New Shows premiering on Me TV (1 Viewer)

[Richard V]

Wasn't sure where to post this (Mods please move to appropriate area if needed) but 3 old favorites are to premier on MeTV very soon. Starting Sept 4th, Highway Patrol will begin showing on MeTV and on Sept 10th, both Peter Gunn and The Untouchables will debut. More Golden Nostalgia.

 

[mattfire64]

The Fugitive is also scheduled before both The Untouchables and Peter Gunn as well. It's almost like they are doing a revival of the "Sunday Night Noir" block that got cancelled 3 (!) years ago.

 

[Charles Ellis]

Apparently Me-TV has first dibs on Dark Shadows, but nothing has happened yet.

 

[David Weicker]

Apparently Me-TV has first dibs on Dark Shadows, but nothing has happened yet.

The problem with Dark Shadows is would they have a five year contract (or two-and-half, if twice a day). A partial run would be frustrating.

Land Of The Giants had a one year, and with skipped weeks, didn't complete it run.

 

[mattfire64]

Apparently Me-TV has first dibs on Dark Shadows, but nothing has happened yet.

Dark Shadows has a rather complex history when it comes to broadcast syndication. The show's former distributor (Worldvision Enterprises) made the decision to split the show up into several 130 episode "cycles" and began their run of the show with the introduction of Barnabas roughly 200 episodes into the series. Based on what MeTV's sister station 'Decades' has aired of the show, Weigel Broadcasting (Parent company of both MeTV and Decades) only appears to have the broadcast rights to the first "cycle", which covers from Episode 210 (The official introduction of Barnabas) up to Episode 340 (The climax of the initial Barnabas storyline, and several episodes before the 1795 storyline).

Theoretically, MeTV could air this first cycle of episodes (which would take them six months if they aired one episode every weekday) and then purchase more episode cycles if the series does well enough for them, but there would still be several hurdles for them to cross. Namely, MeTV would have to put up enough money to make the first and final years of the show available to air, since they never initially aired in syndication.

Since MeTV is technically a "Broadcast Network", they have to adhere to these old guidelines. I also believe this was the reason why MeTV and Decades had to air the re-edited half hour episodes of Night Gallery instead of the hour originals.

On a random side note, the end credits appear to have been reformatted for the episodes that have aired on Decades. Dark Shadows was very peculiar in the fact that some episodes would hardly have any credits at all (Just flashing the Dan Curtis Productions screen and copyright notice) and some episodes had credits that would extend out to around 3 minutes in length, always playing out behind a "live feed" of one of the sets utilized on that episode which could lead to some entertaining bloopers. The episodes on Decades appear to simply take a freeze frame of the set utilized on the original credits and have the credits "retyped" over this freeze frame in order to have the credits on all episodes have a more even length.

Personally, I'd love to see MeTV air Dark Shadows. I think the show would make a perfect fit on their current late night weeknight schedule, preferably in-between The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

For more info on Dark Shadows syndication history, check out this snippet from the Dark Shadows Almanac:

https://books.google.com/books?id=VayAAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT178&lpg=PT178&dq=dark+shadows+broadcast+syndication&source=bl&ots=56pTjijrF7&sig=_kZcw_iUrO824vX0C8Dpbrc2eTc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjcl6Oluv_VAhUJ2WMKHTsbBpUQ6AEIXDAH#v=onepage&q=dark shadows broadcast syndication&f=false

 

[Steve...O]

Moving fro cable to Direct TV was a great move for many reasons, but the one downside is that I lost ME-TV and Antenna TV. Great programming on those channels.

 

[TravisR]

Moving fro cable to Direct TV was a great move for many reasons, but the one downside is that I lost ME-TV and Antenna TV. Great programming on those channels.

Aren't those channels available over the air so you could use an antenna to watch them?

 

[Richard V]

Aren't those channels available over the air so you could use an antenna to watch them?

That is how I get them.

 

[darkrock17]

If MeTV is able to get Dark Shadows they should air it every day at noon and then again at midnight.