Strike Strikes 24
Jack Bauer has met his match: Striking writers.
The seventh-season launch of 24, scheduled for January, has been postponed due to the ongoing union writers' strike, Fox said Wednesday.
24 is the latest casualty of the walkout that began Monday. Several shows, including NBC's The Office, have shut down production. ABC's Desperate Housewives was to follow suit on Thursday.
A Fox spokesman said he didn't know if 24 had stopped shooting. The network said it was holding off on the premiere "to ensure that 'Day 7' can air uninterrupted, in its entirety."
The new Terminator-spawned series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, has been slated to air in 24's usual 9 p.m., Monday time slot, beginning Jan. 14.
Fox also announced several premiere dates for already-planned new shows, including the latest from The Gilmore Girls' creators, The Return of Jezebel James.
The first network to announce a poststrike schedule, Fox said it planned to make it through what could be lean winter and spring months with the midseason replacements, its strike-proof reality series, including Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?, its Sunday-night animated comedies—cartoon producers work further ahead than their live-action counterparts—and, oh, American Idol. The behemoth is due back Jan. 15.
Fox also said it would air "a mix of original and encore episodes" of House, Bones, 'Til Death and Back to You, indicating it expects to run out of new episodes. ('Til Death and Back to You are among the shows that have already gone dark.)
It was believed between eight and nine new episodes of 24 were completed and in the can before the strike struck.
The hit series has had a star-crossed offseason. Last month, a scheduled shoot at a former Marine Corp base in Orange County, California, had to be scrapped because of the region's wildfires. In September, star and executive producer Kiefer Sutherland notched a DUI arrest while on probation for a previous DUI conviction. After pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge in October, Sutherland, due to be sentenced Dec. 21, said his pending jail stint wouldn't affect production on the series.
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