Fred Thompson - another actor/politician whose show will come off the airwaves entirely if he runs for president…or not?
July 26th, 2007 | Posted by Tara Bartley
NPR aired an interesting story this morning about how NBC will stop airing re-runs of Law & Order episodes featuring Fred Thompson if the former Senator makes his White House bid official. Though there’s only a synopsis of the story on NPR’s site, the gist of it is that if NBC were to continue to air the episodes, it would have to give all of the other presidential candidates equal air time.
Apparently the same held true for Arnold Schwartzeneeger when he ran for governor of California and Ronald Reagan when he ran for president. Who knew? I guess I’ve seen The Terminator so many times, I didn’t realize that it wasn’t being aired on Sunday afternoons during Arnold’s campaigns.
But back to the point, what does this mean for NBC.com’s Law & Order web site and their online video clips of the show? Mr. Thompson has been on the show for five years, 100 episodes, that’s a lot to wipe out. Does it all come down? I wonder.
The twist is that the same rules don’t apply to cable networks so can those channels air syndicated episodes with Mr. Thompson?
Last but not least, is this why he’s holding out on announcing his bid for president? So he can collect as much money as possible while NBC airs re-runs through the summer? So many questions.
I think we can all agree that his castmates can’t be happy.
