‘MomLogic,' ‘Dog Whisperer' No Gos For 2010

Neither show could secure launch group

By Paige Albiniak -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/7/2010 5:47:59 PM

Two shows that syndicators were shopping for 2010 are officially out of the running: Warner Bros.' MomLogic and Twentieth's Dog Whisperer.

First-run talker MomLogic, which will remain in development for a potential 2011 launch, could not secure a major-market launch group after Fox decided to renew Debmar-Mercury's Wendy Williams for two more years and pick up CBS Television Distribution's Swift Justice with Nancy Grace, and NBC decided to pass. Other potential launch groups - Tribune, ABC and CBS - were already full. Warner Bros. did have the show cleared in many markets, with many stations bullish about it, but without New York, in particular, Warner Bros. was unable to get it cleared nationwide.

Twentieth, meanwhile, found that not enough stations were interested in the off-Discovery Dog Whisperer because it didn't fit into typical daytime line-ups of talk and court shows, according to sources.

As for the other off-cable shows that syndicators are selling as strips, only one is a firm go thus far: NBC Universal's The Real Housewives. Debmar-Mercury and MGM both expect E! True Hollywood Stories and Discovery's Cash Cab to end up on stations in syndication, although not necessarily as strips in all cases.

While selling non-fiction off-cable shows to cash-strapped TV stations for all barter seemed like a good idea in this difficult economy because the shows are generally cheap, abundant and already paid for, many stations felt they didn't want to take their programming in that direction.

"That's not really a place we wanted to be," said one station executive. "To me, that's about someone else's brand. And not one of these shows has ever come off cable and worked."