The Slow, Painful Death of the DInner Hour Syndicated Sitcom Rerun

[Mark Jeffries]

For quite a few years now, it was guaranteed that in the two hours before prime time you could turn to your local independent/Fox/UPN/WB/CW/MyTV station and get an alternative to news, celebrity gossip, Pat and Vanna and Alex in the form of syndicated reruns of sitcoms--the good, the bad and the mediocre.

Well, in Chicago at least that's not the case anymore.  As new syndicated shows start to pop up this week, the only station where you can watch a sitcom at dinnertime is Weigel's CW affil WCIU, where you can watch "The Neighborhood" at 6 and 6:30 p.m. As if you wanted to watch it first run on CBS Monday nights. The 5 p.m. hour on "CW 26" is filled with "Judge Judy" reruns (as you may know, her first-run judging is now on Amazon's Freevee streamer).

Well, what's on the other non-Big 3 station?  On Nexstar indie WGN, it's two hours of news, as it has been for many years now. On Fox's WFLD, it's an hour of news at 5 and an hour of "Family Feud" at 6 p.m.--they didn't renew for "Big Bang Theory" and WGN picked it up for prime time.  And on sister station MyTV affil WPWR, it's *another* hour of "Family Feud" at 5 p.m. (seems to me Debmar-Mercury feeds six "Feud" episodes a day) and two new game shows from Fox First Run at 6 (they both ran test shows either last year or earlier this year):  "Person, Place or Thing," a not-bad update of "20 Questions" appealingly fronted by Melissa Peterman, and "Who the Bleep is That?", a celebrity identification game produced by Fox-owned TMZ, which may be all you need to know.

Of course, with the changes afoot in television lately, it seems unlikely that there will be more shows coming down the pike to get to the 100 episode number, although "The Conners" will probably make it (and what are they going to do with those first season episodes with Roseanne Barr?) and those involved are rooting for "Ghosts" and "Abbott Elementary"--and also, the stations seem to prefer multi-cams to one-camera shows--good luck on that.

The Fox-owned stations seem to think that the future is in game shows, I guess with "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel" going through the host changes recently and next year,the fact that "Modern Family" and "The Simpsons" are their only remaining sitcoms and Disney will probably want more money to renew them--along with "Feud" and the two new shows, they've picked up reruns of Game Show Network's "People Puzzler" (based on the crossword puzzle for idiots in People magazine) and in-house "25 Words or Less" and in-house-CBS Media's "Pictionary" continue (but Big Jaw's reboot of "You Bet Your Life" isn't, presumably because of Leno's recent accidents).  And you'll find sitcom reruns in late-night against the talk shows--oh shoot, there's another dying genre.

[M-D November]

I wager that with more 'air" to fill on cable thanks to the de-niching of certain channels, the studios are getting more lucrative deals there than in the syndie market.  Plus there's always streaming...

[Tom Wolper]

I remember reading or hearing a sitcom showrunner say that the syndication market is no longer what it once was and making the hundredth episode is no longer a guarantee of wealth for the writers and actors.

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[PGage]

Another common time for syndicated sitcoms was 11:00 x is your sense that this is disappearing too?

One factor of course is that a lot of the old workhorse sitcoms are streaming (Big Bang, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, Seinfeld, Friends, Frazier, Cheers, MASH; I Love Lucy is on Paramount+). Abbott is on Hulu, so even if it gets to 100 may not change much. 

I stopped watching sitcoms in syndication even when they were still common once I could get boxed sets on DVD, as I was frustrated with being forced to watch episodes out of order, and often badly hacked to get in more commercials.

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[brugdr]

I have a sense that many syndicated programs are finding homes on the various digital TV channels like MeTV, H&I, etc.  Now most of these programs are older, but that might change with everything else.

David

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[Mark Jeffries]

In Chicago, WGN has a sitcom block starting at 11 after the late news and a sports show--it's "Goldbergs," "2.5 Men," "Mom" and"Young Sheldon."  In prime time, it's "Big Bang" and Last Man Standing."  And "Friends" is on the weekends (they were running it at 3 p.m. weekdays, but they've just started a local talk show this week that I'm afraid like most local talk shows is chock filled with infomerical segments--see the John Oliver episode about those).  WCIU has coming right out of The CW "King of Queens," "Seinfeld" and "American Housewife," with "Family Guy" at 1:30 a.m. coming out of that Byron Allen-produced game show.  WFLD just has "Modern Family" at 10:30 with "TMZ" and "Extra" on either side, and "The Simpsons" against "Family Guy" on WCIU. And WPWR is running the MyTV block of what seems to be mostly Dick Wolf show reruns at 10, with second episodes of the new Fox First Run game shows at midnight.

Mark Jeffries
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