"The Daily Show's" Larry Wilmore to Replace Stephen Colbert
May 9, 2014
by Natalie Abrams


Comedy Central has tapped "The Daily Show's" Larry Wilmore to replace Stephen Colbert, the network announced Friday.

Wilmore, who serves as "The Daily Show's" "Senior Black Correspondent," will headline his own show called "The Minority Report". The half-hour show, executive-produced by Jon Stewart, will take over "The Colbert Report's" timeslot starting in January.



In April, CBS picked Colbert to replace David Letterman as host of "The Late Show". Colbert will succeed Letterman sometime in 2015.

In the meantime, he will continue as host of "The Colbert Report" until the end of the year.



Wilmore, 52, also serves as an executive producer on the new comedy "Black-ish", which ABC ordered to series on Thursday. The Emmy winner is also known for his work on "The Bernie Mac Show" and "The Office".

http://www.tvguide.com/News/Larry-Wilmore-Minority-Report-Colbert-Comedy-Central-1081615.aspx

http://gawker.com/larry-wilmore-can-save-tv-if-we-let-him-1576265445

Comedy Central premiered David Alan Grier’s failed version of a black “Daily Show” weeks before Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. How much should Wilmore concentrate on minority issues?
Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/tv-tattle#tHxEFiz7R6BztoG8.99

Larry Wilmore’s First ‘Nightly Show': Not Perfect, But Very Promising (http://flavorwire.com/499941/larry-wilmores-first-nightly-show-how-did-he-do)

I've tried getting into this show but for some reason or another it just hasn't really or entirely clicked. A huge part of the problem w/ this show is that Larry Wilmore, when you get right down to it, isn't that great of a host. He doesn't have enough charisma or gravitas (it's not helped by the fact that he has a very thin, nasally voice) to carry a show by himself. Much of the time, it seems like he doesn't have enough confidence in his joke delivery.

Also, I don't understand the point of this show's existence beyond taking over for Stephen Colbert's spot. If The Daily Show analyzes/criticizes the 24 hour news cycle, and The Colbert Report was a send-up of bloviating cable news talking heads like Bill O'Reilly, then what exactly is the mission statement for The Nightly Show?

I guess it wants to be sort of Comedy Central's version of Real Time with Bill Maher w/ the panels and what not. Unfortunately for The Nightly Show, Real Time benefits from being an hour long and commercial free. There's also much more quality control over the panelists since Real Time is only one once a week. On The Nightly Show it gets redundant really quickly.

All in all, the entire show is the same: cuts and transitions are non-existant, and there's just no momentum built, there's no energy, there's nothing to help sell the jokes... and when there are transitions and cuts, they're just as lifeless and flat as the rest of the show. My main point to all of this is that the pacing of the entire show is off, from the opening to the jokes, the segment, and the panel.

The Daily Show’s problem isn’t Trevor Noah’s presence, it’s Larry Wilmore’s absence (http://www.avclub.com/article/daily-shows-problem-isnt-trevor-noahs-presence-its-217999)

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/wilmores-nightly-show-first-3-months-down-nearly-40-from-colbert/

In the three months since The Nightly Show launched, Wilmore has averaged 417,000 viewers in the all-important 18-49 demo.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/gonna-miss-jon-stewart-don-t-worry-larry-wilmore-s-hitting-his-stride-7316943

When Wilmore took the helm of The Nightly Show in January he lamented that “all of the good bad-race stuff happened already.” Turns out, he was wrong. As Inkoo Kang points out, in recent months, “Wilmore has finally come into his own as a political authority after seeming to retreat from the position in earlier drafts of his show.”

Comedy Central Renews "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore"
by Dan Snierson
9/15/15


As Comedy Central prepares for the changing of "The Daily Show" hosting guard, it will keep things the same in the post-Daily Show slot for at least another year.

The network confirmed on Tuesday that it had renewed "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore" through the end of 2016.



The late-night talk show — which features the former "Daily Show" contributor taking on various cultural, political and social issues while lording over a panel of guests — premiered back in January.

The previous time-slot occupant, "The Colbert Report", ran from 2005 to 2014, before host Stephen Colbert was tapped by CBS to replace David Letterman on "The Late Show".

