ELLEN’S LAST STAND
Talk show's final season hits return
IT’S the end of the road — but it’s apparently been a highly generous journey.
“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” unveiled a promo video for its 19th and final season, which premieres Monday, Sept. 13. The promo touts that “Ellen” has doled out a staggering amount in its famous charitable giveaways over the years: nearly a half-billion dollars in total.
The trailer also highlights the show’s on-air accomplishments in the years since its launch in 2003, including 4,000 celebrity guests — and A-listers like Michelle Obama, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney.
In the lead-up to the “Ellen” show’s end, the embattled comedian has faced several scandals, including allegations that “Ellen” has a toxic workplace environment behind the scenes
— a bombshell that made the boundary-breaking comedian seem like a hypocrite for her “be kind” catchphrase. In an explosive Buzzfeed report in July 2020, former staffers raised allegations of racism behind the scenes and allegations of sexual misconduct from producers, resulting in an investigation from Warner Media and three producers getting ousted from the show last August.
It’s all a far cry from where her public image first began in the 1990s, as an underdog and an LGBTQ pioneer, after coming out in April 1997 on the cover of Time magazine with the headline: “Yep, I’m Gay.” She followed that several weeks later with an episode of her ABC sitcom, “Ellen,” in which her character, Ellen Morgan, also came out as gay.
In May, when news broke that “Ellen” was ending, sources told The Post that her contract was up in 2022 regardless, and her official reason for the end of “Ellen” is that it’s “not a challenge anymore.” “As you may have heard, this summer there were allegations of a toxic work environment at our show and then there was an investigation,” DeGeneres said in a Season 18 monologue. “I take that very seriously and I want to say I am so sorry to the people that were affected … I take responsibility for what happens at my show.”
The end of “Ellen” wasn’t exactly surprising, considering all the controversy it engendered and how those impacted the show’s viewership, which shrunk along with most of the other daytime shows in a fractured TV landscape. Last March, “Ellen” was averaging only 1.5 million daily viewers -- a drop of 1.1 million viewers, or 43 percent, from the previous season. Kelly Clarkson’s eponymous daytime talk show, which currently airs at 2 p.m. weekdays, will replace “Ellen” in the coveted 3 p.m. timeslot starting next fall.
DeGeneres, though, isn’t going anywhere in terms of television. She’ll still be both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, producing “Ellen’s Game of
Games” on NBC, “The Masked Dancer” on Fox, “Ellen’s Next Great Designer” on HBO Max and “Endangered” on discovery+, among others.