TVSquad

It was a grand idea, farming out their Sunday programming to Media Rights Capital, which immediately destroyed the night by putting on Easy Money and Valentine. So as a way of saying they're sorry, The CW is abandoning Sunday night altogether, giving them to the the local affiliates to do with as they wish. After the MRC debacle failed, they've been running movies no one has ever heard of.

This move will allow the affiliates to run ShamWow infomercials, which are almost guaranteed to get more viewers than Easy Money and Valentine had. Or they now have a great competitive slot to put Legend of the Seeker. Maybe we'll even get some more quality syndicated dramas that local affiliates can give a prime-time berth to. How about a cage fight between ShamWow pitchman Vince Schlomi and the godfather of product pimping Billy Mays? In my area it will mean my affiliate can play baseball games on Sundays rather than during the week, bumping my CW programming to Saturdays. I can't wait that long for my Reaper fix!

It looks like the great experiment has been deemed a failure. The CW is ending its relationship with Media Rights Capital, who produced its extremely low-rated Sunday night line-up.

The idea looked great on paper: rent out Sunday night to an independent content provider and let them reap the advertising rewards. World Wrestling Entertainment uses a similar model when it broadcasts its wrestling product on any given network. Sadly, the concept could not keep up with the sagging ratings of the CW.

The contract was terminated when MRC couldn't keep up with payments to the parent network. I doubt they were making that much in terms of advertising dollars either, given that their ratings were among the lowest ever for the network. That's saying a lot.

In any case, it's another example of The CW being one step closer to that "going out of business" sale. Perhaps they should simply go back to being the WB.

Brad told you a couple of weeks ago about the new shows on The CW this fall. The network put aside Sunday nights in order to have Media Rights Capital program the night as it pleased, as an experiment. Now, the lineup that MRC has come up with has been released. The network has put all four shows into production immediately (no pilots) so they'll be ready for fall. The shows will run from 7pm to 10pm. Note: sorry Moonlight fans, your show didn't make it.