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/15/nightly-show-larry-wilmore-renewed-season-2

https://t.co/2iXJolVVPn

As Jon Caramanica notes, “when The Nightly Show replaced The Colbert Report in January, it almost completely rejected Stephen Colbert’s model of extreme satirical immersion. Mr. Wilmore is less preoccupied with humor than anyone else who’s ever occupied a mock-news chair. Instead, he delivers earnest exhaustion, frustration and good-old finger-wagging. It’s a repudiation not just of our trying times, but also of responding to trying times with a wink.”

http://www.adweek.com/news/television/was-moment-larry-wilmore-lost-stephen-colberts-intellectual-appeal-169712

Wilmore was confronted by disappointed viewers during a Reddit AMA yesterday. As AdWeek explains, many commenters complained "Wilmore too often falls back on vapid pop culture commentary or race relations in America for his punchlines and segment focuses, abandoning the humorous-but-heartfelt championing of science and reason that was a recurring theme for The Daily Show's Stewart and Wilmore's predecessor, Colbert."

http://www.mediaite.com/online/how-did-larry-wilmore-lose-over-half-the-audience-he-inherited-let-us-count-the-ways/

The Nightly Show has lost more than half of Stephen Colbert’s audience, and one of the reasons why may be because viewers already know what to expect (http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2016/02/25/larry-wilmore-lost-more-half-his-audience-hes-not-funny) each night.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/larry-wilmore-reveals-tweak-turned-nightly-show-around-164357461.html

Larry Wilmore’s “Nightly Show” premiered in January 2015, but it wasn’t until this past December that the Comedy Central series hit its stride. The host, who has spent the past week brushing aside debate about his White House Correspondents Dinner appearance, told TheWrap that a key change implemented this winter really paid off: the show decided to start booking just one guest a night, instead of four. The initial pitch for “The Nightly Show” - initially named “The Minority Report” - was a full half-hour of pure discussion.

"The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore" Canceled
by Sadie Gennis
Aug 15, 2016


Comedy Central has pulled the plug on "The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore". The last episode of the late night show will air on Thursday, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Larry Wilmore's series premiered in January 2015 and was celebrated for showcasing diverse perspectives. However, even with the November election looming, "The Nightly Show" failed to bring in enough viewers, getting only a 0.2 rating in the key 18-49 demographic.





"We just didn't feel like we had enough traction to sign up for another year. It wasn't about the election; it's about another year of the show," Comedy Central president Kent Alterman said.

"Sadly, we've been hoping against hope that it would start to resonate in any of those quarters and we just weren't seeing evidence of it. As much as we like Larry and the uniqueness of the show and the voices that are on the show -- not just in terms of ratings -- it hasn't resonated in terms of our fans engaging with show with consuming or sharing content or having a dialogue about it on social platforms."





When responding to the cancellation, Wilmore didn't hide his disappointment in Comedy Central's decision.

"I'm really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity," Wilmore said. "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."





Comedy Central will air Chris Hardwick's "@midnight" in "The Nightly Show's" 11:30pm time slot while the network looks for a permanent replacement.

And while Alterman shut down the possibility of former "Daily Show" correspondent Jessica Williams as an option ("Jessica is more interested in developing a half-hour weekly scripted show"), he did promise that Comedy Central will look at more than just straight, white men.

"We're totally open to women and in whatever form diversity would come," he said. "We're open to it for sure."

http://www.tvguide.com/news/the-nightly-show-with-larry-wilmore-canceled/

http://www.thewrap.com/larry-wilmore-nightly-show-3-things-you-need-to-know-about-sudden-end/

That was a quick trip around the track for “The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore.” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3722332/) Comedy Central announced Monday that it is canceling the late-night news satire, less than two years after it premiered as a high-profile replacement for “The Colbert Report.” Wilmore’s last original episode will be Thursday. Critics generally liked the show, even if they didn’t give it enthusiastic raves. And the likable Wilmore was still enough of a troublemaker to grab some juicy headlines — a necessary skill for a late-night comic riffing on the news. He had a controversial hosting gig at the White House »

- Scott Collins

that's too bad - although I only watched the show sporadically, I liked Larry and thought he was pretty funny on the show.

as for the Daily Show, I'm not a fan of Trevor Noah and don't bother watching it at all anymore.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/d2fbee88-16ea-3ac5-ae5c-d207c480672b/can-anything-save-comedy.html

