Depending upon what generation you fall into your Pavolvian reaction to what kind of shows you’d associate with FOX is likely to vary. Certainly, if you’re a child of the 90s you’ll immediately pivot to one of the tentpoles of ANIMATION DOMINATION–THE SIMPSONS, FAMILY GUY, AMERICAN DAD et al if you’re male, and the Spelling soaps BEVERLY HILLS 90210 and MELROSE PLACE if you’re female. If you’re a millennial you’ll probably gravitate to reality standouts like AMERICAN IDOL, or more recently THE MASKED SINGER. If you’re Gen Z, if you even know where to find FOX you’re an outlier.
But the reality is now that the FOX brand is heading into its 40th season its largest and most consistent viewership comes not from broadcast but from FOX NEWS, and that audience is both decidely older and unquestionably less “attitudinal” than what otherwise might have been associated with it emotionally and/or historically. No one is more acutely aware of this than the network’s current president Michael Thorn, who is also tasked with rebuilding a warchest of viably marketable IP in the wake of losing those animated titles’ global rights to Disney in the wake of Rupert Murdoch’s gutting of the “middle of the paper” with his sale of what was 20th Century FOX seven years ago.
It is what has apparently motivated the somewhat surprising news that among others VARIETY’s Ethan Stanfield dropped earlier this week:
“Highway to Heaven” is getting a second life. The drama fantasy series, which ran from 1984 to 1989 on NBC, is being rebooted by Fox for the 2027-2028 broadcast season. Emmy winning writer Jason Katims (“Friday Night Lights,” “Parenthood”) will showrun the new iteration of the show about an earthbound angel who travels across America helping people in need. Katims executive produces alongside Amblin Television’s Darryl Frank, Justin Falvey and Todd Cohen, alongside Mark Itkin and Michael Landon Productions’ Wayne Lepoff and Cindy Landon (widow of original series creator Michael Landon)…(“W)e’re building on ‘Highway to Heaven’s’ timeless legacy of transformation and optimism in a way that feels deeply relevant and relatable to our audience,” said …Thorn(.)
Translated : it’s comfort food, “family values” programming that one could easily classify as religious-adjacent. A point certainly not on WOMAN’S WORLD’s Ed Gross when he shared an insight directly from heaven itself in his piece:
In a 1985 interview with People, Landon (who had previously starred in Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie) recalled a terrifying moment when his daughter Cheryl was involved in a devastating car accident. She had been riding home from a college event with friends when their small Volkswagen was struck by another vehicle traveling at high speed. The crash tragically claimed the lives of the others in the car, while Cheryl survived but suffered extensive injuries. She remained in a coma for three days before beginning what would be a long recovery, and it was this that caused her father to make an actual bargain with God. If Cheryl recovered, he vowed to create something that would genuinely help people.
He elaborated on the inspiration a little more to the LA Times on the specific element that drove the show, reflecting, “I was driving through Beverly Hills to pick up my kids on a Friday night and people were honking at each other. There is no worse place for that than Beverly Hills; I think when people have a little bit more money, they really believe that the Red Sea will part and their car will go forward. And I thought, ‘Why is everybody so angry? If they would just spend that same time being nice . . . It’s obvious the flow of traffic is going to go much better if everybody has his opportunity.’” Cheryl did recover and her father kept his word; those circumstances resulted in the creation of Highway to Heaven.
Michael Landon was as evangelical as anyone in his relentless marketing of the original version’s back end, an ominpresence at late 80s NATPEs with the insurgent and aptly-named Genesis Entertainment. LITTLE HOUSE had been a surprisingly broad-performing rerun franchise itself, not just in flyover states but even in New York and Los Angeles, where it effectively counterprogrammed off-network comedies and talk shows for years. And perhaps not coincidentally, LITTLE HOUSE itself is about to be resurrected. Even more coincidentally, SCREEN RANT’s Ben Sherlock dropped an update on that project on the very day that the new HIGHWAY was announced:
Netflix will release the first season of its Little House on the Prairie reboot on July 9, 2026…But, where the previous series had focused more on the father, Charles, played by Landon, the new series will retell the story from his young daughter Laura’s perspective…(It) is being touted as less of a remake of the previous TV show and more of a straightforward adaptation of the original book series. During the making of the original show, there was famously a lot of tension between producer Ed Friendly and star Michael Landon. Friendly wanted the series to be a traditional adaptation of the books, but Landon was more interested in using the show’s historical setting to tell modern stories and explore timely issues like racism and nativism and misogyny… Netflix has so much faith in its Little House on the Prairie reboot that it’s already renewed the show for a second season, before the first one has even been released. In March, four whole months before the show’s scheduled July release date, Netflix officially greenlit Little House on the Prairie season 2.
So this may seem to be a bit more reactive than proactive a move on Thorn’s part–not that FOX hasn’t taken that approach in its past. Its pattern of greenlighting unscripted series that were direct competitors with other networks’ tentpoles, with the mandate of coating it in “FOX attitude” is well documented. But these days “FOX attitude” is more likely to be associated with the demographics and psyches of those that find the War on Christmas to be a meaningful cause. That appears to have been what drove them to test-drive THE FAITHFUL as an Easter-adjacent stunt that attempted to replace the animated comedies for a spell. You might recall that didn’t go all that swimmingly. So Thorn’s got some motivation of his own to get results, as does the disenfranchised Landon family. And they’ve even brought back some of the braintrust that got the OG HIGHWAY sold so deeply–besides Cindy Landon, Itkin and Lepoff were syndication veterans who were as omnipresent as the man born Eugene Orowitz of Forest Hills in those efforts to find room for feel-good content in what was then a cesspool of trashy talk shows and banal sitcom reboots.
It’s important to note that this is a project that won’t launch until NEXT season. For 2026-27, the plans for which will be announced next week at the FOX upfronts, their big swing is a reboot of BAYWATCH–which I guess qualifies as feel-good programming of a different sort. BAYWATCH was ordered straight-to-series last fall on the heels of the disappointing results for the John Wells-produced near-clone RESCUE HI SURF, which debuted along the much more successful DOC in 2024-25. DOC has continued to deliver what FOX considers to be impressive long-tail results, as has its Tuesday night stablemate BEST MEDICINE. Thorn willfully puts HIGHWAY in that bucket, and I can’t help but wonder if he wishes he could undo what now may look like a hasty decision to double down on a level of escapism that just doesn’t cut it either with those too young to remember when Pamela Anderson actually used makeup or too seasoned to want to any more.
So when HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN does finally debut it could be cast as even more of a savoir than Jonathan Smith was. Do remember that will also be after another year and change of the kind of headlines that keeps FOX NEWS viewers engaged and loyal. G-d help us indeed.
Until next time…