Program Partners Selling ‘Steven and Chris'

By Paige Albiniak
( Broadcasting & Cable )
published

Program Partners is bringing Canadian talk show Steven and Chris to broadcast syndication for fall 2010. The show debuted on CBC Television in January 2008 and is hosted by Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman. Episodes of the show have previously aired on Scripps' HGTV.
Program Partners is offering Steven and Chris to stations on an all-barter basis with eight minutes of local time and six minutes of national time in each episode.
No sales to stations have been announced yet.
Program Partners' last foray into syndicated strips was a talk show hosted by Marie Osmond slated to launch this fall, but the syndicator ultimately couldn't get the show off the ground because of the tough economic climate.
Steven and Chris joins a growing list of new strips coming to syndication in 2010. In first-run, those shows thus far are CBS Television Distribution's Swift Justice with Nancy Grace, Warner Bros.' MomLogic, Entertainment Studios' America's Court with Judge Ross and Trifecta's Judge Heck and Tooned In.
Four off-cable reality shows also are in the mix: NBC Universal's Real Housewives, Twentieth's Dog Whisperer, Debmar-Mercury's E! True Hollywood Stories and MGM's Cash Cab.

Paige Albiniak
Paige Albiniak

Contributing editor Paige Albiniak has been covering the business of television for more than 25 years. She is a longtime contributor to Next TV, Broadcasting + Cable and Multichannel News. She concurrently serves as editorial director for The Global Entertainment Marketing Academy of Arts & Sciences (G.E.M.A.). She has written for such publications as TVNewsCheck, The New York Post, Variety, CBS Watch and more. Albiniak was B+C’s Los Angeles bureau chief from September 2002 to 2004, and an associate editor covering Congress and lobbying for the magazine in Washington, D.C., from January 1997 - September 2002.