Glad that the actor’s strike is finally over after 118 days between July and this week as well as six months when it comes to the strikes as a whole that affected the writers from around April until the end of September. All late night and some daytime talk shows are up and running again, as well as seeing CBS finally replace The Late Late Show franchise last week for the 12.37am timeslot with a new version of @midnight called After Midnight after James Corden left also in April this year to return back to the UK where it might not be another talk show, but this time it’s going to be a panel game show that will target a young audience alongside a young comedian at the helm named Taylor Tomlinson based on the up-to-date events off the internet.
Now ABC today has finally made their decisions regarding the last two shows that have been hanging in the balance for months, such a possible Season 2 of the Rookie: Feds & a potential spin-off on The Good Lawyer following its backdoor pilot episode of the flagship The Good Doctor medical drama show back in March this year. Unfortunately, neither of them will be going forward since it’s almost the end of this year thanks to both strikes along with the end of comedy sitcom Home Economics who won’t be getting a 4th season not long after the writers’ strike has over. That means, the only new show from this year’s pilot intake that got a series order other than rescuing 9-1-1 from FOX was High Potential, a comedy-crime police drama adopted from France whose plot involving a mother of three who has extraordinary ability to solve crimes, will still go ahead but has since been pushed back to a year from now in order to get their returning scripted shows back on the air first ASAP through March 2024. If it wasn’t for the writer’s & actors’ strikes, A full season of The Good Lawyer would’ve been on the air by now last month or early March next year if both strikes did end sooner before October which sadly took a month longer than anticipated. Plus, while fans did enjoy watching the Rookie spin-off show (The Rookie: Feds) with sound ratings, they can only focus on the main show moving forward as there is no room for Season 2 with also unfortunate thanks from the strike.
While there is nothing ABC can do about this no matter how disappointed the usual TV fan is feeling at the moment, all they can now is honour their existing strike-proof commitments between now and February before all of their existing scripted programming can come back in life. Then we’ll wait and see which next batch of in-development projects will be up for a pilot screening come mid-2024 as I expect they will choose quality over quantity when it comes to picking up series orders. So scripted programming is here to stay but their library shelf won’t fill in that much since The Golden Bachelor for the elderly and the return of Dancing With the Stars on free-to-air (this time on Tuesday nights) has been their main headline acts since this prime-time TV season. Although I still haven’t heard much detail or official confirmation about the return of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition since June/July, but as it stands, it looks like The Home Edit duo of Clea Shearer & Joanna Teplin will be hosting the show rather than Ty Pennington who hosted the original version on this network between 2004-2012.