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A&E Won't Hold Up Its Off-Net 'Sopranos' Launch
Staff
Pasadena, Calif. -- While James Gandolfini's knee injury and Home Box Office's strategy of not putting the show up against the National Football League playoffs have pushed the final-season start date of The Sopranos back from January to at least March, the actor's mob chieftain character will still roll out into syndication early in 2007.
A&E Network said the postponement of the series' final eight episodes will not deter its debut of The Sopranos in January, a time frame in which the syndicated version of the series was expected to draft on the publicity for the series send-off on HBO.
A&E spokesman Michael Feeney downplayed HBO's scheduling change, saying there were other reasons a decision was made to begin The Sopranos ' exclusive syndication run in the new year.
"January has historically been a great time to launch shows in cable," he said.
When A&E obtained The Sopranos for $190 million -- a cable record $2.5 million per episode, it gained the right to begin airing the show in the fall of 2006.
No exact date has been announced for The Sopranos ' bow on A&E, although Feeney did say it would be in early January. A&E is expected to deploy a stacked scheduling strategy, running a pair of episodes in essentially their original length, typically around an hour apiece, twice a week. To accommodate commercials, A&E is expected to devote 2.5 hours to the block.
Feeney said A&E has written advertising deals for The Sopranos with a number of advertisers, but would not identify the sponsors.
A&E will begin stripping another high-profile series acquisition, CSI: Miami , weeknights in September at 8 p.m., following a Labor Day marathon of the forensic hit.
TNT's 'Nightmares' Is Tops Among Adult Demos
Staff
Atlanta -- Turner Network Television said the July 12 debut of its Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King ranked as ad-supported cable's No....