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Come this fall, Global TV intends to play much the same game with their schedule that Fox, south of the border, announced a couple of months back. Which means that, from week-to-week throughout the fall and winter, you won’t be able to count on finding many of your favourite television shows in the same spots they were the week before.
As the Globe and Mail’s Guy Dixon wrote in his piece on Global’s upcoming fall 2004 television schedule …
The old idea of a network simply débuting a fall lineup of programmes, which then repeats in the summer, has been laid to rest. In its place is a complicated schedule of show premières stretching into January.
As is the case with the two other private Canadian broadcasters — CTV and CHUM — Global’s fall schedule is heavily laden with American imports.
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As you’ve seen in the endless ads for Global’s upcoming season, Friends spinoff Joey (Windows Media Player required); the new Heather Locklear – Blair Underwood airport drama, LAX; The Practice spinoff, Boston Legal; the John Goodman comedy, Center of the Universe; the hour-long drama, The Mountain; House, an ensemble hospital drama about doctors at a Boston medical clinic; Jonny Zero, a drama from ER and The West Wing-producer John Wells about an ex-con with ambitions of becoming a private investigator (January to June); and summer try-outs North Shore and One Tree Hill are among the 40 new shows that have made Global’s fall schedule.
The Apprentice will anchor Global TV’s Thursday nights when the new television season begins this fall.
In addition to The Apprentice and the similarly themed The Billionaire, Global will unveil a pair of boxing-based reality series over the coming year: The Contender, from Apprentice and Survivor producer Mark Burnett and Sylvester Stallone, and The Next Great Champ, featuring champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya and a roster of unknown prize-fighting prospects.
An ever-shifting TV landscape means changes for both Global and CH’s (the latter, Global’s regional network designation) primetime schedules.
Will and Grace and Malcolm in the Middle will return but at new times and, in Will & Grace’s case, on a new day: Wednesdays at 8:30.
24 will return in January, when it will move to Mondays at 9.
Returning shows on familiar nights and times: The Apprentice, Crossing Jordan, Everybody Loves Raymond, Fear Factor, Gilmore Girls, JAG, Judging Amy, King of the Hill, Las Vegas, NYPD Blue, The Simpsons, Survivor, That ’70s Show, Two and a Half Men and Without A Trace.
Returning Canadian shows include Andromeda, Doc, Mutant X, Train 48, Zoe Busiek: Wild Card, and the Burnaby-based Stargate SG-1.
Global’s new Canadian reality series include The Block, a home renovation series based on a popular Australian original, featuring four couples competing to see who can best renovate a run-down apartment; Last Chance for Romance, a relationship dating programme set at a Caribbean resort hotel; and The Temps, a hidden-camera series about unsuspecting office temps compelled to cope with bizarre workplace situations.
And given the recent success of the documentary form, Global has announced that it will produce and air 30 new homegrown documentaries, including a profile of Canada’s women’s Olympic soccer team, a look at the Vivendi-Universal media merger between Jean-Marie Messier and Edgar Bronfman Jr., and a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of Vanity Fair, O, Playboy and Macleans magazines.
As for the remaining Canadian television network schedules: here’s a peek at CBC’s, CTV’s and CHUM’s fall television schedules.
For the major U.S. networks fall television schedules, click on the following direct VanRamblings’ links: ABC, NBC, the WB, Fox and UPN, and CBS.
