TV Q&A: What happened to 2 PCNC local shows?

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen answers reader questions every Wednesday at TribLive.com in a column that also appears in the Sunday Tribune-Review.

Q: What is happening with PCNC’s “NightTalk” with Ellis Cannon and “Pittsburgh Now” with Chris Moore? Both seem to have just disappeared on July 1.

— Eric, via email

Rob: Apparently both “NightTalk” and “Pittsburgh Now” are on hiatus until at least the end of the year. Cannon and Moore could not be reached for comment. Executives at Channel 11 did not respond to a request for comment.

Both programs last aired original episodes in early June. Reruns aired the rest of June and now the shows no longer appear on PCNC’s schedule.

Cable distributor Comcast removed PCNC from its lineup in December 2019.

In March, WPXI added PCNC to its over-the-air offerings as Channel 11.4.

Q: Is John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” not producing new episodes on HBO due to the writers’ strike?

— Philip, via email

Rob: Correct. “Last Week Tonight” was scheduled to produce new episodes this summer but is not due to the writers’ strike.

Q: What caused “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune” and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” to be picked up by ABC and not on NBC? Do they pay a lot to air on another station? Does NBC get residuals or anything?

— Phil via Facebook

Rob: NBC doesn’t own those shows, so it gets no compensation. Sony owns the shows and syndicates them to different affiliates across the country. In Pittsburgh, the daytime versions of the shows just happen to be on an NBC station. In Philadelphia, they’re on the ABC station, WPVI-TV.

For the prime-time celebrity iterations of both series, Sony sold the shows to ABC.

Q: Why did Paramount Network (on weekdays) and TV Land (on weekends) quit showing reruns of the sitcom “Mom”?

— Sandy, N. Huntingdon

Rob: Here’s the problem with trying to get an answer to questions about reruns: Networks do not care about the reruns that they televise. Ergo, publicists don’t care about reruns, which means I do not get answers to these sorts of questions from network publicists.

If you have a question about why a rerun is no longer airing, understand that there’s generally just one answer to just about every single where-is-X-rerun question: It’s always about money. If X show was financially successful in Y time slot, it wouldn’t be taken off the air.