Welcome to a special edition of T Dog’s Four Pack (special because this is a bit serious in tone.) On Thursday, Oprah Winfrey announced she was leaving her syndicated daytime talk show after 25 years and ending the program on September 9, 2011. She is focusing on launching her new cable network with Discovery Communications, which goes live in January […]
A post I wrote last Tuesday received some negative feedback, as yours truly painted a too-rosy picture of Comcast SportsNet’s ratings regarding the Cubs and White Sox – particularly the latter team. According to an article appearing in Sports Business Journal ranking Major League Baseball’s thirty teams in terms of television ratings on games aired by their regional sports networks […]
Your station has a ratings problem. So if the person in charge of the time period isn’t doing the job of tending to it, what would you do? Change doctors. That’s what KPRC did. KPRC-TV, Post-Newsweek’s NBC affiliate in Houston, has replaced CBS Television Distribution’s Dr. Phil, with Sony Television’s new hotcomer Dr. Oz at 3 p.m., which was effective […]
Dr. Oz debuts strong – and the rest of the week that was in syndication Family Feud has added a new element – all right, it’s not so new. The Debmar-Mercury syndicated game show has returned the “Bullseye” round to the start of the game, which started on the series’ eleventh season premiere on September 7. The round features contestants […]
The new season is here, and here’s the first T Dog’s Four Pack for the fall 2009 season: Winners. The Emmy Awards. Neil Patrick Harris rocked as host with a smooth and speedy presentation – and the ratings weren’t too bad either. Glee. This Fox musical dramedy has been picked up for a full season after a strong start and […]
The off-net sitcoms are back. After a year without any new major off-network sitcoms debuting (aside from Tyler Perry’s House of Payne), three of them debut today in broadcast syndication – NBC Universal’s The Office, CBS Television Distribution’s Everybody Hates Chris, and Twentieth’s My Name Is Earl. Of these three, The Office is certainly the most successful, given its solid […]
The early returns for Dr. Oz have been positive and Sony Pictures Television and Harpo Productions hope Oz can lead the company down the Yellow Brick Road to riches. The three day average of Dr. Oz – a new medical talk show hosted by Mehmet Oz which premiered on Sept. 14 – had a three day average of a 1.7 […]
Another GM shake-up at Fox-owned WFLD-TV and WPWR-TV has led Pat Mullen out the door after three rather unproductive years at the duopoly, and was replaced by Michael Renda of sister station WTXF-TV in Philadelphia, which is also a Fox O&O. In turn, Patrick Paolini takes over the WTXF job after his stint as vice president and director of sales […]
This version of the Groovy Grab Bag comes to you from the National Association of Television Program Executives convention going on in Las Vegas. Before we start on a barrage of news and notes, let’s talk about the convention itself: things are not going so well. Attendance at the convention is way down, as station managers and others have decided […]
The president of Debmar-Mercury is calling out the first-run syndication business. In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, Mort Marcus says we might be seeing more syndie cancellations coming in the next several months as the economy continues to become worse. Marcus, who runs the company responsible for syndicating South Park, Family Feud, Trivial Pursuit, and the upcoming Wendy Williams […]
In the same Feder column from today, Fox-owned WFLD-TV (as well as WNYW-TV in New York and KTTV in Los Angeles) have purchased Dr. Oz from Sony Pictures Television for next fall. WFLD plans to air the show at 4 p.m. as a lead-in to a planned 5 p.m. newscast that could also launch next fall. Oz would replace syndicated […]
It’s a home run by the Wizard! Sony Pictures Television had the heart, the courage, and the brains – to clear Harpo Productions’ new syndicated Dr. Oz in fourteen markets, including Fox-owned WFLD-TV in Chicago. No word yet on a time period, but the program could wind up in a late morning time slot, possibly as a lead-out of The […]
In a major coup for Sony Pictures Television, the syndicator has picked up the new Dr. Oz project from Harpo Productions, which is Oprah Winfrey’s production company. The program features Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon who has made appearances on Oprah and on programs produced by Discovery Communications. Many syndicators were bidding for Oz, but Sony came up big […]
Look! It’s Oprah behind the curtain… Harpo Productions is preparing for a launch of a new talk show in September 2009 featuring Dr. Memhet Oz, who regularly appears on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The launch is being prepared the same way Dr. Phil was launched in 2002. Keep in mind that CBS Television Distribution is launching a talk show this […]
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