Recycled Version of Showtime’s Dexter Coming to CBS This February
Here’s some intriguing TV news that comes hot on the heels of one of the possible side effects of the writer’s strike that I posted about last month. It looks like the top brass at CBS weren’t kidding when they hinted about mining their subsidiary cable network Showtime for content to fill up their 2008 schedule. According to TV Decoder, CBS announced today that they will begin airing the popular Showtime series Dexter on Sundays at 10 pm, starting Feb. 17th.
Alright, now I’m curious… how badly will they have to censor it in order to fit the show into the time and content restrictions of a primetime network slot? As they point out over at TV Squad, it might not be as much as you’d think, considering how gruesome shows like CSI have been getting over the years. (In fact, the success of CSI is exactly why I think Dexter could find an audience on network TV.) Still, it would be nice to think that some of the people who discover it on CBS may consider seeking out the original, unedited episodes on DVD or elsewhere.
CBS also indicated that The Tudors and Weeds are possible candidates to air on CBS in edited forms as well. Will other networks follow suit? Hard to say. Not every network can boast the same calibre of cable programming to draw from, but hey, maybe NBC will finally consider putting Battlestar Galactica on primetime after all.
Comments (3)
Ah, editing the Tudors. Makes me happy that the good folks at CBC air it in all it’s uncensored glory. Makes me wonder now…is it REALLY uncensored?
Posted by Marina on January 7th, 2008This is kind of strange as Sunday at 10 PM seems like a filler time anyway. It’s not like it would be filling in for a proper weekday primetime show.
Posted by Ian on January 7th, 2008A normal hour long episode of a network show is about 42 to 44 minutes, right? I believe Dexter tends to clock in at about ten minutes over that. If they don’t always air the full show opening, that’ll probably save them another minute or so. In theory, they’ll probably need to cut about ten minutes out of each episode, which doesn’t seem so bad, but then again that is actually between 1/5 and 1/6 of each episode, which could hinder some stories quite a bit. Then again, to get all of the cursing, nudity, extreme sexual acts, extreme violence, gore, and all of Masuka’s dirty jokes out of the show each episode would, they’d probably have to lose more than ten minutes per show anyway. I dunno. I love Dexter and would be glad for more people to discover the show, but I’d also feel kind of bad that such great stories and characters would have to be edited. I dunno. I guess CBS has gotta do what CBS has gotta do…
Posted by Rian on January 8th, 2008Leave a Reply