Update: Variety reports that CW was able to wrangle out of the deal a bit earlier than expected because MRC hadn’t been paying its bills on time.
We knew that the CW selling off its Sunday night bandwidth to Media Rights Capital (MRC) wasn’t working. And we knew it fairly immediately. In Harms Way, Valentine and Easy Money never got any traction with viewers.
What we didn’t know was how long it would be before the CW took back over Sunday nights (we’d heard MRC was only on the hook for 13 episodes of the shows). Now we know. The CW is taking over again and will air, at least temporarily instead: Everybody Hates Chris and The Game reruns from 5p-6p, reruns of The Drew Carey Show from 6p-7pm, reruns of Jericho from 7p-8p and a movie from 8p-10p beginning November 30.
MRC will air its lineup one last time this Sunday, November 23.
In a letter from CW COO John D. Maatta to local CW affiliates which included the temporary schedule he wrote:
Our Affiliate Relations and Affiliate Marketing teams will be in immediate touch with your personnel regarding this important schedule change.
We will continue to work diligently and find success via the best means possible and move quickly to shore up troubled timeslots. We will continue to invest in new programming that will evolve into valued primetime assets for you, our affiliates, and our parent companies, CBS and Warner Bros.
We appreciate the partnership we have with you, our affiliates, and we will continue to work closely to take our success to the next level.
James Hibberd has the full-text of the letter available on the live feed blog.
Jericho repeats?
The peanuts worked!
I eagerly await the results for Jericho. Just because.
Wait, seriously? Jericho?
The show that just wouldn’t die… JERICHO.
Can MOONLIGHT be far behind :/
Very nice move from CW – Yay, Jericho!
In case you haven’t noticed, The CW will be airing *repeats* of Jericho XD
Just to be different, yay Drew Carey show! How about some Whose Line?
Chmarin: I had noticed, since there is no other kind of Jericho to air. But, I was negligent in not pointing that out since I did for EHC, The Game and Drew Carey. I’ve added the clarification.
Whose Line is something ABC should bring back.
Maybe repeats of THE GAME !!!! YEA CW
Were’d people get Jerricho repeats from?
Fin, in case you weren’t being sarcastic, at the link above in the post. Here’s another link if you want a different source:
http://mobile.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6616448.html
thanks
So, what happens to Bob Saget’s Surviving Suburbia now?
However airing JERICHO season 1 on the CW is an interesting move. The show just won’t die. I mean theoretically it could pull in 2.5M to 3M people per episode and be resurrected again. I don’t think it can pull those numbers, but if it did the idea would be there.
Also you can tell this news came from the parent company vs. Dawn. Just another sign.
WOW….Replace three dead shows with repeats of a show that died twice. Who the hell is running the CW, seriously?
Not that I wasn’t a fan of Jericho.
was Jericho originally on the CW (I don’t know)? 2.5-3m on the CW would be pretty big: expecially for a repeat. Like 5 times what the others had.
fin, it was a CBS show that for awhile was pulling in over 10 million viewers. The show has a rabid fan base and if they do tune in they could once again resurrect the show.
Well, they’ll certainly get more viewers with repeats of Jericho and Drew Carey than the MRC programs were getting. But then, airing a test pattern for two hours might’ve gotten more viewers, too.
Nick, if you want to turn around and reinvest the $10,000 DirtySexyJ owes you, I’ll bet that nothing can resurrect Jericho as a series (I’m not opining on a direct to video/tv movie).
It could do FIVE million on the CW in reruns, and CBS will still say, “Ummmmm, NO!”
Of course at Sunday at 7pm there’s no chance of that happening on the CW, but it could still outperform the entire MRC block, combined
Do you think CW could afford Jericho if it were pulling in 3 million? I mean, if it pulled 6 million, I could see it being worth it, but I’m not sure about 3.
I hear that in one of the Jericho episodes the radiation transforms one of the characters into a vampire! He then goes around solving post-apocalyptic crimes,
they call it “Moonlight over Jericho”. The show also features a bad tempered meerkat chef and a talking car.
I just wanted to see if my avatar worked. Ciao!
If they are showing Jericho from the beginning, I will at least tune in because I’ve never seen it before and have wondered what the hype is about.
I’d watch it. Ciao!
Robert, if it was to be resurrected it would be as a CW show, not a CBS show. I don’t see it pulling in the numbers needed, but it is a possibility if the numbers were high.
