Yahoo Finance Ellen DeGeneres ending her chatshow because it's not "a challenge"
Ellen DeGeneres has announced that she will be ending her 61-time Daytime Emmy Award-winning talkshow after nearly 20 years.
Ellen confirmed the major TV news during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, where she admitted she was no longer satisfied professionally on the show.
"When you’re a creative person, you constantly need to be challenged — and as great as this show is, and as fun as it is, it’s just not a challenge anymore," she explained.
As it stands, The Ellen DeGeneres Show will return for its 19th season this autumn, but that will serve as a swansong for the series.
The comedian is set to further discuss her decision during Thursday's (May 13) episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show in an interview with fellow talkshow icon Oprah Winfrey.
In the meantime, Mike Darnell of the show's production company Warner Bros TV said: "Although all good things must come to an end, you still have hope that truly great things never will… Ellen was and is an indelible piece of the television landscape, and it will be sorely missed."
DeGeneres also denied that her decision to walk away from daytime TV was motivated by the controversy last year over some current and former staff publicly complaining of a toxic workplace.
Although DeGeneres publicly apologised on air to those staff members who'd complained and acknowledged "things happened here that never should have happened", viewership took a hit.
When The Ellen DeGeneres Show returned last autumn, the audience dropped a steep 37% from the same premiere week the previous year.
The Ellen DeGeneres Show had dominated the US daytime landscape since Oprah Winfrey ended her own talkshow in 2011, but ratings have declined in recent years.
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