NEW YORK: Emmy-award winning actor Alec Baldwin’s late-night talk show on cable TV news network MSNBC has been cancelled, the network said on Tuesday.
The talk show, Up Late with Alec Baldwin, was suspended earlier this month after a controversy involving its star. The actor was forced to apologise for comments he made to a New York photographer, which a gay rights group described as homophobic.
“We are jointly confirming that Up Late will not continue on MSNBC,” the network and Baldwin’s representative Matthew Hiltzik in a joint statement.
“This is a mutual parting and we wish Alec all the best,” MSNBC added.
The show’s viewership fell 40% from the 654,000 who watched its premier in mid-October to 395,000 when it was suspended in mid-November, according to Nielsen ratings compiled by Horizon Media.
In a video posted on celebrity website tmz.com, Baldwin is shown confronting the photographer on a New York street and uses a homophobic slur that drew the ire of gay rights group GLAAD, which has previously defended the actor when he was accused of homophobic language.
Baldwin, who has had many confrontations with photographers and reporters, also came under fire in June for homophobic tweets aimed at a reporter for Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 28th, 2013.
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