‘The Conners’ Repeats To Air On The CW In Unusual Acquisition Deal; Premiere Date Set
22.12.2023 - 00:13
/ deadline.com
This is something we don’t see often — repeats of a current broadcast series airing concurrently on another broadcast network in primetime. In a deal with Lionsgate, the CW has acquired the five existing seasons of ABC’s comedy series The Conners. Back-to-back reruns of the Roseanne spinoff will air Thursdays 8:30 PM – 9:30 PM, flanked by original episodes of Canadian comedy imports Son of a Critch at 8 PM and Children Ruin Everything at 9:30 PM.
The Conners will begin its CW run Jan. 4 at 8:30 PM with the series’ first two episodes, “Keep On Truckin'” and “Tangled Up In Blue”. In addition to airing in the Thursday slot, the sitcom starring John Goodman, Sara Gilbert, Laurie Metcalf and Lecy Goranson, will also be deployed elsewhere on the schedule when needed, including on Sunday, Jan.7, behind a broadcast of the Jennifer Lopez starrer The Wedding Planner.
The deal with the CW stems from the distribution pact The Conners producer, Tom Werner’s Werner Entertainment, signed with Lionsgate in August for the indie studio’s Worldwide Television Distribution Group to handle global distribution, including SVOD, AVOD, basic cable and FAST rights, and for its Debmar-Mercury unit to shepherd domestic syndication.
This is not a broadcast syndication deal with the CW’s station group owner Nexstar; The Conners is in the process of being sold in broadcast syndication for a fall 2024 launch.
The unconventional pact fits into the CW strategy under its new ownership for broadening the network’s appeal beyond its previous young adult focus while also moving the CW to profitability by keeping programming costs low.
That has resulted in the CW relying largely on international acquisitions (primarily from Canada but also the UK and