14 Celebrity Talk Shows That Died on the Vine
We’ve been good; we deserve a reboot of Late World With Zach Galifianakis.
2013: ‘Kris’
Normally, even a single-season bomb of a talk show has a run of over 100 episodes. Kris Kardashian’s lasted ten, one of which was marred by an appearance by her son-in-law, Kanye West.
2012: ‘Bethenny’
She’s dabbled in every other endeavor that has the potential to make a moderately famous person moderately wealthy, so why not give Bethenny Frankel her own daytime talk show? That was ostensibly Ellen’s thought when she co-created this one-season meh-fest.
2012: ‘The New Ricki Lake Show’
Her long-awaited foray back into daytime television landed with a thud, despite her being hailed as the successor to Oprah.
2008: ‘The Bonnie Hunt Show’
Despite raking in a Gracie Award for Best Talk Show in 2009, it didn’t last past its second season.
2004: ‘McEnroe’
Pottymouthed tennis star John McEnroe yapped his way into the host’s chair at CNBC in 2004, but his ratings tanked week after week, with four episodes scoring an impressive 0.0 Nielsen rating. It was eventually replaced by the future pop-culture juggernaut The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.
2003: ‘The Orlando Jones Show’
In 1999, Orlando Jones began starring in a series of 7 Up ads where he wore a shirt that said “Make 7” on the front, and “Up Yours” on the back. The commercials (and the shirts, sold at Spencer Gifts) were wildly popular, and led to opportunities like 2003’s short-lived and Wikipedia-less The Orlando Jones Show.
2002: ‘The Caroline Rhea Show’
Canadian actress Caroline Rhea was anointed the successor to Rosie O’Donnell, having hosted the last few weeks of The Rosie O’Donnell Show. When a bloc of ABC-owned stations chose to air The Wayne Brady Show instead, she was cut off from a huge chunk of her audience, and she was never given a second season.
2002: ‘Late World With Zach Galifianakis’
On paper, this show can’t lose: A beardless Galifianakis did a topical, piano-laden monologue, a couple of sketches and a few fake celebrity interviews, before kicking it over to a guest and a musician. In reality, the world wasn’t yet ready for his brand of humor in 2002, and it was canceled after nine weeks.
1995: ‘The Tempestt Bledsoe Show’
After Vanessa Huxtable grew up, Columbia/Tri-Star tried to turn her into the next Ricki Lake. One critic described the attempt thusly: “She didn’t have the white-trash appeal of Jerry Springer, the controversy of Rush Limbaugh, the sensationalism of Ricky Lake , the hard-hitting edge of Geraldo, the red glasses of Sally Jesse Raphael, or the Oprahness of Oprah.”
1995: ‘Carnie!’
Singer Carnie Wilson was one of several first-timers who had talk shows premiere in 1995, when studios were looking for their own Ricki Lakes and Jerry Springers. Hers performed the best of the bunch, but was still pulled halfway through the first season.
1995: ‘Gabrielle’
Beverly Hills, 90210 star Gabrielle Carteris was getting tired of her massive success in the drama department, and told the studio she wanted a career change. They swapped her from main cast to guest star, and gave her her own talk show. It didn’t make it past one season.
1993: ‘The Jon Stewart Show’
It kicked off as a 30-minute MTV show in 1993, to so-so reviews. Because of Arsenio Hall’s retirement and various corporate acquisitions, Stewart was given a golden opportunity to turn it into a completely different, 60-minute show the following year. That was received with even more “eh”s, and it was canceled the following year.
1993: ‘The Chevy Chase Show’
He tried to bring his SNL stuff to a talk show studio, doing out-of-place physical comedy and pleading with the audience when they didn’t give him Studio 8H-style laughs. A critic said he was “nervous and totally at sea, Chase tried everything, succeeded at nothing.”
1992: ‘The Dennis Miller Show’
He didn’t want to be “a faceless, selfless conduit of information” or an overly-enthusiastic Jimmy Fallon type, which is fair, but the middle ground he found was just kind of lightly roasting his guests. That made high-profile celebrities hard to book, and it only lasted one season.