Wednesday, March 25, 2009

WFLD (and WPWR) grab "5th Grader" (updated)

Fox-owned WFLD-TV here in Chicago (and sis station KTTV in Los Angeles) have picked up the half-hour syndicated version of Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader from Twentieth Television for this fall.

The game show, produced by Survivor creater Mark Burnett and hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, has aired on prime-time on Fox to respectable ratings. The program has cleared 95 stations covering 80 percent of the country for a September premiere.

This puts Twentieth back in the game show business, after the failure of Temptation in 2007-08 season.

5th Grader has also cleared New York's WPIX-TV.

UPDATE: According to Marc Berman's Programming Insider, Fox's sister station in Chicago (WPWR) is expected to carry the show instead. With the station already airing Family Feud, pairing it with 5th Grader makes a lot of sense.

A surprise here is Twentieth sold the show to Tribune stations in New York and Philadelphia and Sinclair's CW affiliate in Minneapolis, and not Fox O&Os in those markets.

Other clearences include WBNX in Cleveland, KPLR-TV in St. Louis, and WJBK-TV in Detroit.

Updated at 8:06 p.m. on 2009-03-26.

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