Fox to cancel 'America’s Most Wanted'?

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Fifteen years ago, Fox tried to cancel its signature series 'America’s Most Wanted', but ended up reinstating it after protests from viewers, law enforcement, and 37 governors across the nation. Today, Fox announced its new schedule for next season, and 'AMW' won’t be on it. Instead, Fox wants the space for, er, 'reruns':

Good news for criminals: Fox is cancelling its long-running crime-stopping series 'America’s Most Wanted'.

The series profiling men and women wanted by law enforcement agencies has been on the air since 1988 and consistently wins its time period. A few years ago it announced the capture of its 1,000th criminal. …

Another factor, Reilly noted, is needing an open time period where the network can re-air episodes of other shows.

“We’re going to be in originals across our schedule,” Reilly says. “We want to be able to play repeats to give the audience a chance to catch up and that’s one of the few places we can do that.”

Is that 'really' a big problem? In the age of DVRs and on-demand programming, why does a network need to keep its prime-time real estate open for reruns? Even if one missed the original airing of an episode, they could simply record a rerun in the middle of the night rather than offering up rewarmed content on Saturday evenings.