Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Lifetime Upfront: ARMY WIVES, DROP DEAD DIVA

Lifetime announced today at its upfront gathering in New York that scripted dramedy DROP DEAD DIVA, starring newcomer Brooke Elliott and Margaret Cho, will have its series premiere July 12.

The third season of ARMY WIVES, cable's top-rated drama among women 18-49, bow June 7.

PROJECT RUNWAY will make its Lifetime debut on Aug. 20 WITH a 14-episode run in the Thursday 10 p.m. time slot.

Lifetime will also air off-network episodes of GREY'S ANATOMY this fall.

The announcement was made today by Andrea Wong, President and CEO of Lifetime Networks, and JoAnn Alfano, Executive Vice President, Entertainment, who is marking her first Upfront season since taking the programming helm last September.

"JoAnn and our programming team have put together an aggressive slate of development for movies, scripted and unscripted series that reflects our commitment to growing and evolving the Lifetime brand," said Wong.

Building on the success of ARMY WIVES, Lifetime Networks is developing a number of hour-long dramas with some of entertainment's highest-level auspices. The programs include the following:

* MONA LISA SMILE, based on the feature film of the same name.
* MYSTIC PIZZA: ANOTHER SLICE, a two-hour, back-door pilot based on the hit film and executive produced and written by Amy Holden Jones (Mystic Pizza, Indecent Proposal).
* MARRY ME, a limited-run anthology series that starts with a couple who meets in the pilot and concludes with a wedding in Episode 13, from writer/executive producer Barbara Hall .
* QUEENS OF THE RODEO, a comedic drama with the exciting and dangerous rodeo circuit as the backdrop, from writer/executive producer Sara Goodman and executive producers Neal Moritz and Vivian Cannon.
* THE FALLEN (working title), based on T. Jefferson Parker's novel of the same name, from executive producer McG and executive producers/writers Ed Decter and John Strauss.
* MURDER IN SUBURBIA, formatted from the popular British series, is written and executive produced by Jon Maas.

Lifetime was 2008's highest-rated women's network on all of basic cable in both Total Day and Primetime across key female demographics, including W18-49, W25-54 and W18+. 2008 was also the Network's most watched year among W18-49 in Primetime since 2005, and it was the top-rated, ad-supported cable network for original movie premieres in W18+. In 2009, Lifetime and Lifetime Movie Network continue to out-rate all other women's networks in W18+ and W18-49.

5 comments:

  1. Lifetime was 2008's highest-rated women's network on all of basic cable in both Total Day and Primetime across key female demographics, including W18-49, W25-54 and W18+. this stat kills me! this network would work wonders for Otalia and GL and GL would be the feather in the cap of a fall line-up that includes grey's anatomy and medium. and project runway.

    if GL and lifetime were any more made for each other they would be olivia and natalia

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  2. Does the absence of GL from the upfronts for Lifetime mean that deal is effectively dead?

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  3. Mark, I think it would have only been included if there was a deal in place. It doesn't necessarily mean there won't be one coming at some point. I was actually surprised at how many different shows they have in development.

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  4. I love Lifetime and all the shows it comes out with. I’m especially fond of Drop Dead Diva. I am so glad I work for DISH because I just found out about DISH Online, a site where I can watch full episodes and behind the scenes clips of my favorite shows on demand. It's great!

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