Showtime Bringing Back Big Brother: After Dark

CBS Reality Show to Spend ‘After Hours’ with Cable-Network Cousin

By Anne Becker -- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/8/2008 2:45:00 PM

Showtime will run a second season of Big Brother: After Dark, its three-hour late-night show following what transpires in the house of the CBS reality show late at night.

Starting Feb. 12, the live show will run at midnight every night of the week on Showtime digital sibling SHO2. Big Brother premieres a new, first-ever winter season on CBS that same day at 9 p.m., which will air Tuesdays at 9 p.m. and Wednesdays and Sundays at 8 p.m.

The move is a no-brainer for Showtime, which has the late-night programming space open on SHO2, and it represents an important step in an increasingly synergistic relationship between the pay cable network and its corporate sibling, CBS, which haven't always capitalized on each other's programming.

The broadcast network, as part of its writers’ strike contingency plans, will air season one of Showtime's critically acclaimed original series, Dexter, beginning Feb. 17 at 10 p.m..

“Big Brother: After Dark was a big success for us at bringing an audience to very late-night time periods on SHO2. This began as an experiment with our friends at Endemol and CBS, and I'm happy that it worked so well for all of us,” said Bob Greenblatt, Showtime's entertainment president, in a statement. “I'm amazed at how much curiosity there is about what goes on in the Big Brother house after the lights are out, but what better place to present that than on Showtime, where we have a lot of on-air real estate in the wee hours of the morning.”