The Wendy Williams Show's ratings go up with the absence of Wendy Williams

[TMC]

https://www.thewrap.com/wendy-willia...w-leah-remini/

With guest-hosts filling in for an ailing Williams, her talk show's viewership rose for its delayed premiere week of Oct. 20. As The Wrap notes, viewers may have tuned in to watch something other than Wendy Williams Show reruns.

[TMC]

Wendy Williams' hiatus from her talk show has been extended until March

The Wendy Williams Show announced today that Fat Joe, Remy Ma, Michael Rapaport, Bevy Smith, Terrence J and Sherri Shepherd are all set to return as guest hosts for the month of February and through March 4. Williams has been absent this season as she deals with ongoing health issues.

[TMC]

Sherri Shepherd is in talks to host her own daytime talk show -- Wendy Williams is not returning to The Wendy Williams Show this season

Shepherd, who has been one of The Wendy Williams Show's substitute guest-hosts this season, is in advanced discussions with Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury for her own daytime talk show that could potentially replace Williams' show next season. The potential talk show would be separate from The Wendy Williams Show and mark a full-time return to daytime TV for Shepherd, a former The View co-host. Williams, who has been absent from her show all this season while dealing with health issues, won't return this season and it's unclear if she'll be back next season. "A source says it’s unclear whether Williams will ever come back to her show, but if she is in good enough health to do so and wants to return, executives would be thrilled to welcome her back with open arms," reports Variety's William Earl. "After all, Williams has been a huge hit for Debmar-Mercury and a stalwart in daytime television on the Fox TV Stations." He adds: "If Williams does not return next season, a show starring Shepherd would be a sensible option to fill the daytime slot. Insiders say the show being developed would fully be Shepherd’s own show — not a replacement for Williams on that show. A deal is currently being negotiated, but the paperwork is not signed."

[Hazel Anyday]

They could really have a ratings bonanza if they cancelled that unwatchable horrible mess and replaced it with The Real McCoys everyday.

[TMC]

Exclusive: Wendy Williams show to be canceled at the end of June, Sherri Shepherd show to premiere this fall

[TVFactFan]

if more people are watching when you aint there then its has to be cancelled

[TMC]

Sherri Shepherd to host her own daytime talk show as The Wendy Williams Show ends after 14 seasons

Shepherd's new talk show, titled Sherri, will take over Wendy Williams' timeslot this fall on Fox's owned-and-operated stations. Sherri is from Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury, the same distributor as The Wendy Williams Show. Since Williams has been absent with health issues, "The Wendy Williams Show is slated to continue through the end of this season with rotating guest hosts, including Shepherd, as Williams has been sidelined with health issues for the entire season," according to Deadline, which adds: "While Sherri is positioned as a replacement, taking over Wendy‘s time periods and inheriting that show’s producing team, Debmar-Mercury is leaving the door open to resuming her show if/when Williams fully recovers and wants to do it." The Wendy Williams Show showrunner David Perler will become showrunner of Sherri. Also, Sherri will feature The Wendy Williams Show's "Hot Topics" segment with Shepherd's own spin on it. As an alum of The View and Dish Nation, Shepherd is a daytime TV veteran. Debmar-Mercury co-presidents Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein said in a statement that they'd still like to work with Williams in the future. “This is also a bitter-sweet moment for us and our partners at Fox,” Marcus and Bernstein said. “We all have a great love and affinity for Wendy, who grew into a true icon during her 12 incredible seasons as the solo host of a live, daily talk show dishing on 'Hot Topics' and interviewing celebrities. Since Wendy is still not available to host the show as she continues on her road to recovery, we believe it is best for our fans, stations and advertising partners to start making this transition now. We hope to be able to work with Wendy again in the future, and continue to wish her a speedy and full recovery.” Shepherd called hosting her own show a dream come true: “OMG! I am so excited to have my dream come true and debut my very own talk show Sherri in the fall. I can’t wait until I return to NY to host the show and merge everything I love…pop culture, talk, entertainment and comedy. I am thankful to Debmar-Mercury and Fox for partnering with me on this show and look forward to this new journey.”

ALSO:

• Wendy Williams "understands" the decision to end her show, hopes to return to TV: “It’s been a challenging time for Wendy as she deals with her health issues. She is incredibly grateful to Debmar-Mercury, to Sherri and everybody else who has supported the show through this time,” Williams' spokesperson Howard Bragman said in a statement to Deadline. “She, more than anyone, understands the reality of syndicated television — you can’t go to the marketplace and sell a show that’s The Maybe Wendy Show. She understands why this decision was made from a business point of view, and she has been assured by Debmar-Mercury that should her health get to a point where she can host again and should her desire be that she hosts again that she would be back on TV at that time.”

