of “Only in Monroe” ended with Colbert and his guests taking hammers to the show’s set, and then lighting it on fire in a dumpster outside.
Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts.
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