Ed the Sock – puppet star of Canada’s longest running comedy series – is about to go off the air.

Ed The Sock – arguably the most popular puppet in Canada and the star of our longest-running comedy series here in the Great White North – airs his last episode at the end of August. His cancellation is just one of many changes initiated since Rogers Communications (sort of the Canadian equivalent of AOL/Time Warner) bought out City-TV, which airs Ed’s late night comedy show Ed & Red’s Night Party.

Ed started out sixteen years ago hosting Ed’s Night Party (Red would be added to the act years later) on public access TV in Toronto. He quickly developed a cult following and his show was picked up by City-TV locally and syndicated internationally two years later. The show is legendary in Toronto and regularly beats American talk shows like Letterman and Leno in the ratings here. Ed has also been a VJ and personality on MuchMusic (sort of the the Canadian equivalent of MTV) and frequently hosts a worst-of-the-year music video show on Much called Fromage (see previous post).

While Ed might be gone from City-TV, his creator/puppeteer Stephen Kerzner still has a lot of plans for the country’s most famous piece of hosiery. He’s retained all the rights to the character and there is already talk of developing new shows for Ed and Liana K (Kerzner’s wife and Ed’s co-host “Red”). An Ed the Sock movie is also rumoured to be in the works.

I think someone said it best in a comment on the Globe and Mail web site, “only in Canada could a sock carry a show for 16 years.”