Here is the no. 1 reason why TBS canceled Lopez Tonight: Nobody watched it. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much: Recently the show was pulling in a mere 400,000 viewers a night — or, as those in the biz call it, a “Cleveland." Even worse, the two-year-old talk show managed only a 0.2 rating among the 18- to 49-year-olds who are legally required to be referred to as “coveted” (and, most likely, aren’t just people who fell asleep during reruns of Seinfeld and left the flat screen humming).

So it’s probably not worth digging too deep here in search of conspiracy theories. It’s unfortunate that Lopez and Mo’Nique both lost their talk shows in the same week — leaving the late-night landscape whiter than Conan O’Brien in a leaky pasteurization plant — but it’s also an unfortunate coincidence. No one could survive ratings that low. Sometimes a Hollywood cigar is just a cigar — even when it happens to be a generally unfunny cigar floating in an unattended pool.

Posted at 7:00 PM