Syndication renewal scorecard: “Extra” In; “True Crime News” out
Warner Bros. renews newsmagazine for 32nd season while dumping True Crime News after one season
Warner Bros. Discovery announced Monday the renewal of the long-running newsmagazine strip Extra for a 32nd season after securing a deal with Fox Television Stations to carry the show for another year.
Extra had been on the bubble with two other Warner shows Fox carries: The Jennifer Hudson Show and True Crime News. Extra had been on all the Fox-owned stations since 2019 in a wide-ranging deal, although Fox-owned WFLD Chicago (Fox 32) had been airing the show since September 2016, when it moved from NBC-owned WMAQ-TV after a little over two decades. NBC’s owned stations were the original launch partner for Extra when it debuted in 1994 as an answer to Paramount’s Entertainment Tonight, where it went head-to-head in some markets, including Chicago from March 1995 to September 1996.
It is not known if Billy Bush would return to host Extra. Bush replaced Mario Lopez in 2019 when he left to host his old show, Access Hollywood. Negotiations on a new contract for Bush are expected to take place now that the show has been renewed.
While Fox renewed Jennifer Hudson last month, the group passed on a second season of True Crime News, which led to its cancellation – the fourth syndicated series to get the ax this year. Hosted by Ana Garcia with an accompanying podcast and website (both will continue despite the cancellation), the show could not capitalize on the popularity of the true crime genre, which turned Dateline into a syndicated hit. True Crime aired at an unorthodox 10 p.m. time slot on WFLD opposite local newscasts on the city’s four network-owned stations, which air “true crime news” of a different sort. True Crime also aired at 1 p.m. weekdays and in various weekend slots on Fox Chicago Plus (WPWR-TV) and marked a return to the genre for Warner Bros., which produced Crimewatch Daily in syndication from 2015-18 and where the present-day True Crime website morphed from.
The future of another true crime show, Trifecta Entertainment’s Crime Expose With Nancy O’Dell, has yet to be determined. The show was paired with True Crime in numerous Fox markets, including Chicago where it airs at 10:30 p.m. on Fox 32.
Last month, Fox First-Run, which syndicates its shows to its stations and others, canceled game shows Pictionary and Person Place or Thing, and gossip show Dish Nation after a long run due to low ratings and rising production costs for the game shows, despite being taped in Atlanta. This comes as syndicated programming is taking a huge hit due to the changing economics of television as more viewers are streaming their programming, especially in daytime. One show bucking the trend is CBS’ new soap opera Beyond The Gates, which drew an average of 2.28 million viewers in its first week and improved the year-ago time period rating.