Wendy Williams thrived on daytime TV as an entertainment industry outsider

Tuesday's announcement that The Wendy Williams Show was being canceled due to the ongoing health issues that have sidelined Williams this season is disappointing because she forged a unique connection with viewers, says Daniel D'Addario. "It’s unfortunate to imagine any person with a connection to their audience being denied the opportunity to at least say goodbye on their own terms, says D'Addario. He adds that Williams not being close to the entertainment industry "made her tone a vibrant corrective to the cloying sweetness across the airwaves. Williams called things as she saw them, but she was no nihilist. Indeed, she was suffused with warmth and affection — for her audience, at least. She had a sort of tacit deal with viewers: She’d let her audience in on exactly what she thought of things as long as they rolled with her lapses — moments of oddity or misstatements or not finding the exact right way to phrase things, but pushing on through."

ALSO:

• Wendy Williams' rep questions the source of the recent Instagram posts featuring her: "I'm not honestly convinced of the source of that social media post, so when my old friend Wendy FaceTimes me personally and we alone have a chance to discuss recent events, together we can figure out the best path forward," spokesperson Howard Bragman said in a statement to People.
• Andy Cohen pays tribute to Williams on Watch What Happens Live

[TMC]

The Wendy Williams Show will end Friday without Wendy Williams, but with a video tribute to her as host

Williams, who has been absent all season due to health issues, won't be part of The Wendy Williams Show's final episode after 13 years. “The final original episode of The Wendy Williams Show will air on Friday, June 17th with a video tribute to the iconic host. The series comes to an end after 13 successful years in syndication,” a spokesperson for the show says in a statement to Variety.

[TMC]

The Wendy Williams Show was given an "undiginfied end" with a video montage celebrating an absent Wendy Williams

"A few canned words from guest host Sherri Shepherd and a montage did not make a worthy tribute to a true television pioneer," says Rich Juzwiak. "After 13 seasons, The Wendy Williams Show met a rather undignified end Friday, via phoned-in words in tribute from guest host Sherri Shepherd and a few minutes of montage spanning the daytime talk show’s 14-year run," says Juzwiak. "Williams, notably, was absent from the festivities. The show gave no indication that she was invited or even wanted to attend the finale taping, though in an off-camera, voice-only interview with Good Morning America in March, Williams did say she’d be ready to work in TV again in three months." Juzwiak adds: "What a shame. This was such a non-event. At least they acknowledged the end, I suppose. Maybe Williams’s presence would have been a bummer— after all, her recent interviews and sporadic messages on Instagram alleging a conservatorship-type situation that’s blocking her from accessing her money have been weird. Regardless, it sucked watching her endlessly entertaining show go out like this."

ALSO:

• Wendy Williams deserved better for her messy and fabulous show: "In its final moments, Wendy came to a close with a whimper in the form of a flimsy video montage dedicated to Williams and her show’s incredible legacy," says Coleman Spilde. "No appearance, not even a pre-recorded message from the star of the show—the one who built its audience and carved out a new space in daytime for those who wanted a no-holds-barred host who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and pick up the pieces afterward. Needless to say, Wendy Williams deserved better. The Wendy show was a cosmic flash, a risky concept that could’ve completely bombed and been a forgotten blip in talk-show history. There are very few people who can hold up an hour-long daytime show on the premise of just being themselves, and Wendy Williams was one of the first of her kind. A Black woman spearheading a solo talk show with nothing more than a penchant for gossip and a built-in audience from a long-running radio show: It was never guaranteed that Wendy Williams ’particular brand would translate to the treacherous landscape of daytime television, where more traditionally 'obvious' hosts, like Katie Couric, Anderson Cooper, and Meredith Viera all failed."
• Looking back at the highs and lows of The Wendy Williams Show

Wendy Williams' ex-husband Kevin Hunter slams The Wendy Williams Show's "unceremonious" finale

"I feel like it is a travesty on the part of Debmar-Mercury to have such an unceremonious departure without Wendy being involved," says Hunter, a former executive producer on the show, tells E.T. "It is the first time in the history of talk shows for this to be done, especially for a show that has been on for more than 10 years. There is absolutely no reason why a bigger celebration that involved Wendy couldn't happen."

