Posts Tagged ‘The CW’
The Beauty And The Beast Are The Hart Of Dixie
Friday, 26 April 2013 | Author Jessica
In news that was expected here and in few other places Beauty And The Beast has been renewed for a second season earlier today by The CW. So far there hasn’t been any word from Shaw regarding whether they will pick up the second season for Showcase.
What so few really considered when crunching the numbers was that Beauty And The Beast is actually a Canadian show. CBS made the pilot in Toronto. When it was picked up for series CBS partnered with Take 5 Productions of Toronto to make a formal international co-production. Take 5 also brought in Whizbang Films. How exactly CBS managed to make a show that qualifies as Canadian Content is a bit of a mystery but they did put all of the puzzle pieces together to achieve just that. How do we know that Beauty And The Beast is really CanCon? The licence for Showcase doesn’t allow non-Canadian programming to be shown between the hours of 7 and 10 pm ET and Beauty And The Beast is on Thursdays at 9 pm ET.
Why does it matter that Beauty And The Beast qualifies as CanCon when considering its renewal prospects? The money. CanCon carries a premium. Shaw doesn’t have a piece of the production pie. That means what Shaw pays for the rights to each episode is ‘new money’ on the books rather than money moved from one pocket to another. What exactly Shaw is paying per episode isn’t available but if CBS was wise they charged market rate for CanCon. That has the potential to off-set the lower advertising revenue the show brings in in the US.
The other reason that has been tossed around a bit more frequently is that Beauty And The Beast is the only CBS production (in any configuration) currently on The CW, which CBS co-owns with Warner.
Also renewed today for a third season is Hart Of Dixie, the small-town medical drama starring Rachel Bilson, Wilson Bethel, Scott Porter, Jaime King, and Cress Williams as Mayor Lavon Hayes. Hart Of Dixie is available in Canada on Hamilton’s CHCH and Victoria’s CHEK, the only employee-owned station in North America, as well as Chicago’s WGN, Los Angeles’ KTLA, and New York’s WPIX if your service provider offers The CW (check the movie channels bundle). CHCH and CHEK are indie stations that used to be part of the CH network and still sometimes pick up shows together which the Canadian networks pass on, such as Hart Of Dixie and the past few years of Supernatural.
The other renewals of the day include CBS’ Two And A Half Men, sans the half-man, for an 11th season. Ashton Kutcher and Jon Cryer have signed on for another year but Angus T. Jones has not. Beyond that there are the NBC renewals of Revolution, Chicago Fire, Parenthood, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Grimm for 22 episodes each.
Posted in General | 
Tags: Beauty And The Beast, Canadian, CBS, Chicago Fire, Grimm, Hart Of Dixie, NBC, Parenthood, Revolution, Showcase, The CW | No Comments »
The L.A. Complex – how low will it go?
Friday, 13 July 2012 | Author Jessica
Season 2 of MuchMusic’s “hit” series The L.A. Complex premieres in 4 days, 17 July 2012, on Much and will be simulcast on The CW in the US. But why it is coming back is a bit of a mystery.
When broadcast on MuchMusic in January and February 2012 the first season had 269000 viewers, total. As in the sum of the viewers for the six episodes came up to just over a quarter-million. The average is 44833 per episode. The fifth had a mind-boggling low 16000 and the season finale a mere 22000. Even on Canadian cable those numbers equal cancellation. And yet it was renewed.
The premiere date for season 2 has bounced around a bit – 13th, 24th, 19th – and has now settled on 17th at 9pm et. MuchMusic will repeat the episode at 10pm pt while west coast stations of The CW will have it at 9pm pt.
One regular commenter over at TVBTN, Richard Steven Hack, who is usually well informed, was a little snobby on 24 May when he wrote:
If the first season only had 6 episodes, I’d call it semantics – or spin – to call an additional 13 episodes “season two”. It’s more like a “back nine”…
But of course the CW has to spin it as “season two” to make the horrible ratings for “season one” look better.
American arrogance permeates throughout his comment. Not everything everywhere in the world has to have 22 episodes to be a season. The first season has 6 episodes. They were made in 2011. The second season has 13 episodes which are being made in 2012. No spin to it. It is not a “back nine”, which would be more appropriately called a “back thirteen” but i guess he couldn’t count or felt to apply American terminology to non-American content even though it didn’t add up. The one thing he did get right is that the ratings in the US were horrible, but only half as bad as what they are in Canada.
