The television business has always been a tricky one, with shows frequently coming and going at a breakneck pace. So, when a show seems to be working, and gets the boot, you can bet that the talent behind said show will be salty about it. This is the case right now with Steve Harvey, whose Steve daytime talk show has been cancelled by NBC after seven seasons.
According to Variety, Harvey and the crew on his show filmed the last episodes last week, with new episodes airing through June and reruns appearing through September. When Harvey was asked at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES (via Distractify) whether or not he planned to stay with NBCUniversal (which had distributed his talk show) for the upcoming 2019-2020 television season, he was already none too pleased about the way things were going.
I thought I was, until they made an announcement a couple weeks ago that they wanted to give Kelly Clarkson the [NBC owned-and-operated] networks – that’s my slot.
The trouble seems to have started for Steve in 2016 when Harvey's deal with Endemol Shine North America, which used to produce The Steve Harvey Show along with NBCUniversal, ran out. Harvey then opted to make a deal with IMG Original Content which renamed the show Steve and moved production to Los Angeles, along with giving Harvey more creative control, a larger ownership stake and a higher salary.
Even though NBCUniversal continued to distribute Harvey's show, word was that executives at the network were "furious" at no longer having a stake in the talker once he transitioned to IMG, which paved the way for them to look for a show that would replace Steve. That show, as Harvey mentioned, is The Kelly Clarkson Show, which will see the singer and sometime The Voice coach make her first foray into the daytime talk show space this fall when she moves onto the NBC owned-and-operated networks in the timeslot previously occupied by Steve Harvey's show.
And, it turns out that Harvey isn't just upset about his show being cancelled, but also by how NBC decided to handle the news. He added:
I thought it would have been nice of them to come to me — as the only dude who’s survived [in daytime TV] for seven years — about it. I'm just an old-school guy, and I just thought that you're supposed to just talk to people and just go, 'Look, you've been good business for us. This is what we're thinking of doing, are you okay with that?' No, you just don't put something in the paper and say, 'I'm just going to make this move right here,' because it's crazy.
The dust-up over his deal with IMG may have angered NBC executives so much that they wanted to cut ties with Steve Harvey altogether, as he's also been removed recently as host of the popular evening variety show Little Big Shots, which focused on child performers with amazing talents. While Harvey hosted that show for three years, when it picks back up sometime next winter, People reports that actress Melissa McCarthy will take over hosting duties.
While Steve Harvey is clearly annoyed at how his show was handled by NBC, there's word that IMG is shopping Steve to other outlets to see if it can be kept alive in syndication, or on cable or digital platforms. And, even if that doesn't end up working out, Harvey is still TV's host with the most...shows. He'll still be the main man with the mustache (basically) on Family Feud, and he's still in demand for other shows and specials such as the Miss Universe pageant and Fox’s New Year’s Eve with Steve Harvey: Live From Times Square broadcasts. So, you can still get your fix of Steve Harvey on television in plenty of ways.
