Comedy Central will have a lot less Chris Hardwick in the not-too-distant future. He has had a presence on the network for the past four years thanks to the panel game show @midnight. Unfortunately for fans who have gotten used to Hardwick four nights a week, the show has officially been cancelled after four seasons and will not return for a fifth.
The cancellation comes after host/executive producer Chris Hardwick, Comedy Central, and production company Funny or Die agreed that the time had come to end the show's run. Unfortunately, the announcement comes at a time that doesn't leave us with many episodes left. The final week of new episodes will begin on July 31 and come to an end on Friday, August 4, which marks a departure from the norm. The show usually only airs from Mondays to Thursdays.
@midnight had a healthy run on Comedy Central. Although four seasons might not sound like a lot, especially compared to certain other TV comedies, an awful lot of episodes aired. The final episode on August 4 will be the milestone 600th. No, that's not a typo with one too many zeroes. @midnight will indeed have run for 600 episodes by the series finale. This is a series that everybody behind the scenes can be proud of producing.
The show hasn't done badly recently. In fact, Deadline reports that @midnight received a bump in the ratings after it was moved from the 12 a.m. time slot to 11:30 p.m. back in August after the cancellation of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. It also did well in the young male demographic that's valuable to a network like Comedy Central. Still, the ratings haven't continued to climb, despite some election season bumps. The time simply may have come for the show to end.
Of course, the cancellation of @midnight doesn't mean that Chris Hardwick will be gone from the limelight. He already hosts a number of shows on AMC, including Talking Dead, Talking Dead: Fear Edition (for Fear the Walking Dead), Talking Saul, and Talking Preacher. He even landed an AMC talk show of his own, called Talking with Chris Hardwick. On NBC, he hosts The Wall and is attached to the in-development series The Awesome Show. Throw in his weekly Nerdist podcast, and fans won't have any trouble finding ways to get more Chris Hardwick.
You can catch the final episodes of @midnight with Chris Hardwick on Mondays - Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on Comedy Central. There are still a couple of weeks left to enjoy. For what you can watch once @midnight is over, our summer TV premiere guide and our 2017 Netflix premiere schedule can help you out. If you're still trying to figure out what you'll be watching in the fall, swing by our rundowns of renewals and cancellations for network and cable/streaming TV.
