Drama strategy for ABC

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USA Today has this to say about ABC's drama strategy for the upcoming season.

Drama builds for underdog network ABC
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — ABC faced TV writers Monday in a tough spot: Critics seem to like its new shows more than those of other networks. But with the network mired in fourth place, launching them could prove difficult.

With last season's ratings down 10% from an already weak 2002-03, another team of executives is in place. New entertainment chief Stephen McPherson made his first appearance via satellite from his Paris honeymoon.

"We're not of the belief that it is one show that saves the network," he said. The biggest priority is to fix ABC's broken slate of dramas: The network hasn't had a breakout hit since The Practice in 1998, all six of last season's dramas failed, and lone stalwart NYPD Blue is expected to end next season.

Three will premiere in September: soapy Desperate Housewives; Life as We Know It, about sex-starved teen boys; and Lost, about a group of plane-crash survivors marooned on an island. They'll join Practice spinoff Boston Legal and are aimed at countering the boom in procedural crime shows on other networks. Another trio is teed up for midseason, when Alias also returns.

McPherson says ABC's underdog status allows it to be more patient with promising shows, but "being patient with a show that isn't working doesn't make sense," he says, in an apparent reference to last season's low-rated Karen Sisco.

Unlike NBC and Fox, ABC is sticking to a more traditional rollout schedule, unveiling its fall lineup within a week after the season officially starts on Sept. 20.

McPherson also jumped on the Fox-bashing bandwagon, accusing the network of programming thievery. Fox will premiere Trading Spouses next week, two months before ABC's previously announced Wife Swap, in which two families temporarily trade moms.

Those tactics send a distressing message to producers: "If you take a show, a pitch, into Fox, and they can't or decide not to buy it, they will steal it. Plain and simple. I think it's really upsetting." (The British producers of Wife Swap, which airs in the U.K., say they never pitched their show to Fox.)

Also Monday, Nightline anchor Ted Koppel took issue with Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore's depiction of network newscasters as cheerleaders for President Bush's drive to sell the American public on the war in Iraq. "It's a terrific piece of entertainment ... but it is to the documentary what the JFK film was to history," Koppel says.

He said Nightline has questioned the administration's motives, "but we didn't do those stories as political polemics." He echoed weekend comments by NBC's Tom Brokaw, who accused Moore of "taking a lot of liberties not just with the facts, but how you arrange the facts."
 
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