Late-night TV
CBS cancels the Late Show with Stephen Colbert
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the most-watched late-night programme on US broadcast TV and a frequent platform of satire aimed at President Donald Trump, will end its 10-year run on CBS in May 2026, the network said on Thursday.
The show will be retired and Colbert will not be replaced. New episodes will air until the end of the broadcast TV season in May 2026, a network statement said. “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount,” CBS executives said in the statement. Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, is seeking approval from the US Federal Communications Commission for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media. Reuters
K-pop
Exiled North Koreans launch debut album
A new K-pop boy band made their global debut on Friday with two members who defected from North Korea and an album that includes a song about the consequences of escaping one of the world’s most repressive states.
1verse, pronounced “universe”, is made up of five men in their 20s from North Korea, Japan and the US, who go by their first names, Hyuk, Seok, Aito, Nathan and Kenny. At midnight, the group performed a live-streamed showcase of their first EP The 1st Verse featuring three tracks, including the debut single Shattered. Recorded earlier this year, it shows the group sporting makeup and slick hairstyles, dancing against a stroboscopic background. Yu Hyuk, originally from the northeastern county of Kyongsong in North Korea, has been living in South Korea since 2013. As well as enjoying the freedom to show off his talent to the world, the 25-year-old also appreciates being able to eat three meals a day. Reuters
Snoop Dogg
US rapper invests in Swansea City
American rapper and producer Snoop Dogg has become an investor with Welsh side Swansea City, the Championship club said on Thursday, with the songwriter joining Croatian midfielder Luka Modric as a co-owner.
The news comes just days after Snoop Dogg helped launch Swansea’s new home jersey, which had fuelled speculation that the hip-hop artist would have an even bigger involvement with the club. “My love of football is well known, but it feels special to me that I make my move into club ownership with Swansea City,” Snoop Dogg said on the club’s website. “The story of the club and the area really struck a chord with me. This is a proud, working class city and club. An underdog that bites back, just like me.”
In April, Modric joined American investors Andy Coleman, Brett Cravatt, Nigel Morris and Jason Cohen in the Swansea ownership structure, and the club will hope that the latest investor can help boost their global standing. Reuters
Music
Pop singer Connie Francis dies
Connie Francis, the American pop singer who topped the charts in the 1950s and 1960s with genre-spanning songs of youthful love and heartbreak, died last week, her manager said. She was 87.
With a powerful, clear voice that could be both peppy and plaintive, Francis sold tens of millions of records in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the lovesick hit Stupid Cupid and the lush, maudlin songs Who’s Sorry Now and Where the Boys Are.
In 1960, when she was 21, she became the first woman to hold the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with the release of Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool. She went on to record the song in German — Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel — and became a keen polyglot in the studio, releasing covers of her hits in Italian, Spanish and several other languages. Francis was born on December 12 1937, in Newark, New Jersey, to Italian-American parents who named her Concetta Franconero. A talent scout in the 1950s urged her to change her stage name to something radio DJs might find simpler to pronounce. In her memoir, she describes her father, who scraped a living as a labourer in the shipyards and factories of New York, as the most powerful force throughout her life, helping her learn to play the accordion as a child. “I played the accordion the way I did everything else in life — with a vengeance!” she wrote. Reuters
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