Nineteen years after he walked away from late night, Arsenio Hall walked back in. The Arsenio Hall Show returned on September 9, 2013, as a syndicated hour from CBS Television Distribution, with Tribune Broadcasting’s stations as its anchor group. It was the payoff to the comeback he started mapping out after winning The Celebrity Apprentice in 2012.
The premiere leaned into history. The cold open put Hall on a therapist’s couch, worrying about staying No. 1, before the camera revealed Jay Leno in the chair, the same Leno whose Tonight Show Hall had once battled. Chris Tucker came out and danced with him, and Paula Abdul popped up as a surprise. Magic Johnson and Ice Cube were among the guests booked for that first week.
Early numbers looked like a vindication. Preliminary Nielsen figures for opening night gave the show a 1.0 rating among adults 18–49, ahead of Kimmel, Letterman and Leno that night, helped by an 11 p.m. slot in big markets like New York that started half an hour before the network shows.
The glow didn’t last. Ratings slid sharply over the following months, and although the show was renewed for a second season in February 2014, CBS Television Distribution reversed course and cancelled it on May 30, 2014, saying the audience hadn’t grown enough. The last episode had already aired on May 21.
Our take
On a late-night landscape that in 2013 was almost entirely white men in suits, a Black host with his own hour and his own crowd mattered, and the first week proved the appetite was real. What sank the revival was less Hall than the math: a syndicated show fighting local news and three network giants, just as late-night viewing was moving to YouTube clips. It’s worth remembering as the last time a Black comedian got a full-scale shot at a traditional late-night franchise. Since then, the doors have mostly opened online.
Sources: BroadwayWorld, MediaPost, The Hollywood Reporter, UPI, Wikipedia
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