Nick Cannon’s talk show will be ending after its first season.
The syndicated daytime show, titled Nick Cannon, has been canceled, with Thursday being the final day of production. Staffers were informed on Thursday about the cancellation as the show prepared to head into an already planned five-week hiatus, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
The season will continue to air as planned through May, with pretaped episodes.
“It’s never easy to cancel a production with clear potential but, after a great deal of deliberation and examining various options, we have made the difficult business decision to end production on Nick Cannon,” Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein, co-presidents of Debmar-Mercury, the series’ Lionsgate-owned producer-distributor, said in a statement to THR. “We plan to offer viewers original episodes of the daytime talk show through the remainder of this season. Our thanks go to the very talented Nick Cannon and our wonderful production team, and we wish Nick continued success with his many hit ventures.”
The Nick Cannon show launched amid controversy in the fall of 2021. Initially set to launch in fall 2020, it was pushed back following anti-Semitic remarks made on his Cannon’s Class podcast the prior summer. ViacomCBS cut ties with the Wild ‘n’ Out host following the podcast, but Fox stood by their Masked Singer host. After Cannon apologized for his remarks, Lionsgate and Debmar-Mercury backed Cannon by delaying but not scrapping the daytime talk show.
At the time, Debmar-Mercury said in a statement: “We want to continue the healing process as he meets with leaders of the Jewish community and engages in a dialogue with our distribution partners to hear their views. We are standing by Nick in our hope that by fall 2021 he will be able to use his extraordinary talent and platform to entertain, enlighten and unite his audience on the Nick Cannon talk show.”
The show has struggled to find a wide audience: In the first two months of 2022, Nick Cannon averaged just 568,000 daily viewers, ranking among the bottom third of first-run syndicated shows. The top syndicated talkers, Live With Kelly and Ryan and Dr. Phil, typically draw between 2.3 million and 2.5 million viewers each day.
The cancellation follows Debmar-Mercury recently announcing that its Wendy Williams Show would also be coming to an end after 14 seasons. Sherri Shepherd will headline a new syndicated show in the fall to take over the time slots held by Williams, who has been dealing with health issues.
Rick Porter contributed to this story.
Source: Hollywood
