Two shows that
syndicators were shopping for 2010 are officially out of the running: Warner
Bros.' MomLogic and Twentieth's Dog Whisperer.
First-run
talker MomLogic, which will remain in development for a potential 2011
launch, could not secure a major-market launch group after Fox decided to renew
Debmar-Mercury's Wendy Williams for two more years and pick up CBS
Television Distribution's Swift Justice withNancy Grace, and NBC
decided to pass. Other potential launch groups - Tribune, ABC and CBS - were
already full. Warner Bros. did have the show cleared in many markets, with many
stations bullish about it, but without New
York, in particular, Warner Bros. was unable to get
it cleared nationwide.
Twentieth,
meanwhile, found that not enough stations were interested in the off-Discovery Dog
Whisperer because it didn't fit into typical daytime line-ups of talk and
court shows, according to sources.
As for the
other off-cable shows that syndicators are selling as strips, only one is a
firm go thus far: NBC Universal's The Real Housewives. Debmar-Mercury
and MGM both expect E! True Hollywood Stories and Discovery's Cash
Cab to end up on stations in syndication, although not necessarily as
strips in all cases.
While selling
non-fiction off-cable shows to cash-strapped TV stations for all barter seemed
like a good idea in this difficult economy because the shows are generally
cheap, abundant and already paid for, many stations felt they didn't want to
take their programming in that direction.
"That's not
really a place we wanted to be," said one station executive. "To me, that's
about someone else's brand. And not one of these shows has ever come off cable
and worked."
