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Weekend Maketplace on Fox to end, replaced with two hours of E/I programming

N

nathannah

It was announced in December 2013, but apparently everyone missed the news until yesterday, when it was announced in a kids industry newsletter that Steve Rotfeld Productions will provide four E/I shows a week under a Litton-like syndication package. Unless those two hours somehow involve Fox News Sunday, it's definitely the end of America's most-ignored infomercial block, Fox's Weekend Marketplace, the biggest waste of time (and money) Fox affiliates have to throw on their air every week.

The new E/I programming sounds actually interesting (any description that dares to use the word 'STEM fields' is definitely how Peggy Charren intended the E/I concept to be) and certainly more educational than Litton's cute animal and 'health is awesome' fluff. It may not get that many more eyeballs, but at this point anything that kills one of the most boneheaded moves a broadcaster ever made, to carry infomercials, is just fine by me. And if anything since all the Fox O&O's and Tribune Fox stations signed up, it's the end of an era where the New World 15 that switched to Fox were able to easily push off Fox Kids/FoxBox/4Kids/WM to other stations to maintain their Big Three-era Saturday morning local brokered home show schedules and control of what they chose for E/I. They finally got what they wanted; 2/3 of the E/I burden is now on Fox rather than on their backs.

It also ends the SD era; with Let's Make a Deal going HD in the fall, Weekend Marketplace's infomercials would be the last broadcast network 'content' in the format. Thankfully, that won't be true for much longer.
 
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Better than stupid infomercials.

-crainbebo
 
mrschimpf said:
... it's definitely the end of America's most-ignored infomercial block, Fox's Weekend Marketplace, the biggest waste of time (and money) Fox affiliates have to throw on their air every week.
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Absolutely, especially since FOX has been demanding their affiliates cross the network's palm(s) with a lot of money supposedly derived from "retrans." Two hours of paid-time infomercial trash is not what they should be getting. You're the network, help the stations.

BTW: Like any network programming, I'm sure any affiliate could pre-empt Marketplace if they wanted to for any reason. How many did I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was at least one rebel out there with better things to show twixt 10 AM & Noon local on a Saturday that would attract eyeballs - or take care of some other regulatory mandate.
 
Good bye and good riddance to the infomercials, but will the new E/I programming be any better than Litton's stuff? If Fox hadn't added E/I programming back, all we probably would be getting locally would be more infomercials anyway. :mad:

Is NBC still doing preschool shows? Even though I don't care about seeing it, that's probably better than anything on the networks on Saturday morning.

I'm still for bringing back Looney Tunes, but Cartoon Network probably won't let that happen. :rolleyes:
 
Joe_Capitano said:
Absolutely, especially since FOX has been demanding their affiliates cross the network's palm(s) with a lot of money supposedly derived from "retrans." Two hours of paid-time infomercial trash is not what they should be getting. You're the network, help the stations.

BTW: Like any network programming, I'm sure any affiliate could pre-empt Marketplace if they wanted to for any reason. How many did I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was at least one rebel out there with better things to show twixt 10 AM & Noon local on a Saturday that would attract eyeballs - or take care of some other regulatory mandate.
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So many Fox affiliates have preempted the network's Saturday morning offerings, particularly the old New World group.

In Phoenix the Fox Kids/4Kids TV block aired on our WB/CW affiliate, a day late (that baffled me as a kid). Weekend Marketplace is cleared on a local independent here.

Fox just completed expanding weekend morning newscasts on several of its O&Os, too.
 
NBC is still doing their preschool "NBC Kids" block. LazyTown, Noodle and Doodle, Justin Time, etc. Oddly enough there are some weeks here in Yakima where KNDO airs them on Saturdays, and others where they are aired at noon on weekdays Monday-Friday. And an INFOMERCIAL follows it! Some weeks however, noontime is an encore presentation of Jeopardy!

-crainbebo
 
MarioMania said:
I remember when stations signed off for the night, When did it stop?
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Some stations may still "sign off" occasionally. For example, WKRG-TV in Mobile, Alabama usually "signed off" on their main broadcast channel at the start of daylight-saving time in the Central time zone.
 
Joe_Capitano said:
BTW: Like any network programming, I'm sure any affiliate could pre-empt Marketplace if they wanted to for any reason. How many did I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was at least one rebel out there with better things to show twixt 10 AM & Noon local on a Saturday that would attract eyeballs - or take care of some other regulatory mandate.
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In Minneapolis, Marketplace is shuffled off to the co-owned MyNet station. I believe that is true in other markets as well.
 
HawkeyeST said:
Why not make it three hours?
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They already gave two hours back to affiliates when they killed the kid's block for the infomercials. Two hours is all Fox can do without paying the affiliates a lot for the hour back, which isn't going to happen.

Wright County Guy said:
In Minneapolis, Marketplace is shuffled off to the co-owned MyNet station. I believe that is true in other markets as well.
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WITI in Milwaukee never bothered with Fox's Saturday morning, and after WM came on, all the other stations just refused to carry it. The oddest case is in San Antonio, where Sinclair's CW affiliate carries the infomercials bizarrely on Saturday morning in place of their sister Fox affiil, and CW's kids programming airs late night where few kids would ever tune in. That's probably going to end come September, though Sinclair was loathe to air ABC's Litton block at all and usually does bulk deals for E/I shows in syndication across the chain.
 
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Wright County Guy said:
In Minneapolis, Marketplace is shuffled off to the co-owned MyNet station. I believe that is true in other markets as well.
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Yes, recently WJZY handed Weekend Marketplace off to WMYT which airs it from 9-11 am. I don't know if WJZY or WMYT will be airing the new E/I block.
 
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