Court TV, R.I.P.

Court TV has been killed and is going straight to Younger Viewer Hell.

Make that Younger Male Viewer Hell. "The fringe, primetime and late-night audience is male and loves real people, situations and stories, especially action-focused stories," per BloggingStocks.com. So the channel for courtroom junkies is being taken over by Cops-lovers.

Don't they already have several cable channels catering to Junior & Stupid?

Network X will still cover trials and crime news live from 9 to 3, but in yesterday's announcement they said at the year's end, the channel will get a new name, new logo, add a Star Jones show (don't laugh, she was once a prosecutor) and scale back on the "widely abhorred but habitually watched" Nancy Grace (AOL).

The new shows at night will include "Bounty Girls" about female bounty hunters who live in a hot climate. Pathetic, people!

Frankly I don't think all of this means much. Recall that Court TV abandoned any semblance of "programming" when OJ Simpson and Scott Peterson were on trial.

We're only one Trial of the Century away from getting our Court TV back.

Meanwhile, yesterday I participated in an online chat with John Waters, who will play the Grim Reaper as host of Court TV's new show, Til Death Do Us Part, a fictional account of "average American cases" of spousal murder. The show starts Monday the 19th and this is one "crime hag" (as Waters says) who's tuning in. Court TV set up an online chat with the mustachioed grande dame of death so he could talk up all his crime hags about "the first court TV show with a sense of humor."

Some gems --

John Waters on Manson's women: "Naive, suburban hippies who met one of the most notorious madmen of our time."

John Waters on true crime rags: "Court TV put the true crime magazines out of business... who can compete with Court TV?"

John Waters on the true crime genre: "My favorite one recently was Murder in the Heartland [by M. William Phelps]."

Marital advice from John Waters: "Stay single and stay alive... murder is possible in any marriage... every time you fall in love, you also possibly fall in hate."

Comments

[Corey Mitchell]

I couldn't agree with you more about CourtMTV. I busted on them in my book, EVIL EYES, when they decided to preempt the Coral Eugene Watts serial killer trial for wall-to-wall coverage of the Scott Peterson jury deliberation for several days. So, instead of hearing testimony from young women who heroically survived attacks by our country's most notorious serial killer, we were blessed with hours of what the jury members "might be thinking" in a sad, but ultimately, overblown case.

I refuse to kiss CourtTV's ass.

Corey Mitchell

[BobH]

I'm assuming that the female bounty hunters are in a hot climate so that they can do their hunting minimally encumbered by clothing?

[Corey Mitchell]

Here is a good supplement to this story in regard to stagnant advertising dollars despite higher ratings.

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman/publish/article_10819.asp

[A Voice of Sanity]

The very least they could do with the new format is re-run "Partners in Crime" (1984) with Loni Anderson and Lynda Carter. If we're going to watch eye candy . . . . .