LOS ANGELES (thefutoncritic.com) -- FX has ordered a second season of its Morgan Spurlock-led reality series "30 Days," in which participants are asked to live in an environment counteractive to their background for a month.
The series wrapped its six-week run in July, where it averaged a modest 1.4 million viewers (1.0 million of which fell into the key adults 18-49 demographic). Said numbers nevertheless made "Days" FX's most-watched unscripted series to date. As for its sophomore season, due sometime in 2006, the network hasn't confirmed how many episodes will be shot.
Spurlock, R.J. Cutler, Ben Silverman and H.T. Owens are the executive producers of "30 Days," which comes from their respective production companies Warrior Poets, Actual Reality Pictures and Reveille.
Meanwhile in other FX news, the cable channel has quietly shifted the first-run airings of its Thursday comedies "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and "Starved" to Tuesday nights at 11:00/10:00c and 11:30/10:30c respectively following "Rescue Me." (Viewers however can still catch encores of the Tuesday airings in their old Thursday slots.)
No reason was given for the last-minute move, which took effect last night. "Starved" (1.54 million) and "Philadelphia" (1.42 million) opened to a lackluster numbers on August 4, well behind the 2003 launch of FX's failed comedy "Lucky" (2.5 million). Said numbers tumbled to 981,000 viewers for "Starved" and 840,000 for "Philadelphia" last week, declines of 36.30% and 40.85% respectively from their premieres.
And finally, FX has confirmed launch dates for its off-network runs of "That '70s Show" and "Dharma & Greg." The former will launch with a five-hour marathon on Monday, September 12 at 4:00/3:00c before settling into its regular weekday time periods of 7:00/6:00c and 7:30/6:30c the following night.
As for "Dharma," FX's run (which it will share with WE: Women's Entertainment) is set to bow on Monday, September 19 with back-to-back episodes airing weekday afternoons starting at 2:00/1:00c. WE's run then will bow on September 26 with two episodes airing every weeknight starting at 7:00/6:00c.
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