It was announced yesterday that Comedy Central has canceled “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” due to weaker than expected ratings. Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s president, said the show “hasn’t resonated” with audiences.
“Even though we’ve given it a year and a half, we’ve been hoping against hope that it would start to click with our audience, but it hasn’t happened and we’ve haven’t seen evidence of it happening,” Mr. Alterman added in a press statement.
Wilmore’s show lost more than half the audience that he inherited, after taking over the time-slot vacated by Stephen Colbert, and the numbers continue to dive.
“We were hoping that we would get a turnaround along the way including the wild, wild two weeks of the conventions.,” Comedy Central’s president said. “We just haven’t seen it on any level from the general conversation to ratings to any sort of traction on social media platforms.”
The final episode of Wilmore’s show will be this Thursday.
Whether Wilmore will stay on with Comedy Central in any capacity isn’t known at this time. But he is involved in other projects, like being an executive producer for HBO’s upcoming Issa Rae comedy “Insecure.”
During last night’s episode, Wilmore briefly addressed the cancellation of his show, joking that the fact that it’s going off the air can only mean one thing: that racism is solved. “You’re welcome America,” Wilmore exclaimed.
Watch the bit below: