TV Guide Network has picked up the cable off-network rights to Ugly Betty.  The move comes as the Network is changing its programming direction under new ownership.
Under the deal inked with Disney-ABC, TV Guide network will begin airing new installments of Ugly Betty within two weeks of their run on ABC.  This will begin following the show’s October 9th 2-hour season premiere.
TV Guide will also run the show as a weekly strip beginning in fall 2010 when TVGuide.com will have rights to stream up to five Ugly Betty episodes at a time.  (Currently, new episodes are available at ABC.com …read more

Two months ago, Hulu, the video content provider, announced a deal with ABC to post that network’s content on its website.  That deal is now starting to come to fruition.
Episodes of Grey’s Anatomy  are now available on the site – five episodes from season five.
“Over the next two weeks, more ABC shows will launch on Hulu as part of our ongoing Hulu Days of Summer promotion, including current hits like I Survived a Japanese Game Show and The Superstars, as well as popular shows like Desperate Housewives, Ugly Betty and Scrubs,” a Hulu spokesman said.
Also to be available soon …read more

ABC is already shuffling its summer schedule, pulling low-rated animated series The Goode Family from Wednesday nights.
That was quick.
But, the Mike Judge show isn’t totally dead: It’s moving to Fridays at 8:30 p.m. on June 12, slotted behind original episodes of “Surviving Suburbia”. At 9. 
“Wife Swap” currently airs Fridays from 8-9. ABC had previously decided to air repeats of “Samantha Who” Fridays from 9-10, starting this week– perhaps to warm up the timeslot for “Ugly Betty,” which relocates to the night in the fall.
As for me, I kind of wish Samantha Who? could find its way to the …read more

I have to hand it to Reveille, the production company behind Ugly Betty and The Office.  They’ve never been afraid to roll the dice.  But I have to wonder if they are betting too big on a real longshot: a Twitter-based TV show.
According to Variety, Twitter has been in talks with Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment to create a program based on the Web service. The show has been described as “putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format.” (Sounds kind of like entertainment blogging to me )
I’ve been trying to figure out …read more

California’s legislature recently passed a tax incentives package to keep movie and television production from leaving the state.  The bill, appropriately named “the Ugly Betty Bill”, was sponsored by California Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he’ll sign it.
It’s called the Ugly Betty Bill, of course, because the show’s move to New York (along with hundreds of jobs), was a wake up call for both Hollywood and the state of California.  Of course, ugly Betty was just the latest in a stream of Films, TV shows, and commercials that either moved or were produced outside of …read more

There is a great discussion going on in the comments of this post at TV By The Numbers about Ugly Betty’s showing against Survivor.   As usual, the numbers last night weren’t bad, but weren’t stellar either.
The conversation has been about whether or not Ugly Betty should be moved to another night.  I have to tell you, the thought intrigues me a little.
Betty does well in the “demos”, and even better in the young women demographic (it actually beats Survivor).  But, it’s barely enough to keep the show “safe” in the Renew or Cancel index.  Someone suggested that Betty would …read more

The news about Ugly Betty’s future has been all over the place. The original press release from ABC about the show’s benching was way too open-ended, and caused all kinds of speculation. Many web (and even news) sites erroneously reported that Ugly Betty was being “cancelled”, or the almost-as-ominous-sounding “shelved”.
[...Pats self on back for resisting and sticking with the word "benching"]
Thank goodness for blogging. Yesterday, Michael Urie, one of the show’s stars, helped calm many of us with this posting at his blog. He says,
come on, really? Here are the facts:
We are going …read more

The Ugly Betty fan community is still in shock over yesterday’s news of the show’s benching by ABC. Life does go on, and there will be more news to report later, but, of course, foremost on our minds is the fate of our favorite show.
It might be wishful thinking but I keep coming back to “benching does not equal cancelling”. An ABC representative insists, “…Betty is a solid performer and there is no question that it will definitely be back to complete its season, just without repeats.”
Then there’s this: EOnline’s Kristin spoke to ABC insiders, and says, “The …read more

As many of you know, we’ve been watching how Ugly Betty has been faring on the Renew/Cancel index at TV By The Numbers.  In short, the TVBTN folks have come up with a formula that crunches the internals of the weekly ratings numbers for all TV shows, and uses those numbers to rank the shows on their likelihood of being canceled.  The formula relies heavily on the 18-49 “demos”, because apparently there’s an almost direct relation between the demo numbers and a show’s survival.  The history of “the index” is that it’s quite accurate.
(That’s always been true, this is …read more

I guess our questions about the return of David Blue and his character Cliff to Ugly Betty have been answered.
According to Ausiello at EW Online, Blue has joined the cast of Sci Fi Channel’s Stargate Universe. This is the third (and edgiest, they say) installment of the series.
Blue, along with headliner Robert Carlyle, plays “Eli Wallace, a total slacker who just happens to be an utter genius with anything he puts his mind to — mathematics, computers, video games. A lack confidence has left him with an acerbic sense of humor”, Ausiello reports.
Wow – it sounds similar to the …read more