Comedy Central Cancels Larry Wilmore's 'Nightly Show'

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — It's curtains for Larry Wilmore's "The Nightly Show." Comedy Central announced on Monday it has cancelled the satirical news program which began airing in January 2015 as a replacement for Stephen Colbert's "The Colbert Report." The last episode will air on Thursday.

“I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity, but I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election, or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it,” Wilmore told Deadline. “And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”

Comedy Central pointed to low ratings for the show as the reason for the cancellation. The show had 570,000 viewers in the second week of July, but part of the reason for the decrease was "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah's" lower ratings (810,000). "The Nightly Show" was doing about 700,000 nightly viewers before Stewart, also an executive producer on Wilmore's show, left the hosting chair.

The show will be replaced by Chris Hardwick's pseudo-game show "@midnight" in the short term.

On-air talent and behind-the-scenes workers — often one and the same — posted their condolences on Twitter on Monday morning.

Rory Albanese, executive producer and showrunner for "The Nightly Show," thanked the staff and crew for their hard work. Albanese was with "The Daily Show" for 14 years before taking the helm at "The Nightly Show."

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr/Creative Commons