Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore will take over the time slot being vacated by Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central announced Friday.
The Minority Report With Larry Wilmore will follow The Daily Show With Jon Stewart beginning in January 2015.
In April it was announced that Colbert, whose show The Colbert Report currently follows The Daily Show, would leave Comedy Central after his contract with the network expires at the end of this year to take over as host of CBS’ Late Show. Founding Late Show host David Letterman plans to retire from the late-night talker some time next year.
Minority Report is created by Daily Show host Jon Stewart, and will be produced by Stewart’s Busboy Productions. Stewart and Wilmore will serve as executive producers.
Wilmore joined The Daily Show in 2006 as “senior black correspondent.” He was the cocreator of the Fox’s The Bernie Mac show, for which he won a 2002 Emmy for best writing in a comedy series. Past writing credits include The PJs, which he cocreated with Eddie Murphy, as well as In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Jamie Foxx Show. He is the executive producer of comedy Black-ish, which was given a series order Thursday by ABC.
“We are thrilled to be expanding our relationship with Jon Stewart and Busboy Productions, and are looking forward to the world getting to know Larry Wilmore even better. He’s a spectacular talent in front of and behind the camera,” said Comedy Central President Michele Ganeless. “The Minority Report With Larry Wilmore follows in the Comedy Central tradition—bringing new perspectives to the day’s events and breaking ground in the world of late night television.”
Taking over Colbert’s time slot will make Wilmore one of the few hosts in late-night television to not be a white male. In the current late-night shakeup that began in April when Letterman announced his impending departure, speculation about new hosts at CBS — which has yet to replace Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson, who announced later in April that he would also be leaving CBS — and Comedy Central has included a number of comics from diverse backgrounds.
“There’s room for emerging forms of diversity in late-night television,” Lawrence Epstein, professor at Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, told B&C in April. “It may just, as so many things have in recent years, start on cable and work its way onto broadcast."
