Content area
Full text
How much further can the reality craze go?
Network executives swore up and down last week at the Television Critics Association press tour in Hollywood that reality programming will never overtake their network schedules despite the instant ratings rewards they provide.
Going into midseason, the six broadcast networks will schedule eight hours more of reality programming than they had at the start of the season. Viewers will be able to choose from 15 hours of reality programming, up from seven in September-an increase of 114 percent.
However, that is still only a small percentage of the 104 hours of prime time currently programmed by the six networks. About 14.4 percent of the midseason schedules will be reality programming, compared with 6.7 percent at the start of the season.
ABC Entertainment President Susan Lyne said that despite the fact that the network is essentially turning over its Wednesday 10 p.m. and Thursday 9 p.m. time slots to short-term reality series for the rest of the season, reality will only take up one-sevReport," which succeeded "Joan Rivers," on Fox stations for more than four weeks. It didn't stop the curtain from coming down on Tom Snyder in 1999 after four seasons of "The Late Late Show."
So will broadcasting live from Los Angeles at 12:05 a.m. (ET) each weeknight help Jimmy Kimmel live long and prosper on ABC's latenight lineup?
The network thinks so. ABC Entertainment Group Chairman Lloyd Braun may have more riding on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," which debuts after the Super Bowl, Sunday, Jan. 26, than Mr. Kimmel himself. The choice of Mr. Kimmel as host and the decision to broadcast live were Mr. Braun's. The decision came in the wake of ABC's failed attempt to steal David Letterman from CBS.
Mr. Kimmel, 35, is used to living on the edge. He has pushed the testosterone-filled envelope with "The Man Show" on Comedy Central and with his taunts of the...