Here's the great thing about having this weblog: Yesterday, we discussed what was up with the announced "new" episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? that ABC Family has announced they will begin showing on 1/17/05. Today, I hear from Jim Ellwanger who says…well, here. Read him for yourself…
I've been closed-captioning the new Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes over the past month or so. As far as I can tell, so far it's all leftover material from tapings for the later seasons (all with a 2000 or 2001 copyright date)…in fact, one of the episodes I captioned was material from the one taping I went to, in late 2000 or early 2001, from which I think they had already gotten two or three episodes.
They're edited as regular episodes, not as "best-of" compilations or anything like that. Last I heard, there are supposed to be somewhere between 22 and 29 new episodes, but don't hold me to that number, since I don't directly deal with anyone at the production company or ABC Family.
These are not episodes that were ever slated to run on ABC; we captioned the last batch of episodes for ABC in the first half of 2003, and I think all the episodes from that batch have already aired, either on ABC or ABC Family.
I don't know anything about the "lost" episode. It would have already been captioned in advance of its originally scheduled air date, so I'll be very surprised if it shows up now for me to work on.
Thanks, Jim. I've set my TiVo to grab these, and I'll try watching them with the captions on.