Talk won’t be the talk of syndication this fall — instead, producers are bringing out much more economical true-crime series and games to fill station slates.
In January, Warner Bros. renewed talk strip Jennifer Hudson for a third season, airing on Fox-owned stations in the country’s biggest markets. That caused Debmar-Mercury to withdraw its talk show starring Ken Jeong from the marketplace. After that, several pieces of the fall 2024 syndication puzzle fell into place.
Two new first-run shows have been cleared for launch this fall, Warner Bros.’s True Crime News and The Flip Side from CBS Media Ventures, and the potential is there for a few more shows to emerge.
True Crime News is a new version of Crime Watch Daily, a strip that Warner Bros. produced from September 2015 through June 2018. Crime Watch Daily’s watch ended when stations elected to instead pick up a less-expensive but similar format, Investigation Discovery’s True Crime Files. That show did not last long in station lineups, though, while Crime Watch Daily continued on in the form of True Crime Daily: The Podcast and the True Crime Daily website.
True Crime News will be hosted by Ana Garcia, who hosts True Crime Daily: The Podcast and contributes to ABC’s newsmagazine 20/20. True Crime News will be produced by Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Telepictures, and provide stations with 52 weeks of original programming, including breaking crime news, ripped-from-the-headlines cases and updates on stories pulled from WBD’s vault of crime footage.
Ties to Local Newsrooms
True Crime News also will work closely with local newsrooms to integrate local crime stories into episodes, using stations’ footage and reporting. That type of integration is something increasingly important to launch group Fox, which has worked collaboratively with Warner Bros. entertainment magazine Extra in some markets. For example, Fox-owned KTTV Los Angeles morning show Good Day LA and Extra partnered ahead of the 75th annual Emmys in January, producing a pre-ceremony red-carpet show at 4:30 p.m. PT on KTTV.
Along with the third-season renewal of Jennifer Hudson and the pick-up of True Crime Daily, Warner Bros. has renewed Extra for a 31st season and is shopping off-CBS sitcom Bob Loves Abishola to stations. While it looked like Warner Bros. was stepping away from first-run syndication after the studio canceled such long-running series as Judge Mathis and People’s Court and The Ellen DeGeneres Show ended in May 2022 after 19 years on the air, the studio’s recent moves indicate that Warner Bros. remains in the syndication game.
True Crime News isn’t the only new true-crime show in the offing: Trifecta is shopping Crime Stories With Nancy O’Dell, which will spend each 30-minute episode telling the story of one murder, Trifecta Entertainment president Hank Cohen said.
Trifecta also renewed iCrime with Elizabeth Vargas for a third season, Cohen said, after tweaking the show creatively, revamping the set and bringing in a new showrunner. Both iCrime and Crime Stories are executive produced by Scott Sternberg Productions, which has produced such shows as Investigation Discovery’s On the Case With Paula Zahn.
While syndicators and stations look to introduce new true-crime shows, NBCUniversal’s repackaged version of Dateline has been renewed for an eighth season while CBS’s syndicated version of 48 Hours debuted in September. Repackaging longstanding libraries and offering them to TV stations on an all-barter basis is a growing trend in syndication as TV stations face shrinking margins and less cash to spend.
Along those lines, Judge Judy Sheindlin, star of CBS Media Ventures’s Judge Judy and Amazon Freevee’s Judy Justice, is poised to compete with herself in syndication. Scott Koondel’s Sox Entertainment has cleared Judy Justice in all-barter deals in 98% of the country on such TV station groups as Nexstar Media Group, Sunbeam Television, Cox Media Group, Weigel Broadcasting and Mission Broadcasting. The show stars Sheindlin as well as her granddaughter, Sarah Rose, as her law clerk; Whitney Kumar as the court stenographer and Kevin Rasco as the bailiff. Randy Douthit, Sheindlin’s longtime executive producer on Judge Judy, executive produces Judy Justice.
