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What's That Cable Series Doing on a Major Network?

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 January 2008, 06:00 CST

By Gary Levin

The 10-week-old writers' strike is accelerating a once unheard-of practice: the migration of cable repeats to the major networks.

NBC plans full seasons of sibling USA Network series Monk and Psych starting March 2, Sundays at 8 and 9 ET/PT, and CBS will air Showtime's dark drama Dexter Sundays at 10 beginning Feb. 17. Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which moved to USA last fall, popped up in reruns on NBC last week, Wednesdays at 9.

Studios are busily shopping other cable series, from TNT's The Closer to FX's Nip/Tuck to AMC's Mad Men, hoping big broadcasters will be hungry for replacement series now that the supply of new scripted programming is largely exhausted.

It used to be that original series flowed one way, from big broadcasters to cable channels, many of which depend on such reruns for the bulk of their schedules.

But times have changed. In recent years, some networks have experimented with a handful of cable series, usually in summer and without much success. NBC tried Project Runway in 2006 and Battlestar Galactica in 2005, imported from its corporate cousins Bravo and Sci Fi Channel. ABC aired Kyle XY and Greek, both from ABC Family. CBS aired an episode of Showtime's Brotherhood.

The theory is that bigger exposure may drive viewers back to the cable networks to see fresh episodes. But now the writers' strike -- and the programming shortage it has caused -- could make broadcasters the bigger beneficiary.

"The crossover between cable and network, absolutely you will be seeing more and more of that," CBS chairman Leslie Moonves told analysts last week.

NBC also is eyeing two miniseries, USA's The Starter Wife and Sci Fi's Tin Man. Fox, stocked with American Idol and plenty of new midseason series, isn't looking to cable just yet but has talked about resurrecting unaired episodes of prematurely canceled series such as Wonderfalls and Kitchen Confidential.

Some cable series translate more easily than others. Mad Men, Sunday's Golden Globe winner about advertising executives in 1960, features cigarette smoking in nearly every scene, which is a no-no for some broadcast networks. Dexter stars Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) as a crime analyst who moonlights as a serial killer, exacting revenge on what he deems deserving victims, sometimes by severing their limbs while they're still alive.

Though "the show isn't graphic, and it's not overtly sexual," says Showtime programming chief Robert Greenblatt, Dexter differs from CBS' sociopath saga Criminal Minds in that its hero is also the villain, and he isn't caught.

Greenblatt is personally supervising editing, mostly to dub over swear words. But he says that "the whole psychology of this character is exactly the same as it was on our network," where, as the top-rated show, weekly premieres drew about 1 million viewers last season, about one-tenth of CBS' average prime-time audience.

But the network will have a low bar for success, judged mainly on how well it performs compared with reruns of Shark, the modestly rated drama that normally airs in the Sunday time period.

Despite the bigger platform, observers don't expect big ratings for cable series. "I don't see any great upside potential to these shows," says Carat USA's ad-buying chief, Andrew Donchin. "We're being conservative with estimating how they're going to do."

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Source: USA TODAY

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