TBS Cancels Long-Running Late-Night Series
No TBS show is safe as the new Warner Bros. Discovery seeks to cut costs. The latest casualty is Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, starring the former Daily Show correspondent. The series will end its run with seven seasons and was the highest-profile late-night series hosted by a woman.
Warner Bros. Discovery canceled Full Frontal on Monday, the company told Deadline. The decision to cancel the show comes as Brett Weitz, the general manager at truTV, TBS, and TNT, left the new company. Weitz was one of Bee's biggest supporters.
"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," a TBS spokeswoman said. "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."
Full Frontal was one of the high-profile shows to feature a former Daily Show correspondent after Jon Stewart left Comedy Central, alongside Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Bee's show scored Outstanding Variety Talk Series Emmy nominations in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. In 2017, Bee and her co-writers won Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special for the "Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner" episode. This year, the show was nominated for Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series for "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Presents: Pandemic Video Diaries: Vaxxed And Waxed."
The series debuted in February 2016, just weeks after President Donald Trump was inaugurated. Bee celebrated the 200th episode of the show recently. She filmed many of the episodes during the coronavirus pandemic in her backyard. When the show returned to the studio, Full Frontal was filmed at a studio in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Since the Warner Bros. Discovery merger finished in April, the company has been undergoing extreme cost-cutting measures. The former Turner entertainment cable networks have felt the brunt of it, with several shows getting canceled as Warner Bros. Discovery seeks to stop producing original content for TBS, TNT, and truTV. The TBS reality series The Big D was canceled before an episode aired, even though the entire first season was filmed. Nasim Pedrad's comedy Chad was canceled hours before Season 2 was scheduled to premiere. Kill the Orange-Faced Bear, a comedy starring Damon Wayans Jr., was canceled before the rest of Season 1 could be filmed.
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