Second-Year Shows Prepare to Go Nationwide
By Paige Albiniak -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/6/2003
Some shows on the NATPE slate this year will look familiar to regular NATPE attendees: Buena Vista's The Wayne Brady Show, Twentieth Television's Ex-Treme Dating and Twentieth's Good Day Live all had limited rollouts last year, but are headed into national syndication this year.
Good Day Live— with hosts Jillian Barberie, Steve Edwards and Dorothy Lucy—has been cleared in 88% of the country and in 130 markets. It will launch nationally this month.
All of Fox's owned-and-operated stations air the show, which covers news, talk and entertainment in a none-too-serious way for an hour each morning. Good Day Live is an expanded version of Good Day LA, which started on Fox's Los Angeles owned-and-operated station, KTTV-TV. Stations are paying cash for the show and getting a barter split, with 10 1/2 minutes of advertising time going to them and 3 1/2 minutes going to the studio.
One of Good Day Live's hosts, Barberie, a former weather girl from Canada, does triple time for Twentieth and News Corp., appearing on Fox's NFL game coverage and hosting another show that Twentieth is taking national this fall: Ex-Treme Dating.
So far, that show airs on Fox O&Os in 12 markets and on some other stations, like UPN affiliate WUTB-TV in Baltimore. A full national rollout is planned for fall.
Ex-Treme Dating sets up a couple on a date and then recruits two ex-boyfriends or girlfriends and asks them to provide intimate details about their former partner to their date. With the exes whispering in the date's ears, it can get difficult to overlook a date's little quirks.
Like most of the relationship strips—including Universal's Blind Date, Universal's Fifth Wheel and Telepictures'Change of Heart—Ex-Treme Dating will likely be offered to stations for barter only, sources speculate, although a Twentieth spokesman said no deal terms had been released yet.
ABC's owned-and-operated stations already have cleared The Wayne Brady Show through the end of next year. The Walt Disney Co. owns both ABC and its TV stations as well as Buena Vista Television.
The Wayne Brady Show features Brady, best known for his improvisational skills on the ABC prime time show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, interacting with the studio audience, making up his own song-and-dance routines and interviewing celebrities. Brady is at his best when he's performing; he's a little awkward when he has to get out there and mingle with the audience.
