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Day 25: WGA's Strike; ABC Family Acquires What I Like About You; TV Land Scores in November

We are in day 25 of the strike. Non-writing staffers of The Tonight Show are being laid off on Friday we hear, but Letterman's production company will pay its nono-writing staff from their own pockets. Conan O'Brien is also paying out of his own pocket for his non-writing staff.
Meanwhile NBC has made a schedule move that seems like it was done for the strike. NBC's new dramedy Lipstick Jungle, based on the best-selling novel by Candace Bushnell - and starring Brooke Shields, Kim Raver and Lindsay Price - will premiere on Thursday, February 7 at 10:00 p.m. ET. ER will continue in the Thursdays 10:00 p.m. ET time slot through January when the Emmy Award-winning drama series completes its current run of original episodes.
Fox finally announced its holiday line-up. Nothing really except on Christmas Eve we get the movie Cheaper by the Dozen and on Wednesday, December 26 we get the broadcast premiere of Christmas with the Kranks starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. But why a day after Christmas?

I guess trying to bank on the success of Jennie Garth on Dancing with the Stars, cable network ABC Family will begin airing reruns of the sitcom What I Like About You in January. The sitcom starred Amanda Bynes and Jennie Garth as sisters. The show had a decent four season run on The WB/CW from 2002-06. The show will air weekday afternoons at 4:00pm & 4:30pm ET/PT starting Monday, January 7, replacing 7th Heaven. We asked ABC Family if 7th Heaven would return and they said no, as the show will be moving to The Hallmark Channel. So that answers that. As for What I Like About You, The CW Daytime will still air it at 3:30pm in January from what we see in their listings. We'll keep you posted if that changes. So fans can watch it basically from 3:30-5pm on two channels!
Elsewhere on ABC Family January, the second half of season two of the hit original drama Kyle XY will return on January 14 airing Mondays at 8pm for 10 episodes! A marathon of 9 of the 13 episodes from the first half of the season will air before it from 11am-8pm. The fourth season of another original drama, Wildfire will start a week later, Monday, January 21, and air Mondays at 9pm. Other highlights include, the annual The 700 Club Special Programming will air from 9am-11am for two weeks, week of Jan. 14 and 21, thus Step by Step will be pre-empted for those two weeks at 9am. A marathon of the 700 Club will air on Sunday, January 27 from 12pm-12am. As for movies, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants will get a basic cable premiere on Jan. 6, and a lot of movies will be airing on the ABC Family for the first time, such as Mean Girls, Pleasantville, Bring It On Again, and the TV premiere of Bring It On: In It To Win It.

TV Land scored huge gains among its target demo of Adults 25-54 as well as its core audience of Adults 40-54 for the month of November (10/29/07-11/25/07). The success of the network's regularly scheduled Friday Night Movie Block, a M*A*S*H Mail Call Marathon, the original special Entertainment Weekly and TV Land Present: The 50 Greatest TV Icons and the network's "Overstuffed Thanksgiving Weekend" led the network to score double-digit gains in rating and delivery among A25-54 and total viewers over last year. November was also the most-watched month among A25-54 for the year.
TV Land's November prime time line-up scored a 0.4 rating, 406,000 viewers, up +33% in rating and +24% in viewers among A25-54. Among total viewers in primetime, TV Land delivered nearly 944,000 total viewers, up +15% over last year. In total programming day, TV Land averaged a 0.3 rating and 295,000 viewers among A25-54 for the month, representing a +50% gain in rating and a +19% climb in viewers versus November 2006. It was also the most-watched month among A25-54 in total day this year. Additionally, the network attracted an average of 633,000 viewers for the total programming day, an increase of +13% over November 2006. Among its core audience, Adults 40-54, TV Land averaged a 0.6 rating, 317,000 viewers in prime time, up +50% in rating and +39% in viewers versus last year. In total programming day, the network posted a 0.4 rating, 227,000 viewers, up +33% in rating and +26% in viewers.
Click HERE for the full highlights.