New ABC Team Unveils Strong Lineup, Hope To End Slump

Less than a month after they took their jobs, ABC's new leadership Tuesday met the ad community. And judging from the initial reaction, it may be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

A year ago, ABC's schedule went awry almost immediately. Few comedies survived; for the second year in a row, no dramas were left standing. The network once famous for sitcoms and dramas like "NYPD Blue" fell further into a slump that helped spark a proxy fight at the Magic Kingdom, ABC's parent company.

While acknowledging that things moved quickly--prime time chief Stephen McPherson has only been on the job 29 days--ABC presented a schedule that includes 17 returning series along with two new sitcoms, four dramas, and two alternative series. It also jumped further into year-round programming, saving the critically acclaimed "Alias" until mid-season and beginning one highly noted drama, "Blind Justice," following the series end of "NYPD Blue" in the spring.

McPherson and his boss, Anne Sweeney, both stressed that it was important to come out of the box with as strong a programming lineup as possible. McPherson said he immediately reached out to Hollywood's creative community, telling them that ABC wanted to be the home for fresh and creative material. McPherson showed a confident face to Madison Avenue, serving notice that it wasn't enough just to stay in place.

advertisement

advertisement

"I want to win, and I want this network to win," McPherson said.

McPherson won over the crowd early, recalling his days as a studio executive when he would have to sit through a three-and-a-half-hour upfront presentation, unveiling a schedule everyone already knew.

"Let's not do that," McPherson said to a lot of applause, the first of many remarks that to one observer didn't seem forced or merely polite.

Many of the shows got a positive reaction from the crowd that crammed into the New Amsterdam Theatre in Manhattan's Times Square. The shows included two reality series plucked from the summer schedule--"The Benefactor" and "Wife Swap"--along with the Mel Gibson-directed sitcom "Savages" and standup comic-driven "Rodney." Drama development brought teen-male-oriented "Life As We Know It" along with prime time soap-style "Desperate Housewives" and "The Practice" spinoff "Fleet Street," starring James Spader and William Shatner.

While Sweeney, McPherson, and ABC Sales Chief Mike Shaw were relatively circumspect about the network's recent failings, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was anything but. Kimmel, along with sitcom star George Lopez, loosened the crowd with off-the-cuff humor. Kimmel's standup routine last year criticized ABC's plans to broadcast the wedding of "The Bachelorette" and her beau, surmising that he probably wouldn't be asked back next year.

Kimmel, however, was wrong. It was ABC's top executives who weren't asked back. That gave Kimmel license to take ABC's troubles head on, which he did.

"Do you remember last year, when we talked about how we were turning the place around?" Kimmel asked the advertisers and buyers attending. "That was bull----."

Kimmel said ABC didn't need to look too far to find the perfect reality series, what with the management woes on the network.

"I tell you why we didn't buy 'The Apprentice,'" Kimmel said. "It hit too close to home."

He said there was already someone going around ABC's offices in Burbank saying: "You're fired, you're fired, you're fired."

Kimmel also scored big with the audience with an analogy that seemed to fit the networks' current positioning, if it wasn't politically correct.

"If this were high school, NBC would be the rich kid whose dad bought the BMW. CBS would be the Straight-A student going to Stanford. Fox would be the jock who's not too smart, but still gets the chicks. And we are the kids who eat paste."

Kimmel also took a shot at NBC, whose presentation kicked off the upfront season Monday afternoon.

"I'll tell you ... If NBC made me sit through a two-and-a-half-hour upfront, I would figure out a way to punish them," he told the advertisers.

Next story loading loading..