Julia, sure they could. They’d mess with the budget, but it could do well on CW if it was pulling SUPERNATURAL numbers.
I just agree with Robert that the chances are slim for those types of numbers on Sunday on the CW. Then again if their fans are rabid enough online I’m sure they can whip up some decent numbers.
ZERO chance it will be resurrected as a CW first run scripted show. while Dawn Ostroff is running the CW, it’s not possible. I don’t think Dawn is going anywhere anytime soon either. Though the possibility of that is much greater than the return of Jericho.
Wouldn’t you think that the cast and other talent behind Jericho made contractual commitments to other projects by now?
I found this interesting
It’s believed the CW was able to legally yank MRC off the night earlier than contractually possible because it hadn’t been fully paid
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117996223.htm
thank for the link cool. I am not surprised, I’d seen somewhere else that MRC was having difficulty with credit.
Robert, I’ve been hearing for a few weeks that Dawn’s job was in jeopardy since she was unable to take advantage of ANTM and the fact that her only success has been GOSSIP GIRL while she has left a wake of mistakes behind her.
Woohoo Jericho reruns! And that was not sarcastic – I take the DVD’s with me any time I travel on business. If I could afford it, I’d have bought an HDTV and sprung for the HD DVR on DirecTV, so that I could watch repeats on Universal HD. Now I don’t have to do that – repeats on CW will suit me just fine!
Nick C, as much as I wish otherwise, I doubt the CW could afford to resurrect the original series with original cast. If the repeats do well enough, it is conceivable they could try and swing some sort of spinoff – perhaps focused on the teen characters. It could be a post-apocalyptic 90210
.
Odd timing that the CBS “Jericho” message board was just taken down within the past couple of days – coincidence?
I do hold out hope, in my own Quixotic world, that these repeats will garner enough interest for CBS/Paramount to find a BUYER for the serie. Perhaps NBC Universal (home to NBC, UHD, and Sci-Fi) /DirecTV or cable outlet could arrange an FNL-style sharing deal? I’d settle for a feature film or TV movie with original cast though
Clutz, it is highly unlikely, but a possibility. I’d put it at about a 1% chance. Then again if the JERICHO fans show up in numbers of around 3 million it’s a sure thing that the CW would have to think about it.
I’m sure some of the talent would have moved on. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t come back or be replaced by someone else.
This is TV we’re talking out. I mean we had replacement Dukes.
I know Lennie James (Hawkins) has had a couple of projects going. Sprague Grayden (Heather) had a guest/recurring (?) role on Sons of Anarchy, I think? Pamela Reed (Gail Green) and Richard Speight Jr. (Bill) have probably been busy on the SAG board. I remember reading something about them heading some new, more “reasonable” wind of SAG.
It would be pricey to bring back some of these folks, but not necessarily all. Another spinoff (besides the teens) could be the military angle, if the next owners can afford Esai Morales. Heck, too bad they killed off D.B. Sweeney
Jericho brings huge Rating’s potential season 3 to CW – I read some of their Sunday shows had 200,000 to 500,000 viewers.
This is huge, another major Network picked up Jericho. Not to mention UHD/NBC universal has been airing Jericho daily for three months and through end of year.
Just want to get the record straight, Jericho was brought back a second time to die, it did not die twice. The second season was egregiously mishandled.
Thank you.
moonlightfan, I somewhat agree with you – I think the second (short!) season was brought back by CBS with full intention of wrapping things up. I may disagree with plenty of people on the idea that they purposely wrote a bad story – I liked it! But I think the budget cuts, rush of cramming a season into seven hours, and shooting two endings do look like a endgame in hindsight.
WILL JERICHO START AIRING FROM SEASON 1?
Jericho being aired at CW, For all those whom have never seen this show ”CAUTION” it is addicting, will leave you wanting more.
YEAH! Jericho rerunning on CW!!! My family and I will be there watching! Will it give us another season or movie??? I hope so! THANK YOU CW and thank you for the wonderful article! I can’t wait till November 30 now…..
Jalen – no confirmation other than one radio report – Jericho is supposedly going to run from Season 1, Episode 1, in order. I sure hope that’s how they do it!
I am so excited to hear that CW is showing reruns of Jericho on Sunday nights. Since I don’t have HD this is great. I and my family are so looking forward to this. I hope this new home for Jericho leads to a season 3. Thank you CW. Your The Best.
