Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, the late-night talk show on TBS, was 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 season.
Samantha Bee began her TV career as a correspondent for The Daily Show, where she served for 12 years. But when host Jon Stewart announced he was leaving and Bee wasn’t approached about succeeding him as the show’s host, she decided to pursue other opportunities.
In partnership with TBS, Full Frontal debuted in February 2016 and saw Bee hosting a weekly late-night news show that was a mix 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 during the show’s seven seasons.
On 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-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 this afternoon. night, paving the way for female voices in what has traditionally been and remains a male-dominated landscape.”
They continued, “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee consistently broke down barriers with Sam and his team boldly using political satire to entertain, inform and empower viewers, while embracing critically underrepresented stories, particularly about women.”
A TBS representative added, “As we continue to shape our new programming strategy, we have made some tough, business-based decisions. Full Frontal With Samantha Bee will not be returning to TBS. We are proud to have been home to Full Frontal Frontal with Samantha Bee and thank you 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 premiere season was a critical favorite, earning a 100% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. (opens in new tab) But like all the other original offerings on the TBS network, things are only going one way…
Analysis: Why is the show ending?
As we wrote at length about when executives at TBS sister TNT canceled their latest original programming, Snowpiercer (and when TBS executives made the decision to pull Chad, the critically acclaimed coming-of-age comedy from the air just hours before the start of Monday), season), TBS parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, is in for an epic round of cost-cutting after the merger in early 2022. Simply put, it’s cleaning up all of its original programming on TBS, TNT, and TruTV.
The only TBS original offerings right now are the Daniel Radcliffe comedy Miracle Workers, which is heading for a fourth season, and the animated show American Dad. When Snowpiercer finishes, TNT will only host replays.
The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, had promised he would take a good look at post-merger spending, and he responded in kind with a series of cancellations.
The Time Traveler’s Wife was fired after a single season in early July, and then period drama Gentleman Jack was fired. Both shows were from HBO, while Adult Swim’s Joe Pera Talks With You was also canned, along with HBO’s animated comedy Max Close Enough.
If you’re a new show debuting on HBO Max or any of the other Warner Bros Discovery networks, you better wait for it to start running. It’s brutal out there.