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‘Ugly Betty’ gets prettier time slot
“Ugly Betty,” ABC’s wonderfully warm-hearted show about an adorable, normal-sized girl in the super-skinny New York fashion world, will air on Thursday nights this fall instead of the previously designated Fridays.
Fridays, as everyone surely knows by now, is a graveyard, with only a fraction of the viewership attracted to network TV on other nights. Thursday nights is one of the most-watched nights, along with Sundays.
Which means that ABC had very little faith in “Ugly Betty” when it announced its prime-time schedule in May. But now that the buzz surrounding the show, starring the fabulous America Ferrera and produced by the equally fabulous Salma Hayek, has grown deafening, suddenly the show rates a decent time slot.
Sometimes you don’t know whether to hug or slap these network programmers. On the one hand, they’re giving us a truly original and completely enjoyable new show. On the other hand, they apparently didn’t know how good it was until reporters and fans started buzzing about it.
Whatever. With the schedule move, “Ugly Betty” will air Thursdays at 7 p.m., leading into the relocated mega-hit “Grey’s Anatomy” which in turn leads into another potentially hot newcomer, “Six Degrees,” at 9 p.m.
The trickle-down effect of moving “Betty” from Fridays to Thursdays will bump to “TBD” (to be determined) status two new sitcoms, “Big Day,” a not-funny comedy about a family’s hysteria on the daughter’s wedding day, and “Notes from the Underbelly,” another not-so-funny comedy about a couple entering the wonderful world of pregnancy. Maybe they’ll be delayed and then disappear.
‘Primetime’s’ cheesy ‘news’
Sam Donaldson, the crusty, hard-news guy with the weird hairpiece who helped launch ABC’s “Primetime Live” as an actual newsmagazine in the ’80s, must be screaming on his ranch in New Mexico.
Last night’s unsavory edition of “Primetime” was anything but news. Dubbed “Medical Mysteries,” it featured people who were desperate to amputate their limbs (an alleged psychiatric disorder) and people who felt like worms were crawling under their skin.
This is not news, by anyone’s definition. It’s more like the “Guinness World Records” freak shows and 200-pound tumor folks that used to be the purview of cheesy cable shows. Now they’re prime-time on a major network masquerading as news.
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Comments
By Joe
August 10, 2006 04:04 PM | Link to this
"they’re giving us a truly original and completely enjoyable new show"
I agree it's completely enjoyable, but it's hardly original. There have been numerous versions of "Betty La Fea" on Spanish TV, Salma Hayek is simply making an English version of the show.