Comedy Central lost quite a bit in one very short period of time when Jon Stewart left The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert opted to move to CBS to host his own late night network program. In their places came Larry Wilmore and Trevor Noah. The former hosted his own brand new politically-oriented talk series while the latter took over the reigns on The Daily Show. Unfortunately, one of Comedy Central's latest has already been cancelled. The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore is ending and ending soon.
The staff of The Nightly Show was told on Monday that the still relatively new Comedy Central series will be ending. The show won't be given much of a grace period to finish out its run, either. A report at The Wrap indicates that the last episode of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore will air on Thursday at 11:30 p.m. ET, only on Comedy Central. The Nightly Show's Rory Albanese also confirmed the news on Twitter, also noting that he has nothing but fond memories for the series.
I'm very proud to have been a part of a show that has been funny, diverse & extremely necessary. I want to thank the staff, cast & crew of The Nightly Show. They are the most talented people I've ever had the honor to work with.
The Nightly Show has been on the air for the past 18 months and has not been able to repeat really any of the success of The Colbert Report in that time. Larry Wilmore's show hasn't been a huge ratings bringer for the network and has actually seen rather large losses since the days when Colbert was still on cable. It also has been criticized occasionally for its round table format, which probably hasn't helped. People in general have liked Larry Wilmore since his days on The Daily Show, but if a show isn't bringing in the ratings, it's hard to justify producing more episodes.
Still, we're sure it's a blow to the 100 or so employees who worked on The Nightly Show and who are now out of a gig.
Because there will be a gap in the schedule after The Nightly Show goes off of the air, Comedy Central currently has plans to run the Chris Hardwick-led series @Midnight into Larry Wilmore's 11:30 timeslot. Go ahead and cue about all the jokes you can think of about the timeslot change, since the title of the series will totally be nonsensical moving forward. If you have been a fan of The Nightly Show, you can still catch a few more episodes in that 11:30 timeslot on Comedy Central. We'll let you know if the network figures out another format that could work in the timeslot. Because really, @Midnight needs to be at midnight, right?
