No syndicated Weakest Link in Cincinnati (But Dayton, OH will have it)
Michael Brandenburg
"The Tristate is one of the weakest links in NBC's scheme to syndicate The
Weakest Link.
"The half-hour syndicated version, hosted by comic George Gray (from the
Learning Channel's Junkyard Wars) will not debut Monday on any Cincinnati
station.
"Mr. [Jon] Lawhead [the general manager of Cincinnati's WXIX-TV, Channel 19]
says he didn't buy Weakest Link for his [recent] daytime openings because the
price was too steep. To make a profit, hed have to air it 7-8 p.m., when more
viewers were available than afternoons — and he didn't want to pull Friends
or King of the Hill.
"'A lot of stations don't have a time period available to justify the cost,'
says Chris White, [Cincinnati's WSTR] Channel 64 program director.
"Mr. Lawhead also doubts wheter the show will work without acerbic Anne
Robinson, the host of NBC's one-hour version. 'These (game) shows are so
host-driven. If you take away the host, what do you have left?' he says."
MY COMMENTS: 1. Send Messers. Lawhead, White, and either the general
managers or program directors of Cincinnati's four other commercial broadcast
TV stations to Australia and have them play a "celebrity special edition" on
their version of TWL. (I understand that show's Aussie hostess, Cornelia
Francis, could probably show Mr. Lawhead a thing or two about how TWL could
work with someone else flinging those "brutal truths"!)
2. Better yet, for denying Cincinnati the syndicated version of TWL (for
now, at least) have the five "losers" of that "celebrity special edition" pay
their way back home, as on Japan's Ultra Quiz game!
3. News at 6 for you Weakest Link fans in at least the northern area of
Cincinnati: WHIO-TV, Channel 7 in Dayton, Ohio, will have the syndicated
version on at 6 p.m. weekdays starting 1-7-2002, replacing their previous
early-evening newscast, according to the official WL website
(www.weakestlink.com).
Michael Brandenburg
(Trouble is, I can't get that station where I live in "the other" Dayton,
the one across the Ohio River in Kentucky.)