The 'Check, Please!' effect

Popular WTTW-Ch. 11 restaurant show "Check, Please!" is among the most successful locally produced series in Chicago television and an oasis of public television reasonableness in an otherwise frenetic restaurant scene. The series begins its 12th season next month. In the meantime, it will be reruns up the wazoo. Once a season is finished, its episodes are replayed Friday nights (the show's traditional time slot), then again Saturday and Sunday afternoons. It's rerun often, said V.J. McAleer, WTTW's vice president of production, for the obvious reason that it is among the highest-rated shows on WTTW, occasionally the highest rated, with 150,000 weekly viewers. Somehow, though, if you have a DVR set for "Check, Please!" three airings a week seems wrong.

Christopher Borrelli

September 6, 2012