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3 QUESTIONS
Take 2: CBS's "The Big Bang Theory," with Jim Parsons and Kaley Cuoco.
(By Sonja Flemming -- Cbs)
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This year, it's overseas formats that are all the rage. It's a fad born in part of necessity: They were something U.S. network suits could actually look at and read scripts on during the writers' strike. The list of overseas shows being remade this season by the U.S. broadcast networks includes:
From the U.K.: ABC's time-travel detective drama "Life on Mars"; CBS's sci-fi drama "Eleventh Hour"; CBS's fiance-as-train-wreck comedy "Worst Week"; NBC's Camelot update "Merlin"; and Fox's cash-giveaway reality series "Secret Millionaire."
From Israel: CBS's romantic comedy "The Ex List."
From Australia: NBC's mother/daughter comedy "Kath and Kim" and Fox's high school comedy "Sit Down, Shut Up."
And thank Japan for Fox's human-Tetris competition, "Hole in the Wall."
U.S. broadcast networks buying shows based on overseas formats is nothing new: "All in the Family" was a redo of the British comedy "Till Death Us Do Part." Much more recently, "Ugly Betty" is a rework of the Colombian telenovela "Betty la Fea," and "The Office" is a do-over of the British comedy, um, "The Office." But overseas culling on this scale is unprecedented, what with the network suits convinced that American sensibilities are so unique and that U.S. viewers won't accept anything that smells even vaguely foreign (which is why British actors must feign American accents to get hired on U.S. TV series).
If enough shows in this year's crop succeed, a stake will finally have been driven in that ancient notion.
Is CW the new DuMont?
Word on the street says CW's third season could be its last, although parents CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. insist they love it like a child and are totally committed to the netlet -- which they cooked up from the ashes of CBS's UPN and Warner Bros.' WB in the fall of '06.
Things haven't gone real well for CW since its launch, as reflected in the fact that this fall, it's had to add a whopping seven new series to its fall schedule -- the most of any broadcast network this season, and no small feat for a network that programs only 13 hours per week (compared with 22 hours for ABC, NBC and CBS).
"Essentially, the network is fighting for its own survival," one industry exec speculated. "The network has two bottom-line-oriented parents and they will not put up with losing money too long."
That said, CW might have finally got it right, dumping WWE "SmackDown" and honing in on angst-ridden rich chicks as its story line of choice. Two weeks in a row, the network's new Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday lineups have finished first among the 18-to-34-year-old chicks whom CW now targets.
(And for all you nonserious students of television, DuMont was the first commercial television network. It launched in the mid-1940s and was co-owned by Paramount Pictures, which ironically is now owned by CBS parent Viacom. DuMont also struggled to get a footing and finally went under in 1956.)
