TV Bulletin Board (Dec. 18)
12/18/07 11:43
By ED BARK
Planning well in advance in the event of a prolonged writers' strike, NBC says it will import repeats of Psych and Monk to its Sunday night schedule sometime this March.
Both shows are from the USA cable network, owned by NBC Universal. Now they're suddenly a "great fit with NBC's current programming and brand," says Peacock entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman.
CBS also has indicated an interest in airing edited repeats of corporate cousin Showtime's Dexter and The Tudors. But there's been no official announcement yet.
***The new and novel HBO series In Treatment will premiere on Jan. 28th in a serial soap format. Half-hour episodes are set for Monday through Friday at 8:30 p.m. (central) for the show's entire nine-week run.
In Treatment stars Gabriel Byrne as tattered psychotherapist Paul Weston, with Dianne Wiest and Blair Underwood among the series' co-stars. HBO says that each of Weston's patients will have or his or her own weekly session. Tuesdays, for instance, are "Alex's Nights," with Underwood playing a troubled Iraq war veteran.
***ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live will return to the air writer-less on Jan. 2nd, joining NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien on that same date.
"Though it makes me sick to do so without my writers, there are more than a hundred people whose financial well-being depends on our show," Kimmel said in a statement. "It is time to go back to work."
David Letterman reportedly is still trying to work out a waiver agreement with the striking Writers Guild of America that would enable him to resume work with a writing staff on board.
***The MySpace series quarterlife will join the NBC broadcast network's main stage on Monday, Feb 18th with weekly episodes at 8 p.m. (central).
Centering on "six creative people in their 20s," it's from thirtysomething creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, who also co-produced My So-Called Life.
Webisodes of quarterlife, running at 8 to 10 minutes, have been premiering twice weekly on MySpace before moving to quarterlife.com the next day. NBC plans to stitch them into one-hour episodes.
***Baseball vagabond Pete Rose not surprisingly has a few things to say about the Mitchell Report on the game's alleged steroid users. He'll say them during Wednesday's edition of Sports Unfiltered with Dennis Miller (9 p.m. central on Versus cable).
"Your juices were always flowing. Thank God they didn't have steroids back then," Miller tells Rose.
"I would have got 5,000 hits," he replies.
Rose also says, "I've been suspended 18 years for betting on my own team to win . . . I was wrong . . . But these guys today, if the allegations are true, they're making a mockery of the game."