The Chaser Report - The Axed Show with Stephen Colbert

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Lachlan and John have bad news about the future of The Chaser Report, as decided by our parent company Paramount. We have been assured it's for financial, non-political reasons. Plus John explains how NOT to do coverage of a triple murder criminal trial. ---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ VOTE OPTICS FOR A LOGIE: https://vote.tvweeklogies.com.au/Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Look, we were supposed to be back this week. Clearly, it hasn't been going well for all kinds of reasons. Charles apparently heard his back. I'm actually still on holidays with my family, and we've done a pretty dreadful job of returning. So sorry about that.

However, the good news is that producer Loughlin, together with John Delmenico, the editor at The Chaser. They assure me that they've got a plan for an episode in the feed. I'm bit jibious, but look, it's an easy option. They're offering. So let's see what they come up with. All right, we'll have an ad and then we'll hand over to Loughlin and John. Charles and I will return as soon as we can get our act together. And I'm sure we'll do another subscriber-only weekend edition for this weekend because they've been surprisingly easier to schedule on a weekly basis and trying to do this infernal daily podcast we've somehow committed to. Anyway, I'll be finishing my holiday next week and we should get our act together by that point.

Speak soon. Chaser editor, John Delmanicoe here filling in with podcast producer Lockland. Hey, Lockhey. Hello, John. How are you on this somber day? I'm not great. You see, the reason that Dom and Charles aren't in the office and the reason that it's me as the editor and you as the podcast producer.

It's simply the Chase Report has been cancelled. No. It's purely for financial reasons. I'm really sorry, dear listener, but we just found out last night, the heads of the Iconiclast network told us that we've got 10 months left. This will be the last season of the Chaser Report. And that really sucks for the 200 people who make that show. But it's very important for us, dear listener, that you know that this has nothing

to do with politics, okay? This decision is purely financial and has nothing to do with us trying to appease the Trump government so that our parent company can get a multi-billion dollar deal across the line. Isn't that true, John? Yeah, our merger with Santos and all the other oil companies has nothing to do with this decision. I think that the criticism that Dom and Charles have made over the last year of Trump has been silly and the criticisms of this merger, have also been ridiculous. Yeah. I think it's better for everyone,

journalistically, if we just cut the show. And sure, the Trump administration may have been blocking us with a court case, but we've settled that in a completely unrelated matter

with a $16 million not bribe, plus untold extras. And the fact that our hosts, Charles Dom and Stephen Colbert, are so critical of Trump, that's just a coinky-dink. That's, there's nothing to see here. Speaking of Colbert,

Someone else has been cancelled. Yeah, no, we're doing that very heavy-handed sarcasm thing that we learned from Charles and Dom. Stephen Colbert cancelled the late night show. The great institution of television that is the late night show being cancelled. After how many decades has it been on for? So the late show has been on for 33 years. And it was the top-rating late-night show.

Indeed. And even though CBS have said it's nothing to do with the merger that Paramount is trying to do currently with Skydance. I mean, that would be a financial decision, to be fair. But when you bribe the Trump government with a $16 million settlement payout, everyone is going to think that everything you do is more bribing Trump. Also, it's something that is important for anyone who doesn't know much about the alleged bribe, because there has been calls by the Riders Union to have a criminal investigation

into it. Yes. But it was that the Trump administration was accusing CBS of trying to, like, rig the election by editing a interview down slightly for the TV broadcast of it on TV news with Kamala Harris as if that's not just a normal thing that happens on TV news it's not the entire interview and at first they said it was completely frivolous law and they were ready to fight it until the end and then the merger started to get a little bit of pushback and out of nowhere they settled and completely threw the news team

out of the bus and then cancelled Stephen Colbert coincidentally just after he called it a bribe John, do you know my favorite detail about the Trump civil lawsuit that he was holding against Paramount? What? Trump was suing them for $20 billion. I love the amounts he's suing. Like, he's suing Rupert Murdof, I think it was like $10 billion or something like that. Yeah, yeah. It's the reasonable amount of money that you sue someone for when you are the sitting president of the United States.

Well, something that I think will be good for both Trump and Paramount is that famously, when you cancel a satirist show, but then give them a rest of the season to finish it out. It always goes really well for the networks. Yeah. So how's Stephen been responding since he found out that he's got 10 months left to just tear into Trump? And his boss, I guess. Well, the first episode back has gone really smoothly. He said, fuck you to Trump.

On Friday, Donald Trump posted, I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than he. his ratings. How dare you, sir? Would an untalented man be able to compose the following satirical witticism? Go f*** yourself. Whoa. Which also, to be fair, on American TV, even though it's late at night, that is still not allowed.

