Earlier Monday, Comedy Central announced The Nightly Show had been canceled, in part, because of its low ratings. Last night following the news of his cancelation; Larry took to the desk to speak about it.
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Since taking over “The Colbert Report” time slot on Comedy Central, Larry Wilmore’s “Nightly Show” has lost more than half of the viewers Colbert had. The show’s cancellation has also come just two months before the United States election, and a few weeks before Comedy Central has to renew Wilmore’s contract, as well as that of around 15 creative contributors. Though, on the plus side, our show going off the air has to only mean one thing: Racism is solved. I mean, really our show was at its best when the news was at its worst. “We stuck with it for a year and a half but ultimately we didn’t feel that we see enough traction to justify doing another year”.
The showed premiered in January 2015 at 11:30 p.m. after Jon Stewart’s wildly successful The Daily Show. The programme took over from Stephen Colbert’s long-running favourite “The Colbert Report” when the host jumped to CBS, and Wilmore sought to continue in the same vein of political humour, having also been an alumnus of Jon Stewart’s satirical “The Daily Show” from 2006 to 2014.
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In a statement, Comedy Central credited Wilmore and his staff with generating conversations “by addressing social issues of great importance to the country, always challenging people’s attitudes, perceptions and bias”. “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this insane election or “The Unblackening” as we’ve coined it”. “Nightly Show” averaged 153,000 viewers in that demo. After Stewart bowed out on August 6, 2015, “Nightly Show’ struggled with the smaller lead-in as Noah took the reins from Stewart. I guess I hadn’t counted on “The Unblackening” happening on my show”.
