United Kingdom, March 9 -- Stephen Colbert has joked the revolution "was going to be televised, and then Paramount bought it".

The 61-year-old Late Show host - whose iconic CBS show will come to an end in May - couldn't resist a dig at his soon-to-be former employers, who gained government approval for its Skydance merger shortly after the network announced the cancellation.

Colbert was presented with this year's Walter Bernstein Award at the Writers Guild Awards, and he played down comparisons to the namesake screenwriter who was blacklisted during the Red Scare in the 1950s.

He joked: "This is not the 1950s. This is not the Red Scare. And, as far as I can tell, no one in late-night is fomenting a revolution. "As we know, the revoluti...