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Pushing Daisies, Chuck on the move.

Channel Nine is believed to have sold two promised shows to another broadcaster.

EXCLUSIVE: TV Tonight hears that quirky US drama Pushing Daisies and dramedy Chuck have been on-sold by Channel Nine.

The shows, both promised by Nine for 2008, will now air on another broadcaster -very possibly Foxtel.

Daisies was even plugged by the network as part of a free DVD giveaway in newspapers earlier this year, as a bright new hope for 2009.

Now the shows are considered too niche for the network.

Nine has previously on-sold other shows including The OC, The West Wing and Gossip Girl -which ironically has a summer screening coming after it has aired on FOX8. Three shows (OC, Chuck and Gossip Girl) are from creator Josh Schwartz. Seems he just doesn’t fit with Nine!

Pushing Daisies has also just been cancelled in the US.

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36 Responses

  1. I ‘discovered’ Chuck when I was in NZ in Aug08. And I thought it was a pretty cool show, didn’t know that Nine had it, but wasn’t showing it. If it’s shown in NZ and I’m assuming its doing well enough not to be pulled, why shouldn’t it be shown here in Aus?

  2. Another thing regarding PD, its second season apparrently ends on a whopping cliffhanger, which is infuriating enough for me to not bother watching unless I know another network will pick it up.

  3. Oh now i wonder what will happen to those 9 promos Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski shot while in Australia. I remember reading about them and seeing photos on tvtonight i think. Wonder if they can be leaked on say youtube i was curious just what they looked like

  4. Yay!!

    I’m very happy that Ch 9 no long has Chuck, PD & GG on their network for summer. They promised to show these shows earlier this year, but kept on delaying showing them for less worthy shows.

    Is there any news on which Channels has rescued these 3 shows yet?. I hope that Ch 10 gets “Gossip Girl”, as it can do far better than ‘90210’ attempted to.

  5. Well Pushing Daisies has already been cancelled, so it’s not like Nine would have even given it a decent timeslot anyway. I’ve seen a few episodes from season one, and while it’s cute and clever, it’s central premise was probably too morbid to ever catch on with a wide audience. if it had been made for a cable channel, it’d have run for years, but it was frankly lucky to get just two short seasons on ABC.

    As for Chuck, Nine included an ep of that in a TV Week promo DVD a few months back. More marketable than PD, but it surprises me not one jot that Nine didn’t know what to do with it.

    Screw em’ and just download the shows or buy the DVDs from the US.

  6. I love Chuck, and have bought all the episodes through iTunes, but yeah, it is too niche. Let’s be honest, at first glance, it looks like a show for nerds, and for the greater Australian populace, it’s too subtle in its humour (i.e. no fart jokes). It would be lucky to get 600,000 viewers. Moving it to Foxtel is a smart move.

    I can’t understand why they passed on Pushing Daisies though. It’s the sort of show that you can build an image around, and while it never did gangbusters in the ratings, it did okay (which Nine seems to be happy with lately – mediocrity). This was an unwise move, especially with the lack of new product coming out of the US right now.

    Side note: the Pushing Daisies Season 1 Blu-Ray is region-free. This is really a show that benefits from HD.

  7. Marco – yes 9 did screen Wonderfalls on Saturday afternoons (long after its US dvd release). I remember a tv critic from The Age accidentially came across it, liked what he saw and rang Nine to find out more about the series, only to discover that the people he spoke to at Nine didn’t even realise they were screening it. Guess that was too niche too.

    I wonder if shows like Hill Street Blues, St Elsewhere, Lou Grant and Taxi would be considered too niche now. The West Wing obviously was too. Oh well, there’s always the Aussie version of Wipeout;)

  8. Thats because Josh Schwartz’s shows are meant to be on Ten not Nine. Nine ruins them. Ten makes them better and more known 🙂

    I fell asleep watching a Chuck episode actually :p So that doesnt bother me.

  9. One of the dumbest things ive ever heard, i think nine could have had some success with chuck if it was run on the channel at a decent time and with out being shifted about. Oh well atleast now maybe another network will treat it right
    or foxtel will do the right thing by it.
    Thoe i will say thanks to the net i already know whats happening on chuck

  10. I’m eager to see Pushing Daisies. I wonder if the DVD of season one could just come out already so I could see it that way?

    I’m not too sure about Chuck. I watched the pilot on that free newspaper DVD and while I wasn’t that impressed I thought I’d watch episode two when it came on TV. (It didn’t help that for the climatic act of Chuck’s pilot my free DVD repeated the audio from the act before. I think I missed the explanation of the show’s ‘gimmick’.

  11. I finished episode 13, the season final of season 1 of Chuck this week. Too niche? Oh, that’s because the niche that are left didn’t download it since it was promised. Once those people are sick of 20 to 1 repeats and other garbage on free to air, then what? Call PBL and fold?

    As for pushing daisies, not really my type of show, but it is downright insulting to promise a show for so long then never show it (not that it’s stopped channel nine before).

  12. Think you will find PD has just been cancelled in the States.

    Chuck is a great show but not really what I would consider a dramedy unless thats what action/comedy series fall under now a days 🙂

  13. Bloody hell Nine. Pushing Daisies would have looked amazing on 9HD. Chuck might be a good fit for Ten, but I doubt they would have invested in PD after it was axed. I can’t be bothered downloading them, so will wait for a DVD sale overseas.

  14. lol, just goes to show how out of touch the networks are.

    Chuck is honestly one of the best shows to air in a long long time.

    It’s got everything….comedy, action, drama. And if you’re an IT / Gaming geek there’s lots of little throwaway lines & references in there that will make you giggle like a schoolgirl.

    And I love how they find any excuse to get Yvonne Strahovski out of her clothes 😀 I wonder how she feels….an Aussie actor in a US show that the TV networks back home won’t air. No wonder she looked for work elsewhere.

  15. Timothy, Ch9 did show some (all?) of Wonderfalls on Sunday afternoons I think it was…

    They probably only showed part of it or moved the timeslot around, because I ended up buying the DVDs to see the end of it.

  16. Wont be suprised if Pushing Daisies does go to Foxtel, as they were the only ones to show Dead Like me and Wonderfalls. Hope that it will be in 16:9 so we get the full quality.

  17. Wasn’t PD in the ch9 summer line up?

    God I hope Fox8 gets them and treats them right!

    Stupid ch9 for buying show then waiting for them to go off before on selling them, at least they are not dumping them on late night 9HD where no one would have seen them.

  18. If True, Nine just committed programming suicide! Chuck is the funniest series to come out of the USA in a very long time, with an hot Aussie Actress to boot, a hit with both sexes of all ages.

    You idiots! You’re not the One anymore!

  19. Astonishing.

    Pushing Daisies is anything but “niche”. Perhaps it’s just not bogan enough for Nine, a network now so dead even the Piemaker couldn’t revive them.

    The vast majority of TV viewers in this country who don’t have (or want) Foxtel will know exactly where to see the show now. Don’t worry, AFACT won’t mind, they promise 🙂

    I’d actually held off on Chuck expecting a local airing, but now I guess I know what I’ll be doing with my leftover download bandwidth at the end of the month…

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