Sheindlin also has launched another court show on Freevee, Tribunal Justice, which is similar to one she created for CMV, Hot Bench. Tribunal Justice, which was renewed for a second season in October, stars two of Hot Bench’s three original judges — Patricia diMango and Tanya Acker as well as Sheindlin’s son, Adam Levy. Tribunal Justice also is expected to be shopped to TV stations, potentially putting it up against Hot Bench.
Meanwhile, the CBS and Fox owned stations have renewed Judge Judy library episodes for three more seasons.
One big court entity not offering any new shows this fall is Allen Media Group, sitting out this season after launching three new court shows in September — Mathis Court with Judge Mathis, Justice for the People with Judge Milian and Equal Justice with Eboni K. Williams. Allen Media Group scooped up Judge Greg Mathis and Judge Marilyn Milian after Warner Bros. canceled Judge Mathis and People’s Court.
“We are in ongoing development discussions focused on fall 2025 and we will continue to invest heavily in linear broadcast television adding to our portfolio of 70-plus shows,” Andrew Temple, chief operating officer, broadcast sales and syndication, Allen Media Group, told B+C Multichannel News. “This year, we are focused like a laser on upgrading Funny You Should Ask, Comics Unleashed and all nine of our outstanding court-show series.”
Over on ‘The Flip Side’
While stations build up their true-crime schedules, many of them are leaning heavily on game shows. In January, the CBS-owned stations picked up The Flip Side, which is the first new syndicated series to be produced under the leadership of Wendy McMahon, president and CEO of CBS News and Stations and CMV.
The Flip Side will be hosted by Jaleel White, known for his role as Steve Urkel on Family Matters, which aired on ABC from 1989 to 1997. Since then, White, who also works as a writer, producer and comedian, has starred in Netflix’s Hustle, CBS’s Me, Myself and I and Apple TV Plus’s The Afterparty.
The Flip Side pits two teams of players against each other, testing them on how they think two different groups of people feel about the same issue. Teams choose from multiple-choice answers, and whoever reveals the best intuition regarding human behavior will find themselves richer.
Overall, game shows are popular in syndication right now, often taking the place of more expensive off-network sitcoms. The Flip Side will air on CBS’s duopoly stations in big markets, and Fox also has renewed most of its game slate for next year. That includes Pictionary, starring Jerry O’Connell; Debmar-Mercury’s People Puzzler, starring Leah Remini; 25 Words or Less, starring and executive produced by Meredith Vieira; and Person, Place or Thing, starring Melissa Peterman. Fox also renewed Dish Nation, which features radio deejays chatting about the entertainment gossip of the day, for a 13th season after doing some cost-cutting. Going away after one season is the TMZ-produced Who the Bleep Is That?
Among the major talk shows, NBCUniversal’s Kelly Clarkson and Debmar-Mercury’s Sherri, starring Sherri Shepherd, have been renewed through next season. NBCU’s newest conflict talker, Karamo, starring Karamo Brown, is expected to snag a renewal for season three. ABC’s Tamron Hall, now in season five, is awaiting word on a season-six pickup.
Meanwhile, former syndicated talk show stars are finding new homes elsewhere.
Dr. Phil McGraw, who starred in an eponymous syndicated talk show produced and distributed by CMV from 2002 to 2023, is launching Merit Street Media on February 26. Besides a primetime version of Dr. Phil, the network will feature morning and evening newscasts and a daily afternoon true-crime block anchored by a new show hosted by Nancy Grace.
Rachael Ray, whose CBS-produced show ended after last season, immediately started a production company, Free Food Studios. In late January, A+E Networks said it bought 50% of that enterprise and also ordered 278 episodes featuring Ray and other talent that will run as part of the Home.Made.Nation lifestyle programming block on A&E, FYI and other platforms. A+E Networks will distribute the content around the world. A+E Networks will distribute the shows globally.”
