Chris Hardwick’s @midnight has inarguably had an impressive run. Sadly, fans of the late-night game show will soon have to look elsewhere for laughs as the series is set to come to an end next month.
According to Deadline, the final episode of @midnight with Chris Hardwick will air Friday, Aug. 4. The finale will mark the series’ 600th episode, a milestone acknowledged by both Hardwick and Comedy Central as a true testament to the show’s strength.
“We feel incredibly proud of the show, we think it’s had an amazing run,” said Comedy Central president Kent Alterman. “How many shows can say that they’d hit 600 episodes? It was a little bit of the audience telling us over time, and we mutually thought, ‘You know what, maybe we should walk away holding our heads high and proud, full of appreciation and gratitude.’ ”
Hardwick added:
“@midnight has meant the world to me these last four years. It has been a dream to come to work 600 times to make inappropriate jokes about the Internet with my fellow comedian friends. I could not be more proud of this show, staff and crew and at the end of the day, I think we accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish. Spiritually it just feels like it ran its course — I’m not sure we had many more hashtag games in us (which may actually be a relief to anyone whose Twitter feed gets overrun every night).
I owe such a huge debt of gratitude to Comedy Central and Kent for taking a chance on the show, always being great partners and allowing us to exit mutually, which is rarely a gift you are given in this business. I will certainly miss awarding POINTS! to people nightly, so please understand if you see me randomly shouting it at strangers in public after August 4th.”
In the last two years, @midnight has consistently pulled in between 400,000-490,000 total viewers but, despite a ratings bump following its move from 12:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., the show’s viewership number numbers have plateaued.
In the absence of @midnight, Comedy Central will be searching for an appropriate fit for their 11:30 p.m. time slot. It appears as though Jordan Klepper’s forthcoming Daily Show spinoff and Anthony Atamanuik’s The President Show are prime candidates.
As for the future of Hardwick, fans can still catch him on AMC’s Talking Dead & Talking Saul and NBC’s The Wall.