I had such high hopes when the Hallmark Channel picked up Murder, She Wrote for syndication - it seemed like a good match, the stuff that long term relationships are made of. And early scheduling seemed to bear this out - Hallmark was showing MSW several times a day during the week and airing two episodes back to back on Sunday evenings, including one in the hallowed 8 PM time slot. After the long drought that marked MSW's syndication run on A&E and the Biography Channel, life was good again.
But alas, a peek at Hallmark's upcoming schedule for the rest of November and December reveals that this cable network, like A&E and Bio before it, is not adverse to jerking us around. Having already eliminated the early morning and primetime slots, as of November 26th the late night slots will also disappear, leaving only the noon EST airing during the week. To make matters worse, once December rolls around the Sunday night episodes also disappear, meaning we are left with just the weekday noontime airings - not terribly convenient for those of us who work during the day. The 11 pm and 12 am showings resume the day after Christmas leading me to hope that this is a temporary change made to accomodate some sort of blitz of Hallmark holiday specials, but only time will tell.
I find it very difficult to understand why MSW has such a tough time finding a steady time slot to call home in syndication land. Given the popularity of the show during its initial run on CBS, one would think that cable networks would be falling all over themselves to have it anchor their primetime lineups of syndicated shows. First A&E played around with it, eventually passing it off to its cousin Bio (which few people get unless they have satellites or oodles of extra cable channels), and now this. The only network that treated it with respect was the USA Network, the first cable channel to buy the syndication rights to the series (they also had the vision to produce Monk - coincidence? I think not).
Maybe word hasn't gotten around to the upper echelons of broadcasting that MSW is not just a series for members of the AARP. Maybe they think that families don't mind a steady diet of violence like they get from Walker, Texas Ranger (which replaced MSW in Hallmark's weekday 8 pm time slot about a month or so ago). Maybe the fact that the series is coming out on DVD scares them. Whatever it is, I wish they'd knock it off. Find a good slot for MSW and leave it there, and quit playing games with our loyalties.
