Lifetime Picks Two for Prime
By Allison Romano -- Broadcasting & Cable, 5/5/2003
It's never easy to pick favorites among your progeny, but Lifetime has finally selected two of its four drama pilots to take to series. Dramas 1-800-Missing and Wild Card will debut in early August, each with an initial run of 13 episodes.
Entertainment chief Barbara Fisher says both shows have "great emotional tug and, hopefully, there is good suspense and good mystery."
Lifetime will use the shows to launch a second night of original programming, with Saturday, Tuesday and Friday in consideration. Its successful dramas Strong Medicine and The Division currently air on Sunday.
1-800-Missing, produced by Lions Gate Entertainment, stars Gloria Reuben as an FBI agent who teams with a teenage psychic to solve missing-persons cases. Wild Card, from Fireworks Entertainment, features Joely Fisher as a former Las Vegas blackjack dealer who, after her sister's death, goes to take care of the children left behind and embark on a new investigative career.
A team of Lifetime executives, including Fisher and Lifetime Chairman and CEO Carole Black and executives from research, sales and marketing, hashed out the selections. Fisher says 1-800-Missing and Wild Card meshed well and also tested well with men and women.
The leftover pilots, Follow the Leeds and Nick & Shelley, still could have a future on Lifetime. Both shows could be considered as midseason replacements, Fisher said. Lifetime developed Follow the Leeds in-house.
