James Hibberd reports that Reaper will be coming back on March 3, two weeks sooner than originally planned. Reaper is also flip-flopping time slots with 90210. Originally Reaper was to air at 9pm on Tuesdays after 90210, but now it will air at 8pm before 90210.
The Privileged season finale is being moved up to February 24th to accommodate the earlier start date for Reaper. There won’t be fewer new episodes of Privileged as a result, just fewer repeat airings.
Reaper, which now appears the sacrificial lamb laid out in front of American Idol at 8pm on Tuesdays to help spare 90210 (in a move surely to annoy more than a few Reaper fans) will air its 13 episodes straight through without reruns.
I think this is wrong … They are only doing this to try to protect 90210. I mean really why is that fair. When Reaper has lower then expected ratings they’ll blame the show rather then the fact that they put it against American Idol.
Or it’ll do great and then they’ll talk about how they always had faith in the show and trusted it against American idol. They are such hypocrites like that.
Well, clearly CW wants 90210 to live and are indifferent/resigned to Privileged’s fate.
Reaper seems damned (pun intended) either way – instead of going up against Fringe (who likely share much of the same audience), it goes up against AI (who may not overlap that much). The quandary being, if Reaper’s audience watches the show instead of AI, the CW doesn’t want them. (In any case, not burning episodes into June has to be viewed as a net positive.)
And again, there is the question of why Moonves even continues to fund the CW turkey. Turn one of their many cable networks into a broad demographic channel for airing original programming (such as FX or USA), or, if they want to keep their focus on youth, air original scripted shows on MTV one/two hours on weeknights. Surely there are cheaper ways to train new executives than the CW.
This is called “protecting your ass.” Pressure was put on Dawn to ditch PRIVILEGED and get REAPER back quicker (since REAPER had done better). She was pressured to bring back REAPER. Now she shows “See, I was right” by putting it up against AMERICAN IDOL. The problem here is I think it will still do better than PRIVILEGED, and 90210 will continue to lose viewers.
If REAPER does decent there will be a lot of pressure from the Warners side for a REAPER/SUPERNATURAL Tuesday next fall while a DC night takes over Thursdays (if SMALLVILLE is renewed, it is looking like Welling is about to get rich) as they’re real serious about developing a new DC comics based TV show.
The only thing that I think will save Reaper is if it can pull about 2.5 million audience against Idol. Especially since CW has to program Sunday nights and there is a high percentage chance that within the next two seasons they will lose their top three scripted shows since I don’t see Smallville going past season 9 and I don’t see One Tree Hill past season 7 and Supernatural has a five year plan.
The CW needs to show patience with a show like Reaper and even Privileged because the 2010 – 2011 CW Season could have alot of holes to fill.
I think Reaper can do that Eric. Wasn’t it doing around those numbers last season?
Darius, it averaged 2.66M viewers last season. So 2.5 would be a drop. I’m expecting 2.2. Still better than PRIVILEGED. If it keeps last year’s numbers it will end up being one of their top shows.
Even if it pulls low 2 million I still think it’ll come back. The CW just needs to give more chances with their veteren shows ready to retire soon.
Well from the people I’ve talked to, Dawn actually needs REAPER to do well to keep her job. She isn’t throwing it under the bus, she’s hoping it saves her ass. Her thinking was that 90210 numbers were up in DVR because the people were watching AMERICAN IDOL. So by moving the show back an hour she is hoping to get better numbers for 90210. She also doesn’t think the REAPER fanbase will be watching AMERICAN IDOL and is hoping for 2M+ from REAPER and an increase for 90210 making Tuesday Night no longer look so bleak.
The ready why CW wants to protect 90210 is because they want to build on the 18-34 females, and ABC Family really has given them a run for the money. ABC Family is going to do great even if they can’t the monkey (Pat Robertson) that used to own ABCF off their back.
The CW could use Reaper for when Smallville eventually ends. To some extent, its compatible with Supernatural. Anyway this is great news. Reaper gets moved up so it can air all 13 episodes and Priviliged can die a little earlier than expected.
I think that the majority of Reaper fans are NOT also American Idol fans. I read that they are looking at Reaper to take the place of Smallville with Supernatural on the Thursday line up which will make more sense for the show. But that’s not until next fall and we reaper fans have proved to be DIE hard! So bring it back!! Bring it NOW!!! Put it up against American Idol! No one I know who likes Reaper as much as I do gives 2 shhh’s about Idol. And I’m a singer/songwriter(content to a be an open mic rocker even if in my own head thank you)…..who doesn’t give 2 shhh’s about the exploited search for a manufactured ‘artist’ to further the mass production of soulless formulated music figure headed by naive puppet performers. And to all those who want to be ‘discovered’, DO something that’s worth discovering.
Love the debate here at at our site about whether this is good for Reaper or not. Happy to see people here who are hoping it’s a plus! Yeah, we’re proud to say we who love Reaper don’t watch American Idol.