Numlock News: July 17, 2025 • Bigfoot, Diamond, Stephen Colbert

Jul 18, 2025

Late Show

Last night, Stephen Colbert announced that The Late Show will end next May following a decision from CBS. Whatever the merit of the creative choice, the late-night business just isn’t what it used to be. In 2018, late-night network late night shows reaped $439 million in ad revenue, a figure that was down to $220 million last year. There are many possible reasons why Paramount would come to this kind of choice unrelated to their recent legal difficulties. You have to understand, sometimes these decisions are just about payoff, and perhaps this is just an incentive for Mr. Colbert to finally kick back, it can be so very hard to ascbribe intent when it comes to this kind of decision-making.

John Koblin, The New York Times

Champagne Problems

Tiffany & Co. managed to tick off some of their most devoted customers with a limited edition watch — the Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711, which had a dial in the Tiffany signature robin’s egg blue — of which just 170 were made. The “Blue Dial,” as it came to be known, was in absurdly high demand. As a result, the company hatched a plan — before a customer might be offered the watch for a sales price of $52,635, they would first have to spend (in some cases) $2 million to $3 million to get the grail. The plan backfired; several celebrities appeared to get the watch as a matter of course, which ticked off those who were gently informed they would need to buy some hardware to be under consideration. Some longtime customers were just insulted by the move, cutting off all spending at Tiffany, as well. Prices on the secondary market have fallen sharply, too, dropping from $3.3 million in November 2022 to $1.2 million in May 2025.

Jeannette Neumann, Bloomberg

Trailers

A new analysis sought to find out whether it is indeed true that movie trailers are getting longer. Somewhat surprisingly, they found that nope, trailers have actually trimmed down lately. The average length of a (non-teaser) movie trailer from a collection of 6,926 trailers from top-grossing movies came out to 122.8 seconds, or a little over two minutes. War, history and biography movies tended to have the longest trailers, while documentary and family movies had the shortest. The average annual length of movie trailers peaked in the late ’60s at over two and a half minutes, then declined over the decades to a lull in the 1990s. They ramped up once again through the early 2010s, only to eventually settle down to our current average at, yes, just over two minutes.

Stephen Follows

Diamond Are Forever

The ongoing mess following the bankruptcy of Diamond Comic Distributors — which for decades served as the core middleman of the entire North American comic book industry, the distribution intermediary between a zillion independent comic book shops and every comic company in the world — continues to unfold even after the company’s sale. The latest issue is related to Diamond’s plan to seize and sell off products that are in the company’s warehouses but belong to publishers and only stored there under consignment. Three groups of creditors and multiple publishers are objecting to the move. One group of 11 unidentified publishers, a second group of 13 companies and 12 publishers on behalf of several members each filed objections, along with another group objection filed by the Game Manufacturers Association

Milton Griepp, ICV2

Evidently Not

The retail price of a 1-carat lab-grown diamond is down 86 percent since 2016, and now goes for $745. The influx and popularity of the stones have also undercut the price of the rocks obtained the old-fashioned way — sending people into holes in the ground. Mined diamond prices are down 40 percent over that same period, to $3,925 for a 1-carat stone. Sales of fashion jewelry with lab-grown stones are up 60 percent year over year in the most recent quarter over at Signet, which has shifted strategies a bit and is pushing synthetic stones for fashion jewelry like tennis bracelets and necklaces. However, they are still shilling rocks found in the ground for engagement rings.

Jenny Strasburg and Suzanne Kapner, The Wall Street Journal

Peñico

Earlier this month, the newly-discovered ancient city of Peñico in present-day Peru was announced to the public, and just this week was opened up. The city flourished from 1800 BC to 1500 BC, which would have put it concurrent with China’s Shang Dynasty and the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. The city was strategically situated 600 meters above sea level on a geological terrace surrounded by mountains, but near the Supe River. Among the 18 identified structures is a large public building that has reliefs and designs featuring pututus, which are musical instruments made out of seashells.

Maria Luisa del Río, The Art Newspaper

Emojis

In the spring of 2026, the latest of the new batch of emojis selected by the Unicode Consortium as part of Unicode 17.0 will roll out to phones. Joining the character set includes ballet dancers, an Orca, a trombone and — what’s this now — freaking Bigfoot! Yes, there’s a Bigfoot emoji coming out next year, a cryptozoological miracle that will join other fantastical fauna like unicorns, phoenix, dragons and ghosts. Finally, the world will have a way to express the concept of the Sasquatch without resorting to the mere alphabet. Unicode does have the opportunity to do a really good bit and just lump Bigfoot — who is technically a “hairy creature” — in with the real animals.

Jay Peters, The Verge

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