No further plans to broadcast CBS All Access’s The Good Fight on CBS network TV

The Good Fight on CBS All Access

CBS All Access has no further plans to air the streaming series The Good Fight on CBS terrestrial television, dashing hopes that other CBS All Access originals - like Star Trek - might one day make their way to broadcast TV.

Deadline reported last week that Marc DeBevoise, Chief Digital Officer at ViacomCBS, was commenting on last summer’s broadcast run of The Good Fight, CBS All Access’s sequel to CBS’s The Good Wife. He said, “[There is] no plan to run a further season on the broadcast network at this point, but we are very happy with the first-season run and the ratings over the summer. [...] We thought that did a nice job for raising awareness of the service and the show.”

According to The Good Fight creators Michelle and Robert King, much of the decision was about technical challenges. Michelle King said, “Most of the editing we did had to do with length, rather than anything. Oftentimes, the episodes can go almost up to an hour [...] and then, when you’re doing a 42-minute broadcast show, obviously things have to shrink.”

Robert King added that time and content were factors too. He said, “We spent a month and a quarter cutting those episodes down, and it was hard. [...] The tendency is when you cut for plot, you lose a lot of fun character details.”

It’s not clear whether the decision not to run The Good Fight on terrestrial could affect any plans that CBS All Access may or may not have for Star Trek. However, it is worth noting that they are still going ahead with showing Star Trek: Discovery on terrestrial channel E4 in the United Kingdom, where there are more relaxed rules about the length of TV shows.