[TMC]

Wendy Williams never got the respect she deserves

Williams' The Wendy Williams Show concluded last Friday after 13 seasons with a finale unfit for the Queen of All Media after the host was sidelined all season due to health problems. Despite the “unsettling” nature of her exit following personal battles, Williams never received the credit for the many ways she changed daytime TV, says Variety's Elizabeth Wagmeister, a frequent guest on Williams' show. "What Williams brought to the table could never be drafted in casting," says Wagmeister. "Her messy, burping, farting, teeth-picking, say-it-how-it-is, unfiltered delivery is what brought viewers in and made them unable to turn away. In TV, everyone wants to be liked. Networks want good ratings and to satisfy advertisers. Williams? She never even considered that. She was unapologetically herself: she said what everyone watching at home was thinking, but is too scared to say. That’s the reason why her viewers loved her. Her brand was harsh, brash and real. And sometimes, she absolutely crossed the line. But she had built such trust with her audience, they always forgave her, even when she offended them." Why wasn't Williams more highly regarded? "Maybe it’s because she has strong opinions and could be nasty to the people she spoke about," says Wagmeister. "Perhaps it’s because she’s a woman of color who was ahead of her time, not following the rules and sharing stories about her tough life on national television. But Williams is part of TV history, and deserves her place up with other daytime legends, even if she was never publicly in the same league as an Oprah or a Rosie O’Donnell. Most TV hosts want to keep their celebrity guests happy so they return to the show, but Williams was not in this business to make friends. In fact, one time, she told me that she doesn’t need any celebrity guests on her show — if they get pissed off, so what? She knows that her viewers like to watch her more than them, anyway." ALSO: Wendy Williams tells Billy Bush that she's all good with production company Debmar-Mercury and that she plans to launch a podcast.

[TMC]

Wendy Williams Show's YouTube disappears

The channel was deleted after the show aired its final episode earlier this year. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in search of a laugh should seek out Wendy Williams.

[TMC]

The Hollywood Reporter: Inside the Final Days of ‘The Wendy Williams Show’

This story first appeared in the Aug. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.



Cliffs

- Staff began seeing her in the press and started to worry about her health before the launch of the new season

- They continued to push the promotional tour back as they were weeks away from launch

- Wendy showed up on Zoom to address staff concerns and it went south fast

"her speech quickly became muddled and disconnected. “She gets on and she starts rambling about ‘I’m really fine, it’s going to be fine,’ and it’s like, ‘What are you saying?’ ” recounts one bewildered insider, who suggests she was “starting not to be coherent.” Aware that their plan was backfiring, the executives thanked everyone for their time and ended the Zoom abruptly.

- She started acting incoherent and slurry her words right before season 13

- Alcohol bottles were found throughout the show, some stuck in ceilings

- According to two more, during that four-year period, producers sent preshow text messages to higher-ups at the company questioning Williams’ sobriety on “at least 25” separate occasions.

- In some of those instances, the episode in question was the second taping of the day, which meant it wouldn’t air until later in the week, giving the execs time to rewatch the hour to see if Williams appeared inebriated. In all but one case, it was decided that she seemed “fine enough” and the episodes aired as planned.- They have been trying to get Wendy help but something is still off about her

- Wendy was in denial that her show was getting canceled. She tried telling producers "I'll be ready in a week"

[TMC]

Wendy Williams is glad to not have the "burden" of a daily talk show

Former daytime TV star Wendy Williams has a lot on her plate ... "[The show] was really becoming a burden after 14 years,” she said Monday.

[Hawkee]

What I think Wendy Williams had in mind when she got the chance to host her talk show was she had this fantasy that she wanted to be famous like Oprah Winfrey and she thought that this show might give her a chance at stardom. I had never even heard of Wendy Williams until I got a Blu Cantrell album that had a DVD with Wendy Williams's interview with Blu Cantrell and the first thing I saw in my vision was a sassy smart woman with talent. But I think why The Wendy Williams Show's ratings went up was when it first began the show had weak ratings and when you have a new talk show it's always a slow starter at first but as she got celebrities like James Corden Chris Pratt Wayne Brady Angelina Jolie Howie Mandel and other stars to do interviews on her show she knew this was the format that worked so well. But why Wendy decided to end her show was not due to illness but for money and she used every trick in the book to try to get more money and so she tried to get lesser known celebrities for more money and when the producers saw what she was doing they got unhappy with what she was doing
Bestie

[TMC]

5 Times Wendy Williams Made Her Talk Show Guests Feel Uncomfortable

Throughout the 14-year run of "The Wendy Williams Show," the infamous gossip has made numerous mortifying remarks to her famous guests.