After three years on Comedy Central, the network has decided to not renew The Showbiz Show With David Spade, according to Variety.
While Comedy Central is not saying why they’re pulling the plug on the Hollywood snark-fest, I can think of about a million reasons why this show is gone. Here’s a few:
1) The show was on once a week. The shows that Spade was parodying are produced everyday, so by the time Spade and Co. got around to making fun of them, people forgot exactly why it made it funny. In fact, shows like Extra report on certain people so often (yes you, LiLo and Britney) that most of the good jokes about then have already been told by the time the show hit the air.
2) Rules Of Engagement happened. Once Spade got onto a moderately successful network show (not cable), Showbiz ended up not being a high priority. Spade should have know from his SNL days that a show which needs to be both funny and topical, it can’t be a side job you do for fun.
3) It wasn’t part of the Daily/Colbert block it should have been. What is great about those shows is that they complement each other so much. Instead of pairing Showbiz with them as part as a “see how dumb the media is” block, it was mostly off on it’s own, in the middle of the schedule, between the 419th rerun of Chappelle’s Show and the 520th airing of Airheads. Sometimes I would see the promos and would be surprised that the show was still on.
What started out as a excellent way to merge David’s excellently wise-ass “Spade In America” bit from SNL with The Daily Show to ape a genre that TOTALLY deserves some abuse ends with a wimper. But I’m sure being on CBS sitcom and dating hot blondes will help him get over it.
