Warner Bros’ cost-cutting continues…
Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, TBS’ late-night talk show, has been canceled after seven seasons on the air.
The show’s seventh season came to an end on June 23, and it has now been confirmed that it will not return for an eighth run.
Samantha Bee began her TV career as a correspondent on The Daily Show, where she served for 12 years. But, when host Jon Stewart announced he was leaving and Bee was not approached about succeeding him as the show’s host, she decided to pursue other opportunities.
Partnering up with TBS, Full Frontal then debuted in February of 2016 and saw Bee presenting a weekly late-night news magazine show, which was a mixture of satire and investigative reporting. The show ran for 218 episodes, with the likes of Barack Obama, David Tennant and current Vice President Kamala Harris among those who appeared as guests over the show’s seven season run.
n a statement given to the Hollywood Reporter (opens in new tab), a spokesperson for Bee said: “Samantha Bee is honored to have hosted the Emmy Award-winning series Full Frontal With Samantha Bee on TBS for seven seasons, but the show will not return to the network this fall. Bee made television history in the late night space, paving the way for female voices in what has traditionally been, and continues to be a male dominated landscape.”
They continued: “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee consistently broke barriers with Sam and her team boldly using political satire to entertain, inform and empower viewers, while embracing critically underrepresented stories, particularly about women.”
A representative for TBS added: “As we continue to shape our new programming strategy, we’ve made some difficult, business-based decisions. Full Frontal With Samantha Bee will not return to TBS. We are proud to have been the home to Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and thank Sam, and the rest of the Emmy-nominated team for their groundbreaking work. We celebrate this extraordinarily talented cast and crew and look forward to exploring new opportunities to work with them in the future.”
The show’s debut season was a critical favorite, garnering a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (opens in new tab) But, like all the other original offerings on network TBS, things are only going one way…
Analysis: Why is the show ending?
As we’ve written about at length when executives at TBS’ sibling, TNT, canceled its last piece of original programming, Snowpiercer (and when TBS executives took the decision to pull Chad, the acclaimed coming-of-age comedy from air just hours before its second season was due to start ), TBS’ parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is on an epic round of cost-cutting after it merged earlier in 2022. Put simply, it’s clearing out all its original programming on TBS, TNT and TruTV.
TBS’ only original offerings are now Daniel Radcliffe-led comedy Miracle Workers, which is heading into a fourth season, and animated show American Dad. When Snowpiercer finishes, TNT will play host to repeats only.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav had promised that he would be taking a long look at spending after the merger, and he has responded in kind with a slew of cancelations.
The Time Traveler’s Wife was axed after a single season earlier in July, and then period drama Gentleman Jack got the boot. Both of those shows went from HBO, while Adult Swim’s Joe Pera Talks With You also got canned, along with HBO Max’s animated comedy Close Enough.
If you’re a new show debuting on HBO Max or any of Warner Bros Discovery’s other networks, you’d better hope you hit the ground running. It’s brutal out there.
By Tom Goodwyn