Wanda Sykes Likely Gone From Saturday Nights

Bad news for fans of comics that skewer current events with frightening precision: it’s starting to look like Fox won’t be bringing back the Wanda Sykes Show on Saturday nights.  Even with celebrity panel discussions and booze too, the hour-long talk show failed to find an audience up against Saturday Night Live before the end of its first season.  Her show also performed poorly with the coveted 18-49 demographic. 

Fox has not released an official statement, but one producer told us, “Her show was typically spot on in lampooning current events - maybe too spot on though.  I can only pray the Pope doesn't have satellite.  Anyway, you just can’t expect viewers to use their brains at 11 o’clock on a Saturday.  People want mindless entertainment at that time of night as the success of the competition proves.  It's possible that if we had as much booze as they have in the fourth hour of "The Today Show," things might have been different.   But Wanda probably belongs on cable, like Bill Maher.  And remember, this is Fox - and we’re talking about a woman who said she’d be okay if Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys failed when she hosted the White House Correspondents dinner.”

Very surprisingly, considering Sykes’ show was more informative than entertaining, it did very well with teens.  Perhaps the reason was the youngsters were sober enough to get all of Wanda’s jokes, but too sober to enjoy SNL?