I'm a bit surprised that there are so many gloomy Guses over MDP's scheduling. Just because it is not premiering during "when the TV season counts" doesn't mean it will fail.
Millionaire, Survivor, AI and Dancing with the Stars all premiered in the summer and made successful transitions to the fall schedule. Shows like America's Got Talent and So You Think You Can Dance have become big hits during the summer and could transition successfully to the fall if the networks chose to do so.
Premiering the show on June 1st is a good strategy for the Eye. It has a strong lead-in in "60 Minutes," which tends to do well during the summer months (demos are questionable, though). Competition will likely come from reruns of Ty Pennington (which, AFAIK, doesn't tend to rerun well), the Fox animated comedies (will do well in the demos), whatever NBC opts to put there and something from the CW scrapheap (CW has struggled to garner 1 million viewers on Sundays). If CBS can manage to increase the demo from its "60" lead-in, MDP could be, at least, a minor hit.
CBS will promote the heck out of the show on its prime May programming, and Regis will promote it to death on his morning show (and his viewers are pretty loyal in watching Regis on anything he's on), and perhaps with David Letterman on the Late Show.
If it succeeds in the summer, perhaps the Eye could use MDP as a stopgap between Amazing Race cycles, if CBS opts to do two TAR tournaments on Sundays at 8 next season.
JD
