Fox Nation plans to place promos for The Vow Chris Harrison on ABC stations in roughly a dozen markets, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas. The move pushes a competing dating show into local ad inventory on a network long tied to Chris Harrison’s old franchise, and it lands after Warner Bros. Television objected to the promos’ references to The Bachelor.
Chris Harrison says in the promo, “I believe in true love,” and “Always have.” The spots also show falling rose petals on screen, a visual nod that helped trigger the dispute and now puts the rollout of the campaign under scrutiny in local markets that could run it during prime-time inventory.
Warner Bros. Television’s September 18 letter
On September 18, Warner Bros. Television sent a cease-and-desist letter to Media calling for it to stop making visual and creative references to The Bachelor. In the letter reviewed by Variety, Warner Bros. Television said the recent promos for The Vow represented “a plain attempt to capitalize on and ‘ride on the coattails’ of WB’s instantly recognizable intellectual property and the Franchise’s goodwill in violation of, inter alia, state and federal trademark, copyright, and unfair competition laws.”
The same letter drew a line between the show itself and the way it was being sold. Warner Bros. Television said it had no objection to Fox and Lionsgate releasing a dating show hosted by Chris Harrison in and of itself, but said the promotion had leaned “entirely on the back of the Franchise, not on its own merits.”
Fox Nation’s September 24 response
On September 24, Fox Nation replied that Warner Bros. was trying to restrict FOX Nation and Chris Harrison from promoting a competing dating show. Fox Nation called the studio’s approach “malicious and vindictive,” which turns this from a routine promotional dispute into a broader fight over how far a rival can go when it borrows the look and language of an established franchise.
Harrison is not a side character here. He hosted The Bachelor for 25 seasons, so the promotional value of his name is obvious, but so is the legal sensitivity around anything that visually echoes the series that made him famous.
November 11 and the local rollout
The Vow is scheduled to debut on November 11 on Fox Nation, and the planned ABC station placements suggest Fox Nation wants the campaign to travel through local inventory rather than rely only on its own channels. That tactic is difficult to pull off when the promotion appears to lean on a rival’s brand language, which is why the local-market rollout matters more than a standard teaser buy.
If the promos reach air in the listed markets, the campaign will test how much room a streaming service has to advertise a rival dating series on ABC stations while the legal dispute stays alive. For now, the sharper business question is not the premiere date; it is whether the ads make it onto the stations at all.
