1 of 1- RadioActive
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Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
It's a common enough ratings ploy - have the cast of one series "crossover" from another show on the same network and put them together for an hour. It happens a lot on NBC's Wednesday night "Chicago" trio, and since City owns the rights to all of them here, it's usually not a problem.
But what happens when one Canadian network owns the rights to a U.S. show, only to have characters guest star from a show they don't own?
That's the case on Monday night, when Global airs the Fox show "911" at 8 PM. That's followed immediately on the American network by the spin-off "911: Lone Star," starring the cast from the original program as special guest stars. But "Lone Star" airs here on CTV, which means that network will essentially be promoting its rival's show for an hour.
It doesn't happen often, of course, but it's a weird anomaly when it does. And it could only happen in Canada.
The greatest instance of this I ever saw, though, came not in this country but the U.S. And it was one of the oddest "crossovers" ever. It started on the terrific NBC show "Community" where the character Abed openly professed his love for "Cougar Town," the Courtney Cox show that aired on ABC. It was a running gag for a while, until one day in the new season Abed announced that during his "spring break" he'd gone to Hollywood and gotten a guest spot as an extra on his favourite show. But he got nervous and was so intimidated, he wound up running off the set.
That should have been the end of it, but a few weeks later, an episode of "Cougar Town" took place in an outdoor cafe. As the two main protagonists of that series exchanged dialogue, in the background, you could see Abed sitting at a nearby table. After about 30 secs., you see him get a panicked look on his face, get up, tip over his chair and run off the screen. Meanwhile, the two other actors keep talking and it's never explained.
If you didn't watch both shows, you would have had no idea what that was all about, the ultimate inside joke Easter egg.
It still makes me laugh thinking about it all these years later. It was brilliant and one of my favourite surreal TV moments of all time.
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
I should have known it was online somewhere.
Community: Abed’s Cougar Town Crossover Explained
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Thread Starter- Paul Jeffries
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
There's been at least a couple of instances a few years ago with crossovers between one or more of the Chicago shows and Law & Order: SVU; the former running on Global at the time and the latter on CTV. NBC promoted the heck out of the "crossover event", whereas, if I recall correctly, Global and CTV didn't even do their standard weekly promos for the shows, almost pretending as though they didn't even exist for those weeks, for obvious reasons.
PJ
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You're right. I'd forgotten about those. I'm sure there were others over the years.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Oh the horrors of simsub! As usual, I will PVR both shows on FOX Seattle and watch the episodes tomorrow.
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Good plan. I always try to watch a U.S. made show on its originating network. That way I know I'm seeing the entire thing and nothing is edited out for extra spots or promo time. Plus the scenes from next week air intact.
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Thread Starter- MJ Vancouver
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
Paul Jeffries wrote:
There's been at least a couple of instances a few years ago with crossovers between one or more of the Chicago shows and Law & Order: SVU; the former running on Global at the time and the latter on CTV. NBC promoted the heck out of the "crossover event", whereas, if I recall correctly, Global and CTV didn't even do their standard weekly promos for the shows, almost pretending as though they didn't even exist for those weeks, for obvious reasons.
PJ
There was once a crossover between the X-Files and Law & Order, back in 1997. Detective John Munch was on Law & Order, and he also appeared on an episode of the X-Files. L&O was on NBC (CTV in Canada) while the X-Files were on Fox (Global in Canada).
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Here's another drawback that only becomes apparent after a few years. If they do a crossover on say, all the Chicago shows on a Wednesday, NBC gets to promote the hell out of it, and it almost always does well in the ratings.
But if the shows are hits and stay on a few years, they go into syndication, where they're seen individually on various stations - and some may not take all of them. That means there will be episodes where a story starts on Chicago Med and then never finishes, because the station who bought that program didn't also purchase Chicago Fire and Chicago PD. What a disservice to viewers, who might watch the show and never see how a plot ends. Or comes in in the middle. Or just sees the end.
