ABC has announced that it is picking up the summer’s “hottest new scripted series” for a second season, after only its third broadcast on the network.
It’s referring, of course, to its rookie-cop drama “Rookie Blue,” though this may come as something of a surprise to those Reporters Who Cover Television who have been piling on since its premiere June 24.
“Rookie,” shot entirely on location in Toronto, is about five hot rookie cops who are “thrown into the world of big-city policing” and are learning (cliche alert!) “that no amount of training can prepare them for this job — or life,” ABC says. It stars several faces familiar to U.S. viewers, including Missy Peregrym (“Reaper,” “Heroes”), Gregory Smith (“Everwood”) and Enuka Okuma (“24”).
ABC picked up “Rookie” for a second season because:
A) It is attracting about 2.4 million 18-to-49-year-olds, the crack cocaine of Madison Avenue.
B) “Rookie” costs about as much, per episode, as your average reality series because it’s a Canadian production; ABC has bought the U.S. broadcast rights.
C) Advertisers still prefer scripted shows over reality programs.
D) In the teeth of ESPN’s big wet kiss to NBA star LeBron James, which lured 10.8 million people into watching LeBron announce he was going to throw over Cleveland to play for the Miami Heat, “Rookie Blue” hung on to more than 6 million fans.
E) “Rookie” has story lines like last week’s, in which hot rookie Andy, trades in her uniform for something more risque when she goes undercover as a prostitute. Ka-ching!
“Hot in Cleveland” sinks.
You know what’s the most amazing thing about TV Land’s first scripted series, “Hot in Cleveland”? You think it can’t get any worse. And then it does! Joe Jonas has been signed to guest on this sitcom, in which the enormously talented Wendie Malick gets punished for something she did in her youth.
She’s playing a middle-age actress who attempts to fly from Los Angeles to Paris with her similarly aged gals Jane Leeves and Valerie Bertinelli, who is still of the “adorable” school of acting. Anyway, their flight gets rerouted to Cleveland, and they decide to stay because the town is “less shallow … and weight-conscious than L.A.” — and they lease a home haunted by a crazy caretaker (Betty White).
Oprah’s story.
TV producer Larry Thompson has optioned Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized biography of Oprah Winfrey, and he is trying to sell it to a network. The easiest way to do that these days is to “leak” it in the form of a news release, and let them jump all over it, which he did, and they did.
