Comedy Central has cancelled @midnight after four seasons. The Chris Hardwick hosted tak show will not return for Season 5.
The final episodes of @midnight will commence July 31, culminating with the series finale Friday, August 4, which also sees the show reach the 600-episode landmark.
Comedy Central president Kent Alterman told Deadline of the decision to cancel @midnight, which was primarily driven by low ratings:
“We took a big macro look and we started having conversations with Chris. We feel incredibly proud of the show, we think it’s had an amazing run. How many shows can say that they’d hit 600 episodes? It was a little bit of the audience telling us over time, and we mutually thought, ‘You know what, maybe we should walk away holding our heads high and proud, full of appreciation and gratitude’.”
Hardwick told the publication:
“@midnight has meant the world to me these last four years. It has been a dream to come to work 600 times to make inappropriate jokes about the Internet with my fellow comedian friends. I could not be more proud of this show, staff and crew and at the end of the day, I think we accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish. Spiritually it just feels like it ran its course — I’m not sure we had many more hashtag games in us (which may actually be a relief to anyone whose Twitter feed gets overrun every night).
I owe such a huge debt of gratitude to Comedy Central and Kent for taking a chance on the show, always being great partners and allowing us to exit mutually, which is rarely a gift you are given in this business. I will certainly miss awarding POINTS! to people nightly, so please understand if you see me randomly shouting it at strangers in public after August 4th.”
As @midnight enters the cancellation graveyard, Deadline reports that the concept could be revisited in the fall with a view to reformatting the series. The reaper is determined not to let that happen.
RIP.
Spike says
Good, it was a great show until he hooked up with that heiress.
After that it was constant religion and republican bashing.
I stopped watching after Trump got in the race and it was a nightly Trump bash-fest.
When you have a small audience – it’s kinda suicide to alienate half of them
Geeez says
Never been a Hardwick fan… no clue how he’s managed to weasel his way into television. He was annoying in his stand up (Hard N Firm – not funny at all) and just as annoying on Attack of the Show… and he’s never improved.