If there is an award for “Most-traveled TV show,” it has to go to a show about a demon-hunting young woman named Buffy Summers.
ABC Family announced recently that Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be shown weekday afternoons at 5 PM starting June 22, 2015. It’s part of the network adding a dash of “The WB” by adding Buffy and Dawson’s Creek to the weekday lineup. It will mark the ninth network Buffy Summers’ saga has called home.
She started battling demons on The WB in March 1997, but moved to UPN in 2002 thanks to a better deal and two guaranteed seasons. After that, she has appeared on more cable channels than anyone.
First, the show had a home on FX between 2001 and 2008, then moved to Logo and Chiller in 2010. A year later, episodes were shown on Oxygen and TeenNick.
Then, it went to Pivot last summer, promising high definition versions of the episodes. However, fans were upset by how the scenes were cropped, and how different they looked:
Like, who’s the guy on the extreme left?
Right now, Buffy episodes are shown weekday mornings on FX, but will move to the afternoons on ABC Family. The first week will be episodes chosen by the fans. The website shows 15 choices, including obvious choices like “Hush” and “Once More With Feeling” and the finales from seasons two, three, six and seven. Some may wonder why the first season isn’t included in the poll, but the show will start from the beginning on June 29th.
Maybe the fact that the show is difficult to put into one category is why it’s been on such a wide variety of channels. It can be enjoyed by teens, horror fans, women, guys and the LGBT community. After all these years, it’s considered a family show, because moms and dads see the show as nostalgia, and their kids as an action show.
If Buffy becomes popular on ABC Family, could Angel be far behind? His show was shown early weekday mornings for years on TNT until the summer of 2012. Maybe he can join Buffy at ABC Family, and it will be like the old days at The WB.
Meanwhile, what about Joss Whedon’s other TV shows, Firefly and Dollhouse? Both were advertised on the Science Channel. In July 2013, a weekend was devoted to both:
https://youtu.be/BzIOgrNr28g
Marathons of Firefly air occasionally, including a special about the famous Comic-Con panel that reunited the cast in 2012. However, it’s been more than a year since Dollhouse aired on that channel. Even though they didn’t last as long as Buffy and Angel, having Firefly and Dollhouse as weekend shows would be a great idea.
For now, longtime fans of Buffy will be tuning in to ABC Family this summer, while new fans will tune in to see what their parents, aunts and uncles used to watch every Tuesday. They’ll also see what Alyson Hannigan did before How I Met Your Mother, David Boreanaz did before Bones and Danny Strong did before co-creating the show Empire and writing the last two Hunger Games movies….
…and of course, what Joss Whedon did before The Avengers.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer will air weekdays at 5 PM Eastern and Pacific on ABC Family beginning June 22nd.
The screencapture you used is not from the HD version, but from the R2 DVDs ;).
I tried to find that rooftop scene where cameras were seen off to the side, but apparently that was removed from the net. Also notice someone pointed out there was a scene in “Angel” that was way too bright…which would have been a problem for him. There’s a good YouTube video that reveals the HD goofs from Pivot at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F28XcxHxH6k