‘The Walking Dead,” known for its gore factor, is TV’s most popular cable drama.
But will viewers tune in for a toned-down version of the zombie apocalypse series?
MyNetworkTV on Wednesday announced that it’s acquired the broadcast (rerun) rights to the AMC hit, with episodes airing this fall on Ch. 9 in New York. The news immediately raised questions about what the drama — known for graphic violence of zombies getting their brains blown out or ripping off limbs — would look like on over-the-air TV.
“I think standards have gotten more lax now. The tone of television has changed,” says Billie Gold, VP/director of TV programming research at media agency Carat. “You look at lot of dramas on television and they show things that 10 years ago … I think a lot of family-friendly groups probably would have protested.”
“The Walking Dead” will air back-to-back episodes from 8-10 p.m. one night a week on Ch. 9. The episodes will be edited for broadcast standards and rated TV-14 (the AMC version is rated TV-MA, for mature audiences).
But there might not be much of a difference between “The Walking Dead” episodes airing on AMC and what viewers will see on Ch. 9, at least early on — since the series was already rated TV-14 for its first three seasons (the seasons acquired by MyNetworkTV) — meaning that not that much may need to be changed in its move from cable.
While pay cable shows “The Sopranos” and “Sex & the City” had to be edited for salty language and sexual content for their syndication runs, the FCC does not have indecency regulations for violence as it does for sex, nudity and foul language.
Violent content is determined by broadcast standards, which in recent years have been increasingly raising the bar for what can air in primetime. The Fox drama “The Following” — which featured a woman stabbing herself in the eye in its first episode — has a TV-14 rating. So does NBC’s “Hannibal,” which also features graphic violence.
Given that, Gold doesn’t expect “The Walking Dead” tweaks to be very noticeable — especially because the syndication audience is likely to be different than its current fan base.
“It’s not like it was on pay cable,” she says. “It’s on cable and 80 percent of the country has cable — so people who want to watch it can still get [‘The Walking Dead’] on AMC.”
The show’s huge popularity — its fourth-season premiere drew a record 16 million viewers — should still raise the profile of MyNetworkTV, whose weeknight programming currently includes reruns of “House,” “Monk,” “Bones,” “Law & Order: SVU” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”
And for those that prefer “The Walking Dead” in its full gory glory, its unedited seasons are already available in syndication — on Netflix.