Even if you aren’t a regular “Judge Judy” watcher, you’ve likely caught a glimpse of the iconic courtroom show as you flipped through TV channels.
No-nonsense Judge Judy Sheindlin, a retired Manhattan family court judge, has been delivering small claims court decisions with her sharp tongue and witty asides to TV audiences since 1996.
Now, after 25 years, Sheindlin has announced during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that “Judge Judy” will end after the 2020-21 season. Repeats will continue to air afterward.
“I’ve had a 25-year-long marriage with CBS, and it’s been successful,” Sheindlin said in the Ellen episode that airs Monday, March 2. “Next year will be our 25th season, silver anniversary, and CBS, I think, sort of felt, they wanted to optimally utilize the repeats of my program, because now they have 25 years of reruns. So what they decided to do was to sell a couple of years’ worth of reruns.”
But Sheindlin, 77, isn’t leaving TV for long. She also told DeGeneres that a new show called “Judy Justice” is in the works, though she gave no other real details. She did hint that her new project will come out about a year after the end of “Judge Judy.”
It’s not surprising that Sheindlin isn’t ready to end her television work.
“I have a wonderful time! What would I do?” she told DeGeneres in another show appearance in 2019, seen below. “This job, believe it or not, is an anchor, because it gives you someplace to go.”
“Judge Judy” has been the highest-rated court TV show since it first went on air, and it has 10 million daily viewers. It has also received three Daytime Emmy Awards and continues to be the No. 1 first-run syndicated TV show.
Sheindlin received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Emmys in 2019. She was also the highest-paid TV host in 2018, earning about $147 million that year. That’s because 2018 is the year that she sold the rights to the “Judge Judy” library to CBS — more than 5,000 episodes. She normally earns about $47 million a year, which is also not a bad deal.
So to have “Judge Judy” leaving the airwaves is just about the biggest news for the show since Sheindlin changed her hairstyle in 2019.
Do you watch the show? Will you miss it?
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