Oh, right. Okay, I was going to say, in Australia, Tom Ballard can't get away with the C-bomb. Yeah. So I guess it's kind of the equivalent of why they'd cancel the Tonightly. But also they did a sketch where they were pretending they were doing something else with a Coldplay Spotlight. Ah, yes, because they haven't been enough jokes about that Coldplay CEO yet. Yeah. But what they did was they made it, they animated Trump and Paramount as the two people having an affair.

Oh, edgy. And they show John Stewart as well as part of that, which is important because the Daily Show is also owned by the same parent and company. Oh, interesting. So you think that the Daily Show could soon get the axe. So John Stewart has openly said that they think the Daily Show could end up getting acts as well. Interesting. Well, I think he's got no reason to think that. Definitely the fact that Trump

tweeted immediately after he heard that Stephen Colbert got fired to say that he thinks it's great news and he can't wait for Jimmy Kimmel to get fired next. I think that John Stewart's fine because he knows now that it's when Jimmy Kimmel gets fired is then when I've got to start worrying. He's got one more.

Well, I think for Parano, I've just looked through the history of shows that have been cancelled and then they still have run. You have Tonightly, which gave us Mr. O'Reilly after that was cancelled. And then the Conan O'Brien final week of the Tonight Show, they still can't air some of those episodes. Because if you don't know the thing that he did, he just started playing copyrighted stuff that's very expensive in the middle of the episodes. So they've had to cut the. audio from one of the episode's monologue because he was just playing a very expensive

Beatles album in the background and then one episode he had a TV show and the Super Bowl behind him. The Chaser Report less news more often. So the podcast has been off air for the last two weeks which is perfect timing because a major trial saw a big legal update

just after they went away. And that is, of course, when the coroner in Northern Territory found that the police are structurally racist, and that impact the decision led to the death of Indigenous teen, Kamenjai Walker. What? Sorry, did that happen? I didn't hear about that. I think if something like that had happened, John, the Australian media industry would have covered it just a little.

So I'm pretty sure that didn't happen. Well, on the same day, we had the mushroom trial verdict come in. Normally when I'm asked to feel it on this podcast in the very last minute, I come here to complain about the media. and bad coverage. But anyone who's paid attention to the mushroom trial or not paid attention and just had it forced down your gullet because that's all anyone talked about,

you would know this was... And Lord forbid we force something down someone's mouth that they didn't want in a story like this. You would know that the mushroom trial was held to such a high esteem, which is why I want to about now, while the Walkley nominations are currently happening. Oh, is this your Walkley attempt? No, this is mine.

I want other people to win Walkleys. Okay. So... You've won too many at this point, yes. This domestic violence case was covered with the utmost respect you would expect from a domestic violence case with the ABC News Corp, Fairfax and the Daily Mail, all rushing at daily podcasts. I'm amazed that we held back from doing The Mushroom Report. Lucky, as a podcast producer, there's obviously one big issue with doing daily podcasts of a court hearing, which is that you're not allowed to give any commentary at all, and all you can do is read out the transcript verbatim. Oh, so that's all four of those podcasts did.

I thought the problem you were going to say, John, is that I just, we keep making too much money with these daily podcasts. Deeratically, they're just reading court transcripts, but obviously there's ways to spice it up. But that I mean, allegedly subjudicial coverage. Yeah, so if you just simply break the rules of covering a court case, you can get way more content out of it. As long as you add the word allegedly before everything. No. No? I'm talking about some other stuff.

So, for example, Mama Mia just started out of nowhere speculating on whether she deliberately planned to kill the people. Now, I don't know if you know much about court cases, but that is the whole fucking case. They did that while the case was happening. They just started doing what the case was on a podcast, and the judges said they're not sure yet, whether they will fully have Mama Mia. get in trouble for contempt and they'll come back to that out of date. The other outlet that is getting looked at this, because obviously, Mama Mia, you expect better

than them, but someone you really expect better from is Kyle and Jackie O. Did Kyle and Jackie O do a daily mushroom show? No, they just did it on, they just had it on their regular radio show. Oh, that checks out. So they had someone come in to talk about it who is a court reporter, and they just started, and at one point, Kyle just got bored and started going, I know you can't answer, but did she do it? Come on, just tell us if she did it. Does she have a strong case?

