‘Ricki Lake’ Cancelled After One Season
No surprise here — Twentieth Television just announced that its struggling freshman syndicated talker The Ricki Lake Show will not be renewed for the 2013-2014 season. Original episodes will continue to air through the end of the season. Along with CBS TV Distribution’s Jeff Probst, Ricki Lake never found an audience to support it in the long run as the two faced a glut of new talk shows last fall. A similar announcement for Jeff Probst should be coming soon. “While we are proud of the topics the program tackled including childhood obesity, life-after the military, divorce, and addiction we were simply not able to breakthrough the crowded talk show marketplace,” Stephen Brown, Twentieth TV’s EVP of programming & development said.
While Ricki Lake was a disappointment, Twentieth TV did well with freshman syndicated strip Dish Nation, which was recently renewed for a second season after scoring well with young demos. And the company just struck a deal for a summer test run of a Kris Jenner daily talk show on Fox stations this summer. “I am so proud of the shows we completed this season, sparking important conversations about everything from raising children to mental illness to suicide prevention to coming out,” Lake said. “I will continue to be an active and passionate voice for subjects that are close to my heart through a variety of platforms — and a return to my documentary filmmaking work with Abby Epstein.” Ricki Lake joins sophomore syndicated talk show Anderson Cooper Live, which also is ending its run this season. Freshmen Katie, from ABC-Disney; Steve Harvey and Trisha Goddard, from NBCU; and Dish Nation have been renewed.
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