‘Arsenio Hall Show’ Canceled After a Single Season
The late-night TV landscape is undergoing yet another shift with The Arsenio Hall Show getting canceled after just one season on the air. Variety reports that CBS made the announcement on Friday, citing the show’s failure to draw in enough viewers.
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“While there are many loyal fans of the show, the series did not grow its audience enough to continue,” CBS said in a statement. “Arsenio is a tremendous talent and we’d like to thank him for all the hard work and energy he put into the show. We’d also like to thank Tribune and all our station group partners for their support of the show.”
Despite a slew of high-profile musical guests including Prince, Kendrick Lamar and R. Kelly since its September 9th premiere, Variety notes that the show struggled with bookings. “My one regret was that we had many, many celebrities who told us they wanted to do the show but we couldn’t get their reps to book them,” Hall’s manager and executive producer John Ferriter said.
The news came as something of a surprise, since CBS had previously announced that the show would be back for a second season, even sending Jay Leno to make a surprise appearance to deliver the news to Hall on the air. Production on the show has now stopped, with the last original episode having aired May 21st.
It’s been an eventful year for late-night television. Jay Leno bid farewell to The Tonight Show in February after 22 years of hosting. His seat was taken up by Jimmy Fallon, who left Late Night in the hands of former Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers. In April, David Letterman announced that he would be retiring in 2015 after more than three decades of late-night TV. A week later, CBS announced that Stephen Colbert would be taking over the show, and Comedy Central, in turn, announced that Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore would host a new show in The Colbert Report‘s former timeslot.
Meanwhile, Hall announced on May 19th that he planned to buy the Los Angeles Clippers. He launched an Indie GoGo campaign to raise the mere billion dollars neeeded for the purchase, but has so far raised only $3,545. Since the NBA has just approved former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s $2 billion bid to buy the team, Hall will donate the money raised in his campaign to the National NAACP. Hall tied the two disappointments together in a tweet on Friday evening. “🙁 I lost my job … AND The Clippers, in a 48 hour period! #badweek … Love y’all …” he wrote.