Comedy Central announced Monday that it has canceled The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore because it "hasn't resonated" with audiences. The show has struggled to match the ratings of its timeslot predecessor, The Colbert Report, since its debut January 2015.
"Even though we've given it a year and a half, we've been hoping against hope that [the show] would start to click with our audience," Kent Alterman, Comedy Central's president, told The New York Times. "It hasn't happened." Some viewers took to Twitter to voice their upset, however, hinting that perhaps Trevor Noah's version of The Daily Show — which Noah assumed from Jon Stewart one year ago — was more deserving of the boot:
The cancellation comes just over 12 weeks before Election Day — notable given Wilmore's dubbing of the race to succeed President Obama as "The Unblackening" and his continued racial commentary on the campaign. Wilmore's Nightly Show ran a segment called "Keep it 100", which often featured Wilmore offering unabashed race-based critique of the election:
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Wilmore said in a statement he was "grateful" for the opportunity to host the show, but also "saddened and surprised" by the cancellation. The Nightly Show's final episode will air Thursday. Read more about Comedy Central's decision at The New York Times.
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