This is a real problem for the so-called "Arrowverse" on the CW, which regularly did multi-parters over 5 different shows (Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning and Legends of Tomorrow.) Each show was used to develop a single ongoing part of a whole story. What happens when a station group buys just one of those shows? No one gets to see how it ends. Not that the networks care at the time they air and do big numbers.
But viewers who discover these shows later on in life are cheated of a resolution. And I know if I wasted my time watching a show without an ending, I'd be some kind of P.O.'d.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
Chicago Wednesday has only been around since September 2018. The PD portion has aired at 10pm since it premiered in 2014. Med spent its first three seasons Thursdays at 9pm and Tuesdays at 9 and 10pm. The first season on Wednesdays saw the series move from 27th to 15th in the Neilsen ratings. Fire arrived on Wednesday in season 7. Ratings improved from 29th to 14th. There had been occasional crossovers over the years and a few with PD and SVU. Now that all three are entrenched on Wednesday night, I have noticed the scripts are intertwined on a much more regular basis. ION recently signed a deal to air reruns of PD and NBC sister network USA airs episodes as well.Currently, I am not aware of any syndication deals for Med and Fire.
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Traditionally, a series has to reach 100 episodes before it can enter syndication. (There has to be enough shows to make it worthwhile to "strip" them every day. That's why producers hold big celebrations when they reach triple digits, because those involved know that's when the payday really begins!)
None of the Chicago shows has been around long enough to get there yet, but they regularly win the night for NBC, meaning they will likely be around for a while.
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Thread Starter- Radiowiz
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This is all nothing new. Going all the way back to the 80's when Tom Selleck's version of Magnum P.I. had an episode that continued on Murder she wrote.
Now that I think about it, Vision TV has classic Murder she wrote episodes, but who has the right to air classic Magnum P.I. in Canada...? Just a thought...
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RadioWiz & THE Wiz are NOT the same person.
- mace
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
Traditionally, a series has to reach 100 episodes before it can enter syndication. (There has to be enough shows to make it worthwhile to "strip" them every day. That's why producers hold big celebrations when they reach triple digits, because those involved know that's when the payday really begins!)
None of the Chicago shows has been around long enough to get there yet, but they regularly win the night for NBC, meaning they will likely be around for a while.
Actually, Chicago Fire has produced 183 episodes in its 9 seasons and Med has just squeaked over the magic 100 mark [106] in its 6 seasons of production.
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Didn't realize they'd been on that long. Guess they both rolled out that big cake that's become something of a 100-episode tradition. The big payoff is there for Dick Wolf, who is already raking it in for his Law & Order franchises, which have been running forever.
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Thread Starter- mace
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
While watching a rescue scene in a recent episode of 911-Lonestar, in the background was a billboard displaying "4 News Channel Weeknights at 6" with the call letters KZJP. Being a FOX series, one might think the billboard would display the call letters of the actual Austin affilliate FOX7 KTBC. When CSI: Miami was in production, television news reports displayed on screen were from the CBS Miami affilliate WFOR.
- MJ Vancouver
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Re: Crossover Episode Creates Awkward Moment For CTV Monday Night
While watching a rescue scene in a recent episode of 911-Lonestar, in the background was a billboard displaying "4 News Channel Weeknights at 6" with the call letters KZJP. Being a FOX series, one might think the billboard would display the call letters of the actual Austin affilliate FOX7 KTBC. When CSI: Miami was in production, television news reports displayed on screen were from the CBS Miami affilliate WFOR.
NBC shows sometimes make use of real affiliates, and sometimes they use fake stations. There was a Seinfeld episode where Jerry, George and Kramer were in Los Angeles and Kramer got arrested, and Canadian TV anchor Keith Morrison appeared on a TV (though the station wasn't named, Morrison was the anchor at KNBC at the time).
Law & Order and its SVU spinoff at times has used WNBC, and in one case MSNBC's Morning Joe with a cameo appearance by Joe Scarborough, but at other times they've used fake "Channel 3", "Channel 8", or "Channel 10" stations. There was one weird exception where a WGN Chicago mic appeared in a scene in SVU. At times they've also used real-life cable channel NY1, which has never had anything to do with NBC.