Comedy Central cancels ‘The Nightly Show’.
Comedy Central is pulling the plug on Larry Wilmore’s TV series, The Nightly Show, the network announced on Monday. Its last episode will air on Thursday.
Comedy Central president, Kent Alterman, said the show has not been resonating with the network’s audience. “Even though we’ve given it a year and a half, we’ve been hoping against hope that it would start to click with our audience, but it hasn’t happened and we haven’t seen evidence of it happening,” Alterman said.
Wilmore recently made headlines during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where he was criticized for using the n-word.
Wilmore informed his staff early this morning saying he was grateful but also saddened by the news.
“But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, it came down to contractual negotitations.
The timing — after two seasons or, as of Thursday, 259 episodes — is believed to have come down to contractual logistics. Comedy Central is said to have been faced with a looming decision to sign Wilmore and what insiders say amounted to be about 15 members of the Nightly Show‘s on- and off-screen staff to new contracts. But with the series averaging a particularly grim night-of rating of 0.2 in the 18-49 demo, for instance, doing so was hard to justify.
When it came to who should replace Larry Wilmore’s 11:30 p.m. time slot, Alterman said, “We’re totally open to women and in whatever form of diversity would come, we’re open to it for sure.”
Via THR
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