Nick Cannon’s nationally syndicated daytime talk show is ending just six months after it premiered last fall, TheWrap has learned.
Production staff on “Nick Cannon” got the news Thursday that the show had been canceled, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap. The staff had initially been told they’d be going on a five-week hiatus in the coming days to give Cannon time to focus on his hosting duties at Fox’s “The Masked Singer” and VH1’s “Wild ‘N Out,” Instead, a meeting was called this morning to notify staffers that production would shut down at the end of the day.
In a statement, Mort Marcus and Ira Bernstein, co-presidents of Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury, which produces and distributes “Nick Cannon,” called the decision to end the program “difficult.”
“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,’” Marcus and Bernstein said.
The plan is to tape two episodes on Thursday. Those two shows, combined with previously taped original episodes, will air until the season ends in May.
“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,” Marcus and Bernstein added.
Since it premiered in September 2021, “Nick Cannon” has been averaging a .4 rating. The show insider said low ratings “obviously” contributed to the program’s cancellation.
The daytime show had initially been scheduled to premiere a year earlier, but Debmar-Mercury and Fox Television Stations postponed the rollout of “Nick Cannon” amid backlash when the multi-hyphenate discussed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on his “Cannon’s Class” podcast in June 2020. He apologized the following month, met with Jewish leaders, and his talk show eventually got back on track.
