Stephen Colbert hasn’t even been off the air for a week, but is already causing some hubbub with the launch of a new YouTube channel that has garnered more than 120,000 subscribers.

The popular late-night host, who aired his final episode of The Late Show last Thursday, quietly debuted the channel over the weekend with a single video titled: “Only In Monroe --- May 22, 2026.”

The hour-long video features Colbert appearing on Monroe Community Media, a public access television station in Monroe, Michigan – a small town with a population of roughly 20,000.

In the video, the 62-year-old comedian joked: “It’s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I am grateful to be able to be here on Monroe Community Media before they also get acquired by Paramount,” referring to CBS’s parent company, which was recently acquired by Larry and David Ellison – allies of Donald Trump – as part of an $8bn deal.

Colbert’s new YouTube channel cropped up amid lingering controversy surrounding the end of Colbert’s show and Paramount. Last year, Paramount announced the cancellation of Colbert’s show while seeking regulatory approval from the Trump administration for its merger with Skydance Media.

The proposed deal faced months of delays after the president filed a lawsuit against CBS News over a 60 Minutes interview with former vice-president Kamala Harris in 2024. In the lawsuit, Trump and his legal team accused the program of deceptively editing Harris’s interview, claiming the broadcast amounted to “election interference”.

Paramount eventually settled the lawsuit and agreed to donate $16m to Trump’s future presidential library. Colbert sharply criticized the agreement on-air, calling it a “big fat bribe”.

“As someone who has always been a proud employee of this network, I am offended … I don’t know if anything – anything – will repair my trust in this company. But, just taking a stab at it, I’d say $16m would help,” Colbert added at the time.

Colbert’s comments quickly drew backlash from Trump, who publicly demanded the host be taken off the air. Meanwhile, critics viewed the cancellation of Colbert’s show as a move to appease Trump amid a federal review of the Paramount-Skydance merger.

Following Colbert’s surprise appearance on Only in Monroe – a show he had previously appeared on in 2015 ahead of the debut of The Late Show – clips from the episode quickly spread across social media.

CBS responded by issuing a wave of copyright notices targeting users who had reposted footage from the appearance, prompting backlash online. Critics accused Paramount of trying to “suppress” the clips through what they described as “frivolous” copyright claims.

In response to the criticism, CBS reversed course, stating that the episode had been “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”.

The company added that it would “waive further enforcement of this standard industry practice pending additional review” while emphasizing that “as is our regular practice, we send copyright notices to unauthorized websites that post copyrighted content from CBS and our network/studio talent such as Stephen Colbert”.