Comedy Central renews ‘@midnight’ for 2014

All those hashtag games have paid off for Comedy Central. The network announced on Friday that it’s renewing its new late-night show, “@midnight,” for another year.

The comedy game show hosted by Chris Hardwick, in which three comedians compete for points by riffing on the most interesting or absurd social media moments of the day, will return with new episodes in January. The show will mirror the production schedule of “The Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” and will have 40 weeks of new episodes in 2014.

In a statement, Kent Alterman, Comedy Central’s president of content development and original programming, said, “We’re amazed at how quickly ‘@midnight’ has resonated with our fans. If the internet catches on and social media becomes a part of pop culture, we think we’ll really have something here.”

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The series, produced by Hardwick, Serious Business, Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant and Funny or Die, was a ratings success during its initial four-week run. It was also a hit on Twitter, where the hashtag topics thrown out by Hardwick became top trending Twitter subjects for every night of the run.

In its core young male demographic, the Comedy Central lineup is now the most-watched late night programming on TV, beating the likes of Letterman, Leno, Kimmel and Conan in the demographics of adults 18-24 and males 18-34.

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