Comedy Central has canceled “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” after the series failed to take off among the network’s target audience of young men, the New York Times reported Monday.
“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’ve haven’t seen evidence of it happening,” Comedy Central president Kent Alterman told the Times, saying the show “hasn’t resonated.”
Wilmore was informed of the show’s cancellation last week, and the final episode is slated to air in its regular 11:30 p.m. slot on Thursday.
Wilmore was first introduced to Comedy Central’s audience as the “senior black correspondent” on “The Daily Show,” and he received his own spinoff in January 2015. “The Nightly Show” was known for paying close attention to racial politics in the U.S. and to the 2016 election, but failed to attract the ratings the network hoped for among the viewers who once flocked to Jon Stewart’s long-running show. Nielsen data found that Wilmore received only 776,000 viewers a night this year, compared to 2.1 million for “The Daily Show.”
In a statement obtained by the Times, Wilmore lamented the fate of his show.
“I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” Mr. Wilmore said in a statement. “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.”
It’s about time.
I thought Larry himself was pretty funny in the opening monologues. But didn’t think the roundtables worked, as comedy or discussion.
Larry Wilmore is a genius. Too bad too many just didn’t get it.
I guess its time for Tosh .2
I am very sorry to hear this. I love Wilmore’s sit down brand of humor re current events. I think he should have just spent the whole half hour doing that.
Edit, Maybe Jon Stewart and Larry would team up for a new show. Now that would be funny if they could get it going while Trump is still running for prez.
Though I do not have cable, I did occasionally catch Mr. Wilmore by podcast. I’m sorry to see him go – I rather enjoyed watching his take on this nation’s politics. However, I do understand the ratings issue. I give kudos to Comedy Central for giving the show a fair shot. Good fortunes to Larry Wilmore – I’m sure we’ll be seeing him around.