@Midnight

About

@Midnight is a comedy game show which premiered on Comedy Central in 2013, and is hosted by comedian Chris Hardwick. The show has become popular online for its frequent online celebrity guests and for its hashtag games.

History

@Midnight premiered on Comedy Central on October 21st, 2013. On November 15th, 2013, the show was renewed^[7] for a second season. As of July 2014, the show has aired 110 episodes over the course of two seasons. It has been nominated for a 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Interactive Program.

Game Play

Each show is played by three celebrity guests and broken down into separate mini games, including regulars such as:

*11:59 and 59 Seconds: When the contestants react to a popular YouTube clip, the contestants are not awarded any points for this section.

*Rapid Refresh: A trivia game which asks the contestant multiple choice questions about trending stories.

*Hashtag Wars: A game which introduces a new hashtag and calls for contestants to make up examples on the spot.

*Live Challenge: Which involves contestants coming up with answers to the game during the commercial break.

*For the Win: Before this final game, the contestant in third place must leave. The contestant's answers are read blind, and the audience decides which won deserves the win.

There are also recurring games such a:

*Take Back the Nightmare: A game which let's the contestants re-name creepy children's shows.

*Juggalok Cupid: A game which asks contests to identify the real quote from a Juggalo's OkCupid account.

Online Presence

As of July 2014, the @Midnight Twitter account^[2] has gained over 260,000 followers and its Facebook page^[3] has gained over 48,000 likes. Its Instagram account^[5] has gained over 22,000 followers and its Vine account^[6] has gained over 8,000 followers. The show also has an official Tumblr blog atmidnightcc.^[4]

Cancellation

On July 18th, 2017, Deadline^[8] reported that they would air the final episode of @midnight on August 4th, 2017, cancelling the show on its 600th episode. Deadline reports that the show may have been canceled due to stagnant ratings, following a timeslot switch, moving the show up a half hour, from 12am to 11:30pm.

Comedy Central President Kent Alterman told Deadline:

"We took a big macro look and we started having conversations with Chris. We feel incredibly proud of the show, we think it’s had an amazing run. How many shows can say that they’d hit 600 episodes? It was a little bit of the audience telling us over time, and we mutually thought, ‘You know what, maybe we should walk away holding our heads high and proud, full of appreciation and gratitude.'"

@midnight host Chris Hardwick said in a statement:

"@midnight has meant the world to me these last four years It has been a dream to come to work 600 times to make inappropriate jokes about the Internet with my fellow comedian friends. I could not be more proud of this show, staff and crew and at the end of the day, I think we accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish. Spiritually it just feels like it ran its course -- I’m not sure we had many more hashtag games in us (which may actually be a relief to anyone whose Twitter feed gets overrun every night).

"I owe such a huge debt of gratitude to Comedy Central and Kent for taking a chance on the show, always being great partners and allowing us to exit mutually, which is rarely a gift you are given in this business. I will certainly miss awarding POINTS! to people nightly, so please understand if you see me randomly shouting it at strangers in public after August 4th."

That day, Chris Hardwick tweeted,^[9] "600 eps of @midnight! I'm so proud! I've nothing but gratitude for @ComedyCentral & YOU for watching/hashtagging :)" The tweet (shown below) received more than 700 retweets and 5,600 likes.

Related Memes

#RuinaChildrensBook

#RuinaChildrensBook is a hashtag game played on Twitter that involves altering or adding to the title of a classic children's book that would make the book unpleasant or distasteful. The hashtag originated from an episode of @Midnight which aired on March 24th, 2014. Within 24 hours of the episode airing the hashtag #RuinaChildrensBook^[3] was tweeted out over 126,000 times. On March 25th, The Daily Dot^[1] and Bustle^[4] published posts covering the spread of the hashtag.

#Buttflix

#Buttflix is a hashtag game which was introduced during a segment on @Midnight that aired on April 2nd, 2014. In the segment, Hardwick held a contest in which guests on the show were awarded points for listing movie titles with jokes about rear ends (shown below).

#BadPrequels

#BadPrequels is a hashtag game which asks Twitter users to create the title of a fictional prequel to a well-known film that sounds far less interesting than its original counterpart. The hashtag was introduced on @Midnight on an episodes which aired on May 6th, 2014. The idea for the hashtag was sparked by the release of the trailer for the Batman prequel Gotham. Guest comedians Scott Aukerman^[6], @Willieforcrack^[7] and James Adomain^[8] offered their #BadPrequel titles before Twitter users were called to play.

Search Interest

External References