Winning With “Anger”

Oh Oh. Charlie Sheen’s “winning” again.

FX and Debmar-Mercury announced on Wednesday the ninety-episode pickup of  Sheen’s new sitcom Anger Management, with production beginning in September and new shows airing in January.

With the pickup, the series is now being prepped for an off-network broadcast syndication debut for 2014.

In order to get the ninety-episode pickup, Management had to meet a certain rating threshold during the series’ run (excluding the first two episodes.) The ten-episode run on FX concluded last Thursday and averaged 4.53 million viewers, with 2.5 million of them in the coveted 18-49 demo.

The 10/90 threshold isn’t really new: Debmar-Mercury used it before with Tyler Perry’s House Of Payne in syndication. After a two-week test on several stations (including WCIU in Chicago) in 2006, Payne was picked up for 90 episodes and was also sold to TBS.

Bidders for Management would likely include Fox Television Stations in its nine duopoly markets, and Tribune Broadcasting for its nineteen markets.

While Management is a hit with viewers, it necessarily hasn’t been one with critics: On Metacritic, it only has a score of 44, with a 4.6 user score.

The series is based on the 2003 theatrical of the same name, though much like the Friday the 13th television series, is not really related.

In addition, the series recently premiered on Bell Media’s CTV in Canada, where it airs Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. (ET) since August 12 and promoted heavily throughout CTV’s Olympic coverage.