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.Continue reading...