‘The Family’ Postponed to Summer, ‘Are You Hot?’ Pushed Back Two Weeks, and Other ABC Changes

A combination of war coverage, schedule jumping, and not-up-to-par ratings have caused ABC to remove The Family from its current schedule, to push back Are You Hot? for several weeks, and to postpone the premiere of new series Extreme Makeover.

ABC has announced that The Family and Are You Hot? were both struggling before the war began, and the schedule juggling due to pre-emptions have only hurt matters. Even though The Family was not itself pre-empted, other shows during which ABC would have promoted The Family have been. Furthermore, the show was scheduled to move in two weeks to Thursday nights to allow NYPD Blue to return to Tuesdays. This would be yet another change that could have further eroded the viewing audience.

Therefore, ABC has decided to instead put the show on hiatus and show it during the summer, a strategy they used with The Mole 2 last year. (Does this mean we can expect to soon see a “Celebrity Family” as well?)

Are You Hot? only had two scheduled shows remaining. Both of them will be combined into a two-hour finale on Saturday, April 5, at 9/8 Central.

Extreme Makeover, a new series based on the special aired earlier this year, has been pushed back to a premiere date of Thursday, April 10.

Ironically, war documentary/reality show Tales from the Front Line has also been put on hiatus. (The network called it a reality show, but most critics and viewers saw it as a documentary that merely had the “reality show” label applied to it in an attempt to gain more viewers.) Apparently we get enough war TV from the current war and don’t need to watch the Afghanistan war as well.

According to TV Guide online and ABC’s website, The Bachelor premiere is still set to air tomorrow, Wednesday the 26th. No word on what will become of the special “where are they now” episode that was supposed to air last week. The second episode of All American Girl, which follows The Bachelor, is also still scheduled to appear.

Remember that any of this information can change due to changes in the war. RealityNewsOnline will continue to provide you with information as we receive it.

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at rno@pobox.com.

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