CBS has revamped their Sunday schedule, dropping their weekly movie and replacing it with three Jerry Bruckheimer series: AMAZING RACE, COLD CASE and WITHOUT A TRACE. Bruckheimer owns Sunday, which may be the first time a single producer has owned a night of network programming since Aaron Spelling owned ABC’s Saturday with TJ HOOKER, THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND and later with THE LOVE BOAT, FANTASY ISLAND and FINDERS OF LOST LOVES (though Norman Lear came close with ARCHIE BUNKER’S PLACE, GLORIA, JEFFERSONS, and ONE DAY AT A TIME on CBS Sundays…the last hour going to TRAPPER JOHN MD).
It figures that CBS would do away with the Sunday night movie just as Tom Selleck was hitting his stride with the Robert B. Parker/Jesse Stone films. Maybe the Eye will find some way to squeeze more of them onto the schedule. Unless Selleck wants to take it to series …
They aren’t abandoning MOWs, rather the notion of setting aside a night for them on a regular basis. Moonves made a point of saying that the Tom Selleck movies were the only ones that worked…so I think we may be seeing more of them.
_Sunday, Saturday, Saturday, Sunday???? Aren’t weekends supposed to be a tv wasteland?