All things you are not allowed to say, and they are going to be investigated over an allegation of contempt? I had thought that you were going to tell me that Kyle had asked the court reporter, hey, can you tell me if this is the sound of Aaron Patterson pissing or not? But to hear that he asked her that question is even more disgusting. Well, I think that's good journalism. Why wait for the courts? Sure, they did genuinely run the risk of having the case get thrown.

out because if it does be found to be sub-tradicial, you can't have a fair try, which is why you're not allowed to do any of this. But they did that anyway, and that's important. Also important, big shout out to Harold's son, Kriki, and the ABC for all breaking a court order. And the court order are a very important one to break, naming her children. Because obviously you can't do this without naming the children because even though they're not relevant to what happened and then and their children that doesn't matter he still named them and a big shout out to lame stream the new podcast on a cast network because they also caught out the fact that the ABC forgot to take down the stuff after they got told to they accidentally left it on

YouTube for an entire day wow what about the the herald did they just they took it down when they were told to and now you might be sad thinking that all this Walkley award winning stuff so should be Walkley awarding stuff we'll have to end now that the case is over. But don't worry. Now is the time. Everyone knows, John. This is exactly when you announce a hundred more spin-off shows.

Yeah. So directly afterwards, you've got amazing journalism with many outlets just posting pictures of her living room as if that matters at all. There was headlines like, the details we weren't allowed to show you. And I'm like, cool, we could have just not seen that detail. And the Sydney Morning Herald had on their home. page one of their top stories talking about the trial was having someone on to diagnose her with mental disorders despite having no actual basis to do that because that person had never

met her see i think this is a lot like when the o j simpson trial finally had its verdict and when we finally discovered i mean that he was innocent it's actually he was innocent he was entirely innocent unlike uh erran well entirely is a straight he wasn't he was found not guilty in a In criminal court, I was found... Entirely innocent. In a different court, he was found to have had some liability. There was no podcast material there. I'm sure there wasn't a single podcast about that when it happened.

What a double standard. Well, there was a book called If I Did It, which he had to hand over the ownership of the rights to. And speaking of books, there are so many books coming out about this trial in the next few months. Well, I assume the Beef Wellington's writing a book, also titled, I Did It? There's one coming from the writers of Underbelly. There's multiple people from, like, who cover crime overseas who flew to Australia just to cover this. There's going to be a stand documentary about it. That was announced while the-

I did see the stand. While the case was happening, also announced while the case was happening was an ABC drama about it. Nice to see the 80. All it took for the ABC to get back into making dramas was this trial and not any of the pictures they've had. It was a triple murder. Yeah, but we're all laughing. We need to remember there's some real victims here. That victim, of course, I'm talking about the Daily Mail's Wayne Flower.

Okay, you're going to have to fill me in here, mate. Well, here is a headline to a pay-walled daily mail article. Knife-wielding junkies, courtroom invaders, TV reporters terrorized, and my wife left me. Wayne Flower on the shocking curse of the mushroom trial. Sorry, his wife left him because of how intensely. he covered Aaron Pattinson's murder trial. Well, yeah. So here's the section on the... They should send her to jail again. When's she being tried for that? How dare she? Yeah, well, we should listen. Well, here's the section about the wife leaving. I bought multivitamins and

fish oil in the hope of pushing through a little longer. At home, a long way away, my life and family were imploding. The grind in my absence had made my partner of 24 years, the mother of my two children, come to realize she no longer needed me in her life. Days after my 50th birthday, for which she had organized a surprise party with all of my friends and family in attendance. She told me that she no longer loved me and I was discarded like yesterday's newspaper.

But the trial went on and so did I, perhaps the last sad victim of Aaron Patterson. Okay, I know we don't usually do this on the Chaser Report, but Wayne, if you want to come on the Chaser Report, this is a call out. If you know, if you're related, to Wayne Flower, email podcast atchaser.com.com. Give us your details. Let's get Wayne on the show and finally tell this untold story.

And I say that, John, because it might be the only new angle on the mushroom case that we could capitalize on. And we also know that he clearly loves podcasting over anything else because he managed to ignore his family for months on end. But I think while the Walkleys are trying to figure out how many Walkleys do you get for ignoring your wife to the point that she leaves? you. What we can remember is that this podcast is brought to you by Iconiclast. And it's very important from Iconiclast that you know that there was

nothing political going on in our future cancellation. When I said brought, not bought. Oh, oh, and the plug. Speaking of buying things. Speaking of buying things. Charles is off signing some copies of the new Wankanomics book

written by him and James Shuffle from the shovel. There's a limited run of signed copies available as of today on the Chaser Shop website. Charles and Dom, we'll be back tomorrow, hopefully.