A packed post full of items in this edition of The Grab Bag:
– Say au revoir to Swift Justice: CBS Television Distribution’s first-run courtroom strip is over and out after two years, as reported by Broadcasting & Cable last week. The series was originally presided over by Nancy Grace, but she left the show after one season and was replaced by Jackie Glass, who presided over the most recent O.J. Simpson trial and production was shifted from Atlanta to Los Angeles, for what CBS claimed was to “cut production costs”. Justice is just the second syndicated strip to be canceled this season; Nate Berkus’ show was dumped by Sony last December after two seasons – practically all other syndicated series are returning next season.
– And one of those series – also from CBS – is Excused, the late-night dating strip that so far season-to-date, is ranked 135th out of 189 syndicated series on the air with a 0.6 household live-plus-same day delivery. Credit (or blame) the station in the top three markets – WCIU in Chicago and WWOR and KCAL in New York and Los Angeles, respectively.
– Meanwhile, WCIU has also picked up Trisha from NBCUniversal, a new talk show hosted by Trisha Goddard, which received an early pickup from Sinclair Broadcasting. Goddard plans to tape on the same stage as Maury, where Goddard made numerous appearances and even had guest-hosting chores. Goddard hosted daytime show for ITV and Channel Five in the United Kingdom. She also worked in television journalism in Australia, where she became the nation’s first black news anchor.
Ironically, when Trisha Goddard left ITV for a rival show on Channel Five, who was her replacement? It was no other than Jeremy Kyle, who launched an American version of his British talk show last fall. Jerry Springer filled in for a time on ITV after Goddard departed and before Kyle arrived.
– Seth MacFarlane’s plan to reboot the classic 1960’s animated series The Flintstones for Fox may be DOA: The man behind Family Guy simply had too much on his plate, including a singing career and a new movie called Ted (which the trailer for was awful), and working on a thirteen-part series Cosmos: A Space Odyssey.
But it turns out Fox executive Kevin Reilly “liked” the script for Flintstones, but didn’t “love” it (which pretty much meant he hated it.) Reilly gave him an option to rewrite it; but with his other projects, MacFarlane didn’t have time, so he declined. A few weeks ago, six people who were hired solely to work on the Flintstones project were laid off, including former Family Guy staffer Daniel Palladino, who was bought out of his contract. Had the project stayed on schedule, The Flintstones would have debuted in the fall of 2013.
– In a move that was expected, sister properties Comcast SportsNet Chicago and NBC-owned WMAQ-TV’s sports department are expected to integrate with one another more. Even though this isn’t a true merger, look for CSN Chicago on-air talent to appear more frequently on WMAQ. Sara Kustok is now airing WMAQ’s Friday night sports segment, while Pat Boyle takes over as host of WMAQ’s Sports Sunday. CSN personnel has taken over the NBC O&Os’ newscasts sports segments in other markets where both operate, such as in San Francisco.
– Remember Erica Cobb, from Eddie & JoBo’s morning show? Well, the Chicago native and DePaul graduate now has landed a new gig, hosting a daily gossip video segment for TV Media Insights, a television industry trade website which features former Mediaweek writer Marc Berman as editor-in-chief. Cobb joined Eddie Volkman & Jo Bohannon’s WBBM-FM (B96) morning show from 2005-08. After B96 dropped Eddie & JoBo in 2008, Cobb went to KALC-FM in Denver (a Hot AC outlet known as “Alice”) and joined the morning show, remaining there until December 2011.
TV Media Insights is listed under the T Dog’s Media Friends section to your right.