Comedy Central has canceled “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore,” the cable network announced Monday.
The last episode of the late-night talk show, which premiered in January 2015, will air Thursday at 11:30 p.m. Comedy Central’s 12 a.m. show “@midnight” will temporarily replace the programming at 11:30 p.m. until the network finds a permanent replacement in the time slot. According to Variety, the network is developing a show with “Daily Show” contributor Jordan Klepper that could, in time, perhaps become a replacement for "The Nightly Show."
Comedy Central President Kent Alterman told The New York Times that the show was canceled because it “hadn’t resonated.” The show, which replaced Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report,” was averaging around 776,000 viewers a night in 2016, according to data from Nielsen.
Wilmore informed staff Monday about the cancellation.
“I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” he said in a statement. “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”
The cancellation, which comes less than two months before the presidential election in November, is due to the timing of a contract renewal, Alterman said.
Wilmore hosted the White House Correspondents' Association annual fundraising dinner in April.
