It took some wranglin’ but Dick Wolf’s Law and Order franchise is secure, along with his dream to have the longest running dramatic show in television history. And I don’t mean the show that seems longest. Believe me, he’s already got that.

You may recall in March on the podcast I talked about the danger Law and Order was in. The episodes cost too much and weren’t performing like they used to so NBC was talking about scuttling the franchise. I think I used the phrase “pack Sam Waterston in bubble wrap and go home.” Now the negotiations are over and guess what - everybody wins!

LAW AND ORDER: SVU wasn’t in any danger. It’s about sex crimes. People eat that up with a spoon.

LAW AND ORDER has been renewed to for 22-episode seasons until 2012.

LAW AND ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT is renewed under the same terms, except here’s the weird part - it will originate on the NBC owned USA network, then re-run on NBC a week or two later. Basically the exact deal they had before but in reverse.

“Putting ‘Criminal Intent’ originals on USA was the centerpiece of this whole thing,” said NBC Universal prexy-CEO Jeff Zucker. “The fact that originals will air on USA serves to make USA an even stronger and more dominant channel. It propels USA into a new stratosphere above where they already were, and into the big leagues with ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox. It starts to make USA the fifth major network.”

It makes LOCI the big fish in a smaller pond essentially. But what about the cost? Oh, the onerous cost?

Zucker hinted that the company also will likely start pushing advertisers to pay broadcast-level cost-per-thousand (CPM) rates on USA shows, starting with “Criminal Intent.”

Wolf and Zucker declined to specifically discuss license fee arrangements. It’s rare for a basic cable net to order a full 22-episode order of a drama; it’s even rarer for a network drama to make the jump to cable without a significant license fee reduction. But the second run of “Criminal Intent” likely will help USA amortize the cost.

I’m guessing that Wolf will produce the shows for even less than they cost before, and NBC is paying more than they thought they could afford because they can try this crazy first-run cable scheme. So whatever I said before, everybody loses. But GUNSMOKE, the current longest-running series, was on for twenty years. Unless everyone on LAW AND ORDER has massive simultaneous Orbach-style heart attacks, the show will beat that by two years. Keep taking your Lipitor, everyone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 1:42 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.