In the crowded field of late night talk show hosts, there are sure to be casualties as viewers get spread too thin, and the latest is Larry Wilmore. Comedy Central announced on Monday that The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore has been canceled. The show debuted in January of 2015 and after two seasons and 259 episodes, ends its run on the network with its last episode airing this Thursday night.
Comedy Central president Kent Alterman discussed the reasons for the cancellation with The Hollywood Reporter, seemingly blaming the show’s demise on it’s lack of a strong viral/social media presence. His statement reads, in part:
”Unfortunately, it hasn’t connected with our audience in ways that we need it to, both in the linear channel and in terms of multi-platform outlets and with shareable content and on social platforms as well.”
Wilmore, who informed his staff of the network’s decision early Monday, didn’t hide his disappointment. “I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” he says in a statement to THR, leaning on his “Keeping it 100” mantra as he continued: “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.”
“We just didn’t feel like we had enough traction to sign up for another year. It wasn’t about the election — it’s about another year of the show,” Alterman adds. “Sadly, we’ve been hoping against hope that it would start to resonate in any of those quarters and we just weren’t seeing evidence of it. As much as we like Larry and the uniqueness of the show and the voices that are on the show — not just in terms of ratings — it hasn’t resonated in terms of our fans engaging with the show with consuming or sharing content or having a dialogue about it on social platforms.”
tl;dr – No carpool karaoke, no lip sync battles, no ratings. It’s too bad, as the few monologues I saw were insightful and funny. Here are some highlights from the show’s run.
The 52-year-old comedian/writer/producer began his relationship with Comedy Central in 2006, serving as a correspondent on The Daily Show. When Stephen Colbert went to The Late Show on CBS, Larry took over his slot. After Thursday, Comedy Central will cause some confusion as it will begin airing the Chris Hardwick-hosted game show @Midnight in the 11:30 slot previously occupied by The Nightly Show.
I wasn’t a big fan of The Nightly Show, but, heck, I get up at 5am, so late night talk shows aren’t part of my life. Apparently the panel discussions weren’t well liked and caused a lot of fans to abandon the show after it premiered. It is unfortunate that late night lost some of its diversity, with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show now the only African-American talk show host. Larry was a co-creator for ABC’s hit series Black-ish, and is still listed as the show’s executive producer, so let’s hope he can get back to the small screen as as soon as possible. RIP, Nightly Show. You will be missed.
Photo credit: WENN.com, Getty Images
This is a bummer in our house as we loved the nightly show. Wilmore had a great monologue and fantastic insights. And the unblackening segment was great.
That said-we only watched through the start of the panel section as that has consistently been the worst part of the show. The guests were good-but then 2 panel members were made up of part of the writing staff/comedy team and they tried way way to hard and ruined a lot of great interviews.
Hope he finds something else as he’s super talented.
I’m upset. I liked the nightly show.
Larry is a smart, witty guy but the format was just horrible and not at all conducive to playing to his strengths. The panel was, by and large, a waste of time, filled with d-list comedians and writers who came armed with pre-packaged “zingers” that usually had no relation to what they were actually discussing, just jammed in there as random one-liners. Panels can be great, but they need breathing room, and the half-hour, commercial filled version just wasn’t the place for it.
Personally, I would have canned Noah, moved Wilmore to 11:00 and expanded him to an hour, but that’s just me.
Every time Ricky Velez opened his mouth I wanted to throw something at the tv. The panel works when you have interesting guests that like to debate a topic or at least discuss the pros and cons. This panel wouldn’t get past “who cares” and “that’s not interesting” while insulting the guest. Poor Bill Nye deserves so much better than how those fools treated him.
I did not like Larry Wilmore in his segments on the Daily Show, but I was pleasantly surprised by the Nightly Show, and DVR’d it faithfully. Too bad; I’ll miss the show, especially the election coverage he would have done.
They really cancel shows too soon these days. Takes a while for audiences to find them. At least give it two full years to get us through this awful election…
So true. Conan would never had made it in this day and age.
I agree! I thought the show was picking up strength and after a ho-hum beginning was really catching on! I’ll miss it and hope Wilmore comes up with a slightly different format but the world needs his political insights!
I’m disappointed by this. I think The Nightly Show is great. Having said that, I frequently turned it off during the panel discussions, maybe instead of canceling the show they should have just eliminated the panels.
I might not have always agreed with Larry on issues (I did frequently, but not 100% of the time), but when I disagreed, the issue was always presented in a way that made think about it and appreciate the other side of the issue.
I did not really watch the Nightly Show, but I like Wilmore much more than Trevor Noah. Also, Noah is not African American. He is South African – his mother is part Jewish and his father is of European descent. Anyway, Noah is very fortunate that Stewart picked him as a replacement. I don’t find him to be funny but The Daily Show seems to be “too big to fail” in a way; it won’t be cancelled although I think Comedy Central execs should consider replacing Noah in a few years if he doesn’t improve as a host.
