Court shows are one of syndication's strongest genres as well as one of the least expensive to produce, unless the show is long-run ning and features a venerable judge, such as Judge Judy's Judy Sheindlin. But it's also a genre that steadfastly sticks to a stodgy format that some producers are looking to tweak. "The first ever court show was Divorce Court, which has been on and off the air in some form or another tracing back to 1957," says Ritch Colbert, co-principal of Program Partners, which will premiere Family Court with Judge Penny in syndication this fall. "Then came People's Court with Judge Joseph Wapner in 1981. "That created the first major shift in the genre, introducing the adjudication of small claims. Every court show since People's Court has been a pretender to the People's Court throne. Viewers now have an expectation that court shows will follow a fairly strict formulaic construct." For the most part, they do. Says Mark Koberg, executive producer of Twentieth's Divorce Court: "One of the things we hear over and over again is that Divorce Court is great because it's the same thing day after day. The other side of that coin is that Divorce Court is the same day after day. So we're not going to go too far from our format but we are going to offer a variation on what people have been seeing."
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