Syndie Insider
By Staff -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/2/2003
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Walsh Gets a Second Year
NBC Enterprises has renewed The John Walsh Show in more than 86% of the country for a second season. The show has been cleared in 28 of the top 30 markets and 45 of the top 50 markets.
"The John Walsh Show has proven to be one of the most important and relevant daytime talk shows in syndication in just its first season," says NBC Enterprises President Ed Wilson. "Whether it was on-location in Salt Lake City with Elizabeth Smart's family or in Modesto, Calif., holding a town-hall discussion on Laci Peterson, John and the show have been changing the way viewers look at daytime television." The show's newest round of renewals include WDIV-TV Detroit, WMAR-TV Baltimore and WOOD-TV Grand Rapids, Mich.
Pyramid Changes Director
Bob Loudin will take over directing duties for Sony Pictures Television game show Pyramid when the show goes back into production in August. Sony also has cleared the game show on Post-Newsweek's ABC affiliate WPLG-TV Miami, where it will air at 4:30 p.m., leading into the station's local news. Loudin comes to Pyramid from the Discovery Channel's The Christopher Lowell Show, replacing Paul Nichols.
Good Sweeps for ET
Paramount's Entertainment Tonight Weekend won its third straight May sweeps, finishing as the No. 1 weekly hour by a wide margin in the week ended May 18. That concludes the sweeps for weekend shows; strips are waiting for Nielsen to count three more days into their tallies. ET Weekend showed a 6% increase in households over last May to a 3.8 rating. ET Weekend was the only one-hour weekly show in the top 10 to show growth. In second place was Warner Bros.' off-net ER at a 2.5, unchanged.
No. 3 MGM/NBC's Stargate-SG1 was down 8% to 2.4. Twentieth's The Practice, in its second off-net season, ran fourth, off 15% to 2.2. Four shows tied for fifth at 2.1: Tribune's Mutant X (off 5%), Tribune's Andromeda (off 19%), Twentieth's off-net Buffy the Vampire Slayer (flat), and Twentieth's off-net The X-Files (off 22%). In its first May sweeps, NBC/MGM rookie She Spies tied for ninth at a 2.0 with Twentieth's off-net World's Wildest Police Videos.
