CBS is postponing tonight’s originally scheduled premiere of “Hollywood Squares” a week due to the wildfires throughout the Los Angeles area. As a result, the show will now bow on Thursday, Jan. 16 at 8 p.m. ET instead.
According to insiders, the decision was made because it didn’t feel appropriate to showcase a lighthearted show featuring celebrities joking with each other at this moment due to the severity of the fires and the number of celebrities who have lost homes in the disaster.
Also, CBS’ KCBS-TV has been airing wall-to-wall news coverage of the fires and is likely to continue to do so tonight. For the rest of the country, CBS will now air repeats of “George and Mandy’s First Marriage” and “Ghosts” in the 8 p.m. hour.
Drew Barrymore serves as center square of the updated version of “Hollywood Squares,” which CBS first picked up to air last January. Nate Burleson hosts the show, which moves to its regular 10 p.m. Thursday time slot beginning Jan. 29.
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Jesse Collins (for Jesse Collins Entertainment) and Barrymore (via her Flower Films) are the producers on this new “Hollywood Squares.” Much of the format remains the same: “The ‘board’ for the game is a vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The celebrities are asked questions and the contestants judge the legitimacy of their answers to win the game.”
Barrymore hosts the first-run syndicated talk show strip “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which CBS stations air in major markets, for CBS Media Ventures. This reps the first new edition of the regular “Hollywood Squares” since a syndicated version hosted by Tom Bergeron from 1998 to 2004.