I agree with you on The Daily Show being way too much of a tent-pole to suffer from the same pressures that must have been placed on Nightly. But while he has yet to find his footing hosting and interviewing, I think Noah is genuinely funny. His commentary about his life under apartheid is so fascinating, and he’s incredibly adept at finding joy and humor in some of the darkest places. I just don’t know if he’s in the right platform to share his particular sensibilities.
Also, thank you, Trevor Noah is not African-American. He even jokes about being called that in his stand up!
I find that Trevor Noah is consistently improving, but I know that he’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
I wish Larry would have gotten the Daily Show. I really like him a lot more.
This is my favorite show and I feel crushed. I even liked the panels! Larry Wilmore is a truth-teller and brought sincerity and insight to every topic — and is HILARIOUS.
I will watch whatever Larry Wilmore dies. He’s hilarious.
I can’t believe they cancelled him pre-election. That just seems dumb.
I really like this show and especially Wilmore, he’s great. He’s able to talk about black issues in a way that everyone can understand. Honestly as a white person it means a lot to me to be able to hear from him, so I can understand a little better what’s happening from the perspective of my black fellow Americans in such a tumultuous time. Plus he brings a killer sense of humor.
Trevor Noah, while very well intentioned and intelligent, just doesn’t have much charisma and I find him boring. I wish they would put Larry Wilmore in his place on The Daily Show.
I don’t do late night either but I’m sad to see him go. Like others here, I detested the panel part of the show. I saw that portion maybe five times and the guests were terrible every time.
Sorry to nitpick, but Trevor Noah isn’t African American. He’s a black South African.
I never watched that show even though I’m a die hard The Daily Show fan. Larry has quite an annoying voice, one that I can’t listen to for an entire half hour show.
This sucks I’m totally Mourning this one cause i Go Hard for Larry Wilmore and some of the people in his panels are people that i’m friendly with/or have followed for years in a variety of social media/podcasts etc so I was always happy to see who would show up and the actual frank discussions that were being had *le siiiiggghh*
I love Larry but I hated the panels – they were boring and forced and awkward. Wish he had tried to shake up the format before he got canceled.
I like Larry but hated the panel format.
And I still think Comedy Central screwed up when they jumped on the Trevor Noah wagon instead of Samantha Bee. I know that no one wants to do TDS 4 days a week, but I have this fantasy that it could have been split up into 2.
The emphasis on viral content is ridiculous. The shows that put out the most viral stuff need to do so because their shows are not great.
The show runner who always had to be on the panel/in the sketches killed it. He was the un-funnying. Without his on camera presence, the show would have been much more watchable. I agree with someone up thread. I only watched until the panel discussion part.
The funniest part ever was the satellite bit where Mike Yard and his costar pretended to want to plan a wedding on a Southern Plantation. It was hilarious. More of that and the show would have been a big hit.
Cory? Is it Cory? Anyway, too fat-too lazy to look it up.
Rory Albanese. Agree. Just yelling and being aggressive and obnoxious. If he was in a sketch, it was the fast forward button at my house.
The show replaced The Daily Show for me. Then in recent months, they became very sloppy. It’s like they wrote only a few paragraphs of content and the rest was just filler and hemming and hawing + self-referential things like “Keeping it 100” which never meant anything to the audience.
The panels, too, were interesting in the beginning when an actual discussion could get going. But usually the most informed and interesting person on the panel would get two sentences in before getting interrupted by the comedians yelling something pro-apathy and ignorance. It became an empty and aggravating experience, without enough pointed political/media critique.
Anyway, personally, I stopped PVR’ing it a few months back.
I really liked Larry’s monologue segments on the Nightly Show. I was always searching for them, on CC’s official channel even, on YouTube. As a white woman, I found it very informative to hear him and his opinions on black issues. And I really liked Francesca Ramsey.
I wanted to like Larry but as someone else suggests here, there’s something about his voice/delivery. I also can’t quite get into Samantha Bee but I do enjoy Trevor Noah… His outsider perspective helps the “step back and look at this objectively” commentary and he has the cadence of Jon Stewart to keep it snappy. I saw a suggestion that Jessica Williams should be given the slot and I would LOVE that, but since she basically rejected the suggestion she should take over The Daily Show I won’t hold my breath that anything has changed. She wants to explore her career and you have to respect that. Still, like Stewart and Noah, she has the sharp delivery that keeps the pace brisk.
I agree, Jessica Williams would be an excellent choice.
Terrible timing! Couldn’t Comedy Central at least wait till after the election to cancel this show which I just discovered earlier this year? I’m going to miss it.
I like The Nightly Show, and I am totally pissed that it was canceled. I think that CC should have given Larry Wilmore a chance to re-structure certain parts of the show that apparently “didn’t resonate” with some viewers, to at least, give a fairly entertaining and informative shows a second chance. Then again, I guess for CC, two Black men, is one too many….and they actually, and officially “unblackened” the part of The Nightly Show that “didn’t resonate” with the brother that was too real, and made them uncomfortable.
I agree with most. Loved the show, couldn’t with the panel. Why couldn’t they have just re-done the format?