Judge Wapner to return to television courtroom

Wapner was television's only judge when he started "The People's Court" in 1981 after leaving the California bench.

Now there are 10 court shows on the air. There's "Judge Judy" Sheindlin and her husband, Jerry, who now presides over "The People's Court." There's Judge Brown, Judge Hatchett, Judge Mathis and Judge Lane. There's "Divorce Court," "Moral Court," "Curtis Court" and "Power of Attorney."

It's all a viewer can do to avoid getting lost in legal mumbo jumbo.

There's really only one thing to remember: "It's Judy and everyone else," said Stu Billett, executive producer of "The People's Court."

The tart-tongued "Judge Judy" has an audience roughly twice the size of any other, and she's the reason there are so many court shows. The genre had virtually disappeared when Wapner left in 1993, but "Judge Judy" revived it four years later.

"People saw efficiency, they saw a problem and they saw it resolved within 30 minutes," Sheindlin said. Each of the non-Judy court shows are basically interchangeable with viewers, said Garnett Losak, an expert on the syndication market for Petry Media Corp. How well they do is dependent on the time slots they negotiate with local stations, she said.