America's Most Wanted: Unwanted by FOX, Captured by Lifetime

When FOX canceled fugitive-finder America’s Most Wanted in May, it terminated one of the best-known brands associated with the network. The show premiered in 1988, a year before The Simpsons started, four years before The Cosby Show ended, and six years before notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger — featured on the program 16 times — went on the lam.

After more than 1,100 episodes (and about as many captured criminals), and despite an average of 5 million viewers during its most recent season, FOX axed AMW (though periodic specials — the first one on Oct. 29 — will continue to air on the network), and this time it appeared that a grassroots “save our show” campaign would not be as successful as the previous one, in 1996, when the network briefly ended the show’s run.

Crime-victim advocate and host John Walsh vowed that another network would pick up AMW, and his prediction rang true when it was announced that the 25th season of the show would run on basic cable. Not a cable channel known for criminal justice programming like truTV or even a “real life” channel such as Biography, however, but Lifetime, home to not-very-law-and-orderly shows like Project Runway and Dance Moms.

Then again, Deadline.com cited “industry insiders” who “pointed out that [AMW] is actually female-skewing because of its wish-fulfillment element that justice will be served.” Only time (and ratings) will tell whether the Lifetime and AMW partnership will last longer than, well, the marriages in one of those “I didn’t know I wed a psycho until it was too late” movies that Lifetime has been known for. But the move from network television to basic cable is no longer the kiss of death it used to be, and channels like Lifetime (and truTV and Biography, among many others) have success with niche shows with smaller (and for advertisers, more targeted) audiences.

Those 5 million AMW viewers represented a loss for FOX, programming chief Kevin Reilly admitted that the show, while “important,” hasn’t made money in a while — but Project Runway pulls in only 3 million viewers for Lifetime on a good week (but gives it access to elite advertisers) and even one of the hottest shows on television, Breaking Bad, scored only 2.6 million viewers for it’s the current season’s premiere on AMC.

There’s no guarantee that all 5 million AMW viewers will flock to Lifetime, but it’s a sizeable enough audience to justify Lifetime’s decision, assuming the show will continue to serve ratings the way it serves justice. After all, right after FOX cut the program from its schedule, Whitey Bulger was finally captured.