Syndication’s Fall Docket On The Light Side

Good-bye Harry. Hello Vivica and Frank.

That just about sums up the news for this fall’s first-run syndication season.

Harry is Harry Connick Jr., whose NBCU-distributed variety hour will not be coming back after two disappointing seasons.

Vivica A. Fox is the host of Face the Truth, a cross between Maury and Dr. Phil from CBS Television Distribution. That the show has traces of Dr. Phil DNA is no accident. The show is produced by Phil McGraw’s son Jay (Stage 29 Productions) and Phil is one of the executive producers.

The show, which carries license fees in addition to barter time, will be offered as back-to-back half hours.

The CBS O&Os are dutifully acting as the launch group, slotting the show in daytime at 10 stations, including WLNY New York and KCBS Los Angeles. Weigel’s independent WCIU will cover Chicago.

Other groups committed to carrying the show in multiple markets include Sinclair, Cox, Meredith, Graham and Hearst.

It’s set to debut on Sept. 10.

Frank Caprio is TV’s newest judge, the accidental star of Caught in Providence.

Caprio is a real judge presiding at a municipal court in Providence, R.I. His equally colorful brother Joe made him a YouTube sensation by recording his hearings and posting them on the social media platform.

Now Liongate’s Debmar-Mercury is hoping to make him a bona fide TV star by transforming Caprio’s rulings into a more polished show.

“I don’t have a badge under my judicial robe. I have a heart,” says Caprio. “I try to treat the people that come before me the way my parents taught me, with dignity and respect.”

Stacey Schulman, who tracks syndication for Katz Media, likes what she has seen of the show. “It’s court, but it’s court with friendly, human side. He’s really endearing and engaging. I think he is going to surprise people and come out strong.”

The straight barter show will debut on Sept. 24 with Fox providing the major-market clearances.

Although the syndie pickings for this fall are slim, there’s are signs of more shows, some with big budgets, coming in 2019.

The most ambitious may be a talk show with former Today Show star Tamron Hall. After some false starts elsewhere, she is developing a show with Disney-ABC, which hasn’t been seen in the first-run market since its flop with Katie Couric.

Hall has something to prove. She left NBC having being bumped from the extended Today lineup by Megyn Kelly, whom the network snapped up after her falling out with the Fox News Channel.

Meanwhile, undaunted by the Harry failure, NBCUniversal is developing a talk show with pop star and The Voice judge Kelly Clarkson.

Although the show will not be ready to step in for the departing Harry this fall, it could replace Steve with Steve Harvey next fall if it falters this season. Steve is also distributed by NBCU.

Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution is preparing to shop a talk show with RuPaul, whose Wikipedia entry describes him as an “American drag queen, actor, model, singer, songwriter, television personality and author.” Warner Bros. has shot a pilot.

RuPaul is already a busy man. In addition to producing and hosting the reality series RuPauls’s Drag Race on VH1, he is to star in a Netflix series called AJ and the Queen, in which he will play a down-on-his-luck drag queen working the nightclub circuit in an RV.

With plenty of time to fill, the Fox station group continues to work developing new first-run shows through its in-house unit and stations as well as with outside producers and syndicators.

The work is important for the entire industry as it produces shows ripe for national syndication.

This summer, in keeping with its practice of the last several years, Fox tested six shows with three of them getting big tryouts in several markets.

The Hustle, produced by Telepictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, is a collection of videos selected for their outrageousness or shock value rather than for humor or sentimentally. It ran on eight stations in late July and early August.

Meredith Vierra, who managed only two seasons (2014-16) as the host of her own NBCU-distributed talk show, auditioned a game show, 25 Words or Less, on the Fox stations for three weeks this month in nine markets, including New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Like 25 Words, Phone Swap, the third of the multi-market summer tests, comes from Elisabeth Murdoch’s Vertical Networks. It’s a dating show that grew out of a short-form series on Snapchat.

Frank Cicha, Fox’s programming chief, says no final decisions have been made, but that The Hustle and 25 Words performed well enough and looked good enough to be considered real possibilities. Both picked up viewers as their tests went on, one of key qualities Cicha looks for in a new show.

He says he expects to talk to Warner Bros. about The Hustle after Labor Day. “I like the idea of a swing show that can air just about anywhere on a schedule, particularly in duopoly markets … daytime, early fringe or latenight.”

With Vierra as host, 25 Words is a show that could work for Fox as a companion to the highly rated Family Feud. (For its run on WWOR New York, 25 Words aired at 6:30 p.m., leading out of Feud.)

“The show is well done,” he says. “Bringing in Meredith was a big get. It makes it more fun. It makes it recognizable. It makes it feel a little bigger.”

Cicha says he also liked Phone Swap — “it popped off the screen” — but that its future may be online or on cable. He said the test demonstrated that at the very least the dating genre could work on the Fox stations.

One final note on this fall:NBCU’s Jerry Springer is coming back for its 29^th season — sort of. The show is no longer in production, but shows already in the can and reruns will be aired this season on The CW as a replacement for the departing The Robert Irvine Show.

Looking head, Katz’s Schulman says that it’s a good thing that the broadcast networks are scheduling more sitcoms in primetime this season. “That eventually comes back to syndication and gives us more content to play with.

“Right now, we are kind of in a slump with what’s out there.”