Judge Judy Sheindlin chastises CBS for substituting Drew Barrymore’s talk show for her series.
Judge Judy is enraged at the way she has been treated by the US television network that airs her show, telling them: “You were wrong.”
Judge Judy Sheindlin was not pleased with CBS’s decision to move her other court show to a backburner channel in favor of another daytime talk show.
The Drew Barrymore Show is scheduled to air on the priority channel ahead of Sheindlin’s Hot Bench, and Sheindlin joked that the network will be kicking themselves for making such a move.
The eminent judge spoke with the Wall Street Journal about her historic 25-year run as the top first-run show on all of syndicated television.
In 2014, Sheindlin launched another courtroom series, Hot Bench, in which three judges rule on cases in the same manner as Sheindlin, with brash retorts and amusing anecdotes.
Sheindlin, who is worth $590 million, claimed that CBS executives mishandled Hot Bench, sending it to their other secondary channels in September in favor of the newly syndicated Drew Barrymore Show.
“You denigrated my creation,” Sheindlin told the publication of the court show, which reportedly outperformed Barrymore in the ratings this season, averaging 2.3 million viewers to Barrymore’s 719,000.
“You were incorrect,” Sheindlin continued. “Not only in your disrespect for my creation, but also in your gamble with what you replace it with.”
It wasn’t all thinly veiled jabs from Sheindlin, who laughed and joked that while she and CBS “had a nice marriage,” their public split is “going to be a Bill and Melinda Gates divorce.”
In a statement to the newspaper, CBS Media Ventures President Steve LoCascio lauded Sheindlin.
“Over the last 25 years, we have had an incredibly successful relationship with Judy,” he explained. “Representing her show has been an honor, and just as there will never be another Oprah, there will never be another Judge Judy.”
Judge Judy’s IP will now be available on a new platform, Amazon’s IMDb TV streaming service.
She recently discussed how she used to negotiate her exorbitant salaries by sliding a sealed envelope containing her desired salary across the table to a CBS executive, movie-style – but joked that her negotiations with CEO Jeff Bezos were not nearly as serious.
“Without going into specifics, as that would be a little impolite, my compensation has never been a secret,” Sheindlin – who earned an estimated $61 million per season – said.
“It’s been out there for a long time – not because of me, but because it got out there and had its own life,” she continued. Thus, the Amazon staff was aware of the parameters. There was no conflict.”