One of the cast members posted a note on Facebook addressing some of the rumours and speculation and the assertions from the guys who run TVBTN who said The L.A. Complex was cancelled because it wasn’t on The CW’s fall schedule.
Ok here we go….Season 2 of THE L.A. COMPLEX starts airing in JULY!!! 13 new episodes will air on MUCH MUSIC (in Canada) and on THE CW (in the U.S.) SIMULTANEOUSLY!!! So despite the recent rumors, the show HAS NOT been cancelled by the CW – the only reason it doesn’t show up on their fall roster is because it’s a summer NOT fall show duhhhhh!! Keep supporting, TUNE IN, and enjoy!!
It is so much more fun when someone directly involved with a show calls Bill at TVBTN out on a gross erroneous assumption he proclaimed as fact. With The CW not premiering their fall schedule until October it leaves room for all 13 episodes of season 2 of The L.A. Complex to be shown. And that means some of the episodes will be shown in the US during the in-season (September – May). So much for Bill’s “it will never be seen in the US again during the regular broadcast season” being accurate. It would be even more fun if this show were not such a ratings failure everywhere. This week’s repeat of the season finale on The CW had 450000 viewers and a 0.2/0 rating/share in the 18-49 demographic. Ouchies.
Is the show really that bad? No. It just isn’t a glammed-up, life is a wonderful bliss in LA that Americans are used to with shows like 90210. Are its ratings that bad? Yes. The show will be on after Pretty Little Liars and what did Pretty Little Liars have for its episode on 26 June? Well it had 134000 viewers, or about 3x that of the season 1 average of The L.A. Complex. The series premiere had 351000 viewers for the simulcast on CTV which sounds impressive until you remember Flashpoint normally does 4-5x that for a new episode.
On the up-side Jewel Staite will be back on our screens soon. On the strange-side veteran actor Alan Thicke joins the show for season 2 as a hard-headed actor-director-producer named Donald Gallagher. Trying to appeal to tweens and their grandparents are they?
Thoughts on the 2011-12 schedule
Thursday, 2 June 2011 | Author Jessica
With the CHCH schedule now available it seems time to take a look at what is going to be on tv this autumn. The most obvious is the proliferation of movies in prime time on Saturdays. A and Citytv used to have movies more frequently. CHCH is still a predominately news & movies channel so that would be expected from them.
Citytv used to be the home of Canadian programming that was good enough to make it in the USA. Battlestar Galactica, the Stargate franchise, The Collector, and a lot of movies. For 2011-12 Citytv has gone the route of CTV and bought rights to as much American programming as they could. They got a lot of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General | Tags: ABC, CBC, CBS, CHCH, Citytv, CRTC, CTV, CTV two, fall schedule, Flashpoint, FOX, Global, InSecurity, Murdoch Mysteries, NBC, Revenge, The CW, The Listener, The New Girl | 2 Comments »
Dawn Does It Right – must be a blue moon
Wednesday, 27 April 2011 | Author Jessica
None of them are really crime dramas and only one of them is a scripted show carried over from The WB but Dawn Ostroff, the out-going boss at The CW, has renewed five of her favourite shows. America’s Next Top Model, gossip girl, 90210, Vampire Diaries, and Supernatural will all be back on your local station of The CW this coming autumn.
All i can say is thank god she didn’t renew Shedding For The Wedding.
Shows not getting not-that-early renewal are Nikita, the poorly constructed remake of the cult classic movie and 1990s tv series , One Tree Hill, the other carry-over from The WB that is still on television, and Hellcats, the rookie cheerleader show.
Where the problem in this lies is that Dawn Ostroff still apparently will be picking the shows that are new for the 2011-12 season before her resignation takes effect and if every other season is any indication she is going to pick some colossal failures that she thinks will appeal to young women but will really only be of interest to horny guys who want fierce women. Can you say Nikita ? Seriously, that has got to be the most grossly miscalculated move she has made in the last two years. Yes, only the last two years. Dawn Ostroff has fucked up a hell of a lot in her time as the big boss of UPN and then at The CW. Somehow she had a better record when she ran the cable channel Lifetime.
Some of Dawn’s biggest mistakes:
Posted in CBC shows, CBS shows, FOX shows, WB shows | Tags: 18 to Life, 7th Heaven, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Enterprise, Kevin Hill, renewed, Smallville, The CW, UPN, vampire Diaries, Veronica Mars | 1 Comment »
