Like Stephen Colbert, the Smothers Brothers enjoyed top ratings, and they had a history of refusing to avoid sensitive topics, regularly airing anti-Vietnam War and pro-civil rights segments at a time when such material was scarce on network television.

Warnings of "government censorship and authoritarianism" are a "flaming bag of nonsense," countered David Marcus at Fox News. Colbert's cancellation is, instead, merely the inevitable result of his "utterly pointless and irrelevant" faux conservative character having run its cultural course.