Corus unveiled Global's new fall lineup on Tuesday (somewhat optimistically, since there may not even BE a fall season if COVID continues to delay production) and I was surprised to see the network had taken "60 Minutes" away from CHCH-TV. It was one of the few new American imports the independent Hamilton station had. 

Still, there must be some relief in the newsroom with the announcement, since for years, they were forced to vamp until ready. "60 Minutes" is one of those shows that originator CBS refuses to let be pre-released in Canada. So CHCH could only show it the second it started airing on its American counterpart. 

That meant waiting - sometimes for over an hour - for sports programming like the NFL or a golf tournament to finish airing across the border. And that often meant having the 6 PM news extend on and on and on, with an on-air crawl and anchors promising "60 Minutes" would begin as soon as possible. And because CBS has so many sports rights, it meant this would happen every week for most of the year. 

I used to tune in to some of those extended newscasts to watch the anchor and producers struggle to fill an unknown amount of time waiting for the vaunted stopwatch to appear. Usually it meant repeating the same news items and weather for what seemed like an eternity, while almost apologizing for not getting to the show.

I have no idea what they'll fill that slot with, but there must certainly be some relief in the newsroom that they won't have to stay on airing filler while waiting for a thriller on another network to finally come to an end.

Global TV fall 2020 lineup