‘Kyle XY’ lands in suburbia, finds viewers

Are the broadcast networks going to start shoveling a lot of “repurposed” cable shows at us during the summer? The saga of “Kyle XY” suggests they might.

“Kyle,” a sci-fi drama about a mysterious teenage boy (Matt Dallas) who lands in suburbia with no memory and no navel, gave ABC Family its highest ratings for an original series when it premiered June 26. An average of 2.6 million viewers tuned in, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research. For ABC Family, the Walt Disney-owned cable outlet that has struggled for years to find a profitable identity, this was welcome news indeed.

On Friday, ABC, Disney’s main broadcast network, reran the pilot episode at 9 p.m., and darned if the show didn’t generate decent ratings all over again. An average of 5.2 million viewers watched, doubling the ABC Family premiere, according to early numbers from Nielsen.

More important, “Kyle” narrowly won the time slot in the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic (1.6 rating/6 share), although it faced fairly weak competition with repeats of such shows as NBC’s “Las Vegas” and Fox’s “24.”

This was the first time ABC had run programming from one of its sister cable properties in prime time, and it probably won’t be the last. (In an experiment several summers back, ABC re-aired episodes of the detective show “Monk” from USA, which is not part of the Disney corporate family.)

Other networks have already embraced the trend. Fox helped promote the return of FX’s “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” last month by running some older episodes. NBC has repurposed Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and other material from cable.

There’s an element of “If you can’t beat ‘em, repeat ‘em” to this phenomenon. Basic cable, of course, has been where audiences flock during the hot months, as broadcasters cling to repeats and cheap reality shows. So it makes sense for the networks to cherry-pick summer cable series that actually get viewers.

The alternative is to make original summer series that can square with the broadcasters’ confining economic model -- and so far, that has proved to be a bigger mystery than what happened to Kyle’s navel.

Channel Island is a blog about the television industry. For the latest posting, go to latimes.com/channelisland. Contact Scott Collins at channelisland@latimes.com.