Chicago may get back in the talk show business, almost one year after the Jerry Springer and Steve Wilkos’ shows departed for Connecticut. And Springer’s former executive producer and director will be back at work on the new shows.
Robert Feder’s local broadcasting blog reports that EP Richard Dominick and director Greg Klazura will tape a pair of talk show pilots over two weekends in June at Ch. 9 for syndication by Tribune Broadcasting.
One of the hosts is radio personality is Cincinnati’s Bill Cunningham, who taped an earlier pilot with Springer for a show that went nowhere. The other host could be Bubba the Love Sponge, the Sirius XM radio personality on Howard Stern’s Howard 101 channel.
If approved, the two shows could turn up on Tribune and Sinclair Broadcast Group stations next January and be offered for national syndication in the fall of 2011.
“We’ve moving with an experienced team that’s been successful in the talk format,” wrote Ch. 9 VP/operations Steve Farber wrote in a memo to the Ch. 9 staff.
“The two pilots will be taped on June 12-13 and June 19-20 and will include a live audience. Show details will be forthcoming,” Farber said, according to Feder’s story.
The Jerry Springer Show, which moved here from Cincinnati, had been a Chicago fixture and tourist draw for 17 years and would still be yakking it up if the Illinois House hadn’t spurned a Senate-approved amendment making TV shows eligible for tax credits. (What! Give Oprah a tax credit?!)
With all its plans in place, the syndicator last March announced the departure of the two shows in June for the welcoming arms of Stamford, Conn. It’s too soon to tell if the two new Tribune shows will seek tax credits as they head for syndication.
