Launching a daytime talk show and having it go on to become a quick success might be the very definition of difficult. So, when the host of such a show leaves the air after a long tenure, you can bet that it makes them consider all of the fans who helped them get to where they are. Such can be said for Ellen DeGeneres, who recently shared a thankful message with her fans for the 19-year journey she’s had on The Ellen DeGeneres Show after filming her final episode.
How Did Ellen DeGeneres Thank Fans After Filming Her Final Talk Show Episode?
While it’s fair to say that every television show survives because of its fans, it might be even more true for talk shows, where the personality who leads the proceedings every day has to be fully embraced by the audience in order for the show to have a shot at continuing. For nearly all of her 19 seasons on the air, that has been completely true for Ellen DeGeneres (who spoke about the end of her show last May), so after filming her last episode of Ellen on April 28, she took to Twitter to thank her loyal fanbase for sticking with her:
Today we taped the final episode of The Ellen Show which airs on May 26th. When we started this show in 2003, the iPhone didn’t exist. Social Media didn’t exist. Gay marriage wasn’t legal. We watched the world change, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. But whatever was happening, my goal was always for the show to be a place where we could all come together and laugh for an hour. Being invited into your lives has been the greatest privilege of my life and has brought me incredible joy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I’m sure that DeGeneres’ diehard fans would certainly agree that her show held firm and kept her original goal alive of making viewers laugh for an hour, no matter what else was happening in the world. But, that has been quite a bit trickier in the last two years.
Even though DeGeneres will likely rank as one of the most successful daytime talk show hosts in history for many years to come, what had been a nearly perfect public image came under fire in a big way in 2020. Mid-July of that year saw former employees begin to come forward with allegations of Ellen being a toxic workplace, with claims ranging from reports of racial discrimination to workers being fired for taking medical leave. Eventually, claims of sexual misconduct, harassment, and assault from dozens of former employees also surfaced, all of which led to an investigation and Ellen later firing several top producers.
This led to a number of additional issues, both for DeGeneres and her long-running show. Stories about her personal, supposed bad behavior started to either circulate for the first time or come to light again. That, added to the reports about how some of her staff had alleged treated people, led DeGeneres to see declining ratings over the past couple of seasons, with Ellen’s Game of Games even being cancelled earlier this year.
Ellen DeGeneres has said that she decided to end her show because it wasn’t “a challenge anymore,” and it had nothing to do with all of the behind the scenes controversy (though some of Ellen’s ex-staffers had different thoughts on why she was quitting). Regardless of the reason, though, she’s now done something that few daytime talk show hosts have done by completing Season 19, and the best thing to do would be to pay thanks to the fans who helped her make it this far.
