This week was the unofficial kickoff to the 2025-26 primetime television season, not that you likely noticed. For one thing, the current champion of what’s left of linear TV, CBS, has chosen to wait until the middle of next month to officially kickstart their schedule, though they have snuck in an original SURVIVOR just for the semblance of playing along. (FWIW, the CW seems to be doing that, too). And much has been the case when these things mattered a lot more, there are a few others that will be withheld by a week or two for a slightly longer onramp and their own promotional focus.
I could go on for hours or even days about this because for decades my autumns were defined by these moments, a call to action that would mean vacations or even sick days were verboten, showing up at the crack of dawn to get a head start on the processing and interpreting of overnight results both local and national was a requirement and inevitably there would be impromptu meetings to figure out what else we might need to do to amplify or rationalize what we saw before the trade media beat us to it. It was exhausting, to be sure, but it was also exhilarating.
Alas, this is now the sixth consecutive autumn I will not be an actual part of this, and it’s actually been that long since I set foot on the Sony lot that was my most recent stop on my professional journey. And as the distance between today and yesterday continues to grow it begins to become clearer and clearer that despite my best efforts and doing everything within my power to find someone–ANYONE–who might be able to provide a connection for even a PROJECT the harsh reality is that to those still in the biz, I’m as good as deceased. With the exception of a handful of mid-level folks who do their darndest to stay under any radar of change and who would never risk whatever security they may have to even dredge up my name in conversation, just about everyone who was part of the teams I cherished being an integral part of are gone. As are virtually all of the shows that I worked feverishly on to sell, renew and save. And even those scant few that remain are seeing departures of key talent that are reshaping their look and potential.
I was soberly reminded of this with the raft of promotion I saw for the new season of SHARK TANK that began this week, a byproduct of monitoring the triumphant return of Jimmy Kimmel to ABC’s air and the slew of related news about the behind-the-scenes haggling that we spent quite a bit of time musing about. INC.’s Graham Winfrey provided this synopsis:
Shark Tank is back, but it may never be the same. ABC’s Emmy-winning business-themed series returns for its 17th season this week, albeit with two big changes: Longtime Shark and billionaire Mark Cuban is no longer one of the five investors on the show, and it will no longer air on Friday nights at 9 p.m. ET. Beginning this week, Shark Tank moves to its new time slot of Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET.
Season 17 welcomes back returning Shark investors Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, Daniel Lubetzky, and Kevin O’Leary, but will also feature more guest Sharks than any other season, according to ABC. Guest Shark investors this year include Allison Ellsworth, co-founder of prebiotic soda brand Poppi; Chip and Joanna Gaines, co-founders of the lifestyle brand Magnolia; Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit; jewelry entrepreneur Kendra Scott; television host and former NFL star Michael Strahan; Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey co-founder Fawn Weaver; and venture capitalist Rashaun Williams.
I’ve previously mused about the whole process of integrating guest sharks into the format and I therefore envy the folks who I would hope have been as integrated into the process of deciding which are viable and resonating as I and my colleagues were. The show’s longtime showruner Clay Newbill and his right hand Yun Lingner are among the most inclusive and thorough creatives I ever had the good fortune to collaborate with, and the insights they offered to THE WRAP’s JD Knapp on what went into the moves outlined above rang more than a few bells in my long-term memory:
“We used to be on a different night and ABC moved us to Friday. At that time, nobody watched TV on Fridays and I distinctly remember having a conversation with ABC executives asking, ‘You say you love the show, why are you moving it there? It’ll die there!’ ”… Newbill told TheWrap at ABC’s Summer Soirée earlier this month. “I was wrong, they were right. So, honestly, I trust them — a lot of effort and work and thought goes into it before they make a move like that. Plus, the interesting thing is our lead-in will be ‘The Golden Bachelor,’ which if you look at the demos, both reality.”
“We like to keep the show pretty uniform with the formula, but how we really mix it up is with the Guest Sharks,” … Lingner added. “That’s a really important component of the show, because everybody has a different perspective about business and the entrepreneurs that come in every season are really a natural reflection of what’s going on in business. Like at the beginning of the show, people didn’t sell on social media, right? But now that’s everything. So it’s just a natural kind of manifestation of what’s really going on.”
But the takeaway that we got in all the work myself and my colleagues did was that there was no personality or presence more captivating or galavanizing as Cuban. And although per PEOPLE’s Debra Wallace Cuban isn’t completely departing he will no longer be the reliable and practically omnipresent source of familarity and promotion that the show inevitably relied upon whenever someone new at ABC might have gotten the idea to see it as yesterday’s news. And with all due respect to the newly promoted former guest shark Daniel Lubetzky, he may be one of a Kind (pun intended), but he’s no Cuban. He may need that new lead-in as much as anyone–our experience for the better part of the show’s prior 16 seasons was that it was a self-starter. That Friday slot, for a spell following some god-awful sitcoms such as CRISTELA and our DR. KEN, and later usurping those shows for the 8 PM hour, was a safe haven which they now no longer have.
What did get that slot was another Sony unscripted show in transition, although that process actually began last fall. WOMAN’S WORLD’s Carissa Mosness was on top of that one:
Celebrity Wheel of Fortune Season 6 was officially announced earlier this year, but it came with one major change. In previous seasons, Pat Sajak has hosted the competition show alongside Vanna White. In Season 6, though, Sajak’s role will be taken over by Ryan Se(a)creast, as it had on the regular Wheel of Fortune after he retired in June 2024.
Perhaps the best thing that can be said about CWOF is that it’s pretty much been rolling along as it was for the past couple of decades despite the change in emcees. If anything, the comfort food touchpoints are still ubiquitous, with White a connector to the show’s past and Seacrest a connector to ABC’s present–AMERICAN IDOL is still one of the most popular of the array of unscripted shows on the network and yes, up until recently that list included JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!.
All that aside, it’s still not easy for me to grapple with the fact that two more folks that I worked with and knew are no longer showing up on the Sony lot for tapings, meetings and schmoozing–even with the rank and file. Especially since any chance I have to somehow still part an actual part of it grow dimmer and dimmer with each passing autumn.
So best of luck to those still involved that I knew –and all the more to the much larger contingent that I didn’t. You deserve to experience some of the excitement I once felt this time of year for yourselves.
Until next time…