48 Hours, CBS News’s long-running crime and justice series, is launching in weekday syndication this fall, CBS News said Monday.
The series is being repackaged as a syndicated strip with 48 Hours contributors Jericka Duncan and Jonathan Vigliotti anchoring the episodes, all of which have been updated with current information about the cases involved. CBS News has nearly 600 episodes to offer to TV stations.
“We wanted to do two things: distinguish the library shows that are going to syndication and distinguish from brand-new fresh content that then makes its way downstream,” executive producer Judy Tygard said. “We added Jericka and Jon because they can give the shows the additional content that’s needed.”
Duncan and Vigliotti are providing new information in each case, giving them more content, including opens, mid-joins and transitions.
“This is a very talented group of journalists and the fact-checking that goes into making sure that these stories are updated with fresh information is phenomenal,” Duncan said.
“The amount of work and care put into updating each episode has been unbelievable,” Vigliotti said. “True crime can be a bit tabloid so what’s been so incredible is 48 Hours’s legacy of truly paying tribute to victims and their families. It’s so heartfelt and you always see their names front and center. 48 Hours holds feet to the fire in investigations that have either stalled or gone cold.”
The show is cleared on an all-barter basis in more than 97% of the country in 190 markets with the 15 CBS-owned stations serving as the launch group. It’s sold to stations in the Nexstar Media Group, Sinclair, Fox Television Stations, Gray Television, Cox Media Group, Tegna and E.W. Scripps station groups.
48 Hours has been undergoing a brand expansion over the last several years. The show airs on CBS on Saturday nights but also has broadcast, cable and streaming windows on the CBS News Streaming Network, CBSNews.com, Paramount Plus, YouTube, Fave TV, Pop TV and domestically and internationally on Paramount-owned FAST platform Pluto TV. It’s also licensed to networks in dozens of countries across the globe. The show also produces a podcast, and correspondent Erin Moriarty has her own podcast, titled My Life of Crime.
“The reason I fell in love with 48 Hours and went to it full time was because honestly I have never been able to do such a variety of reporting and be so immersed in the story,” Moriarty said. “We really focus on the heroes of the story — the cops who solve the cases, the parents or husbands or wives who fight so hard for justice. That’s where my focus has always been.”
Repackaging library episodes of long-running programs has become a trend in syndication, where TV stations need budget-friendly programming that performs. 48 Hours is not the first newsmagazine to be repackaged for syndication: NBCUniversal has been airing a syndicated version of Dateline for the past six years. Dateline, which kicks off season seven on September 18, is averaging a 1.1 live-plus-same-day national household rating, according to Nielsen, and 1.6 million average daily viewers.
48 Hours is distributed in syndication by CBS Media Ventures.