News broke Monday that Larry Wilmore (https://www.yahoo.com/news/larry-wilmore-nightly-show-wasn-164437517.html), one of the former Daily Show correspondents anointed to usher in a new era for Comedy Central, was losing his show (https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/8bba0130-5ae1-3338-8e16-f9c902b9ae3d/what-killed-the-nightly-show%3F.html) after less than two years on the air. Despite landing the coveted Colbert Report slot with a plum Daily Show lead-in, Wilmore was unable to connect with audiences, and his dismal ratings make the cancellation (https://www.yahoo.com/movies/critics-notebook-yes-larry-wilmores-nightly-show-missed-040044574.html) not all that surprising. Is it a sign of the continuing collapse of Comedy Central? Or a signal that a new era is about to dawn? As the increasingly nervous HBO and AMC will tell you, it’s dangerous to hang your brand on just one or two hits. When first Stephen Colbert and then Jon Stewart left Comedy Central, its established brand of smart,

http://www.mediaite.com/online/how-did-larry-wilmore-lose-over-half-the-audience-he-inherited-let-us-count-the-ways/

The Nightly Show has lost more than half of Stephen Colbert’s audience, and one of the reasons why may be because viewers already know what to expect (http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2016/02/25/larry-wilmore-lost-more-half-his-audience-hes-not-funny) each night.

One of the biggest problems with the panel, in my opinion, is that guests were generally booked pretty far in advance, as happens with late night shows. But the show was reacting to the topics of the day, so often you had a guest panelist who didn't really know a whole lot about whatever issue they happened to be talking about. In that case, the guests can either try to BS their way through the discussion, or just crack some weak jokes. Neither one really helps with a substantive conversation. Only relatively rarely did they have a guest who was a genuine expert on current issues, as opposed to celebrities like actors, comedians, or musicians.

But more often than not, it was 3 or 4 people who didn't understand the issue of the night well enough to say anything worth saying. There'd be a few cheap jokes. Someone (or a few people) would say something that was mostly irrelevant or missed the entire point and because either the other panelists didn't know the subject (or they were told not to say anything), the stupid comment would slide.

One of the biggest problems with the panel, in my opinion, is that guests were generally booked pretty far in advance, as happens with late night shows. But the show was reacting to the topics of the day, so often you had a guest panelist who didn't really know a whole lot about whatever issue they happened to be talking about. In that case, the guests can either try to BS their way through the discussion, or just crack some weak jokes. Neither one really helps with a substantive conversation. Only relatively rarely did they have a guest who was a genuine expert on current issues, as opposed to celebrities like actors, comedians, or musicians.

But more often than not, it was 3 or 4 people who didn't understand the issue of the night well enough to say anything worth saying. There'd be a few cheap jokes. Someone (or a few people) would say something that was mostly irrelevant or missed the entire point and because either the other panelists didn't know the subject (or they were told not to say anything), the stupid comment would slide.

Wilmore was failed by his supporting panelists, none of them were funny or have any charisma to them the way Wilmore himself and several others had on Jon Stewart's run. Maybe the show would've benefited more from being pure panel discussion like Real Time or Tough Crowd instead of following the Daily Show format with a mini-panel at the end instead of an interview. Or just not use correspondents like the Colbert Report.

It was less humorous than the Daily Show but did not provide enough news or actual journalism to make up for it. I think the Bill Nye incident is part of what ultimately sank them. Yeah they had him back on, but even with him around the apology came off disingenuously plus it was several months too late.

And not just Bill Nye mind you, but other serious intelligent guests who are talked over and sidelined so the other "contributors" can make jokes. Seems like the guests were either people that were brought on to try to validate the show, or entertainers who conveniently have a show/movie/album to promote to express their unqualified position on a serious subject. Don't fill out your panel with people who are there for comic relief.

The format did not work for a 22 minute show, however. It just forced them to rush things before it got interesting. Usually, the show was only good for the first segment and everything after that was just falling short. There are many things that they could have done to have made it a better show:

- Have it be a full hour block show (not likely on Comedy Central weeknight schedule)
- Have it be a Friday only show to allow for more time (of course, then it would be competing with the better established Real Time with Bill Maher)
- Eliminate segments in order to expand others
- Rotate the different segment types throughout the week with Larry's news recap/monologue being the only thing kept on every show (perhaps Monday could be a panel discussion episode, Tuesday be correspondents episodes, Wednesday be an interview show, and Thursday be the episode where they do the "Keeping it 100" segments

Or, it might have been better to be a mock Meet the Press / McLaughlin Group and have the round table be the show instead of the very rushed everything it tried to be.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-08-23/the-nightly-show-didnt-work-and-wont-be-returning-at-10pm-admits-itv-boss/

One year after Comedy Central axed Larry Wilmore’s The Nightly Show, a British comedy show also called The Nightly Show is set to be canceled. The British Nightly Show premiered in February featuring a rotating cast of presenters like David Walliams and Gordon Ramsay.

Even though it failed it was head and shoulders above the current incarnation of The Daily Show.