“[Jericho] could do FIVE million on the CW in reruns, and CBS will still say, ‘Ummmmm, NO!’ ”
Then they’re idiots, Robert. Or else cutting off their nose to spite their own face…er, eye.
If Jericho does 5-6 million which is impossible a network might pick them up for a short season 3.
If it does 1.5-2 million then CW has a success.
The true test will be after the football season
Just when the Moonlight fans quieted down, the Jericho fans are back in style.
MRC had a shot a Moonlight when it was being shopped around, but passed, and that was probably a good thing in retrospect. Moonlight is already reportedly going to air on Scifi in January.
Julia, I believe it’s related to the balance of the TV universe, fans abhor a vacuum and as the fans of Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone and Dirty Sexy Money depart, the fans of Jericho rush in to fill the void.
I loved Jericho, but I highly doubt it’ll ever come back. It would be nice, but I’m kinda over it. I do however, hope that the ratings are good enough to have the networks start showing reruns in the summer. I don’t want to watch a bunch of reality and game shows. I want to watch my favorite shows, even in reruns. And that’s how I started watching Buffy so long ago. Before season 3 started, the had reruns every Monday and Tuesday night and I was able to catch up and start watching that fall. Right now they only have reruns of the biggest shows, which in my opinion aren’t always the best.
Julia I protest, since when have I quieted doen O_O
Anyway, I think the whole motto here is “cheap ‘ting no good” I believe if MRC were to find some success with there other shows on other nets, it could prove that maybe CW just made the wrong choices in programmes. I wonder how the decision to choose Valentine and In Harm’s Way were made? Was it Ostroff’s final decision. I mean MRC couldn’t have just come in and decided on their own to place in such good timeslots such bad programmes.
And they looked really really cheap to create.
The problem with shows being brought back to life or given a second go is that not many nets are willing to spare the extra dough to get it back on track.
Woo hoo! Drew Carey!
I can see Jericho being brought back for a potential movie or maybe a mini-series on The CW if repeats do well. Apparently there is intrest in the show otherwise CBS wouldn’t have given syndication right to The CW. There could be a very distant chance that it could get a third season but on a smaller budget than it would have being a CBS show.
Also CBS should look into acquiring maybe one or two Canadian shows for The CW. I mean after Flashpoint performed well I don’t see why they won’t look into it. CBS should look into getting the rights to CBC’s The Border or Global’s The Guard. Granted the two don’t fit into CW’s female demographic but they would perform well on The CW I think.
The only shows I ever watched in my life , were Buffy and Moonlight . Buffy was a wonderful experience , following buffy , willows and the rest of the gang for so many seasons , watching them grow , deal with new things in their lives , and then the wonderful ending . I remember all of that with a big smile . The only next show i watched was Moonlight , and the experience was nasty , with the cancelation and everything. And now I realize TV these days suck big time . Shows are canceled in a nanosecond leaving viewers with no ending in their stories. I know they did the same with jericho…And then they put money in shows like all the ones of MRC now canceled or The Ex List for nothing. They waste money and viewers are crashed , who wins here?? Why wouldn’t CW take Jericho or Moonlight when they were canceled that had enough viewers for them , making viewers happy instead of trying new shows for nothing?? I am so happy we just watch cable now.
Paula:
…what?!
Jericho reruns are about all CW can afford. Anyone thinking CW will produce new episodes of Jericho is not playing with a full deck. New Jericho episodes are about as likely as CW making new episodes of Drew Carey.
As for someone expecting Jericho reruns getting 5-6 million viewers, thats not realistic as thats what brand new episodes of Season 2 got. When they aired reruns on CBS (the summer of 2007) they were lucky to get 3 million viewers and thats when the show still had coming Season 2 buzz going for it.
Its likely that Jericho will beat the current CW lineoup, but 750,000 is not hard to do. My guess for Jericho reruns – 1.7 million viewers for Season 1 and maybe 1 million for Season 2 episodes. As reruns costs little to air (it belongs to parent company CBS) odds are it will remain in place unless the ratings fall under 1 million right away, in which case they will stick something else in that time slot. Throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks sort of deal.
I’m with “Joe Cool” down the line…
isn’t Jericho in Sci Fi now?
I wonder how many viewers is getting?