* ABC essentially in same position as when Paul Lee took
over
* His freshman season brought ‘good solid singles,’ no home
runs
* 10 new shows on schedule for 2012: 6 dramas, 4 comedies
By Lisa Richwine and Liana B. Baker
NEW YORK, May 15 (Reuters) – Paul Lee’s performance since he
took over as ABC Entertainment Group president in July 2010 gets
these evaluations from analysts and other industry observers:
“Good solid singles.” “Decent batting average.” “Doing
reasonably well.”
Not bad, in other words, but no home runs.
After his first full season atop the network, ABC is
essentially in the same position it was in before he got there.
Ratings are flat, and the network is still ranked third among
broadcast networks, with an average of 8.4 million total weekly
viewers, according to Nielsen.
That’s why there is more riding for Lee on this year’s
schedule – unveiled at a star-studded presentation featuring
Jimmy Kimmel and the cast of “Modern Family” at Lincoln Center
in New York on Tuesday – than for perhaps any other network
head.
“We felt we had a lot to do when we came in and we’ve been
very pleased,” Lee said on a conference call ahead of ABC’s
presentation Tuesday.
“We had a good start but we’ve got to keep going and we
think we have the shows to do it.”
With a new tagline that asks, “Why just watch when you can
feel?” Lee announced 10 new shows – six dramas and four
comedies.
Among the dramas are “666 Park Avenue,” about the mysterious
happenings in a New York City apartment building, and “Last
Resort,” starring Andre Braugher and set on an exotic island
after a submarine mission gone awry. Rounding out the new dramas
are “Mistresses,” “Nashville,” “Red Widow” and “Zero Hour.”
Comedies include one that Lee said was among his personal
favorites, “The Neighbors,” about aliens living next door; “How
to Live with Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)”; “Malibu
Country”; and “The Family Tools.”
“There’s a lot of ambition with this schedule,” Lee said.
“We are piling in behind both comedy and drama because we think
we have strong development and we want to solidify the success
we had this last season.”
IGER’S HANDPICKED LEADER
Lee, a London-born and Oxford-educated executive without the
cockiness so often seen in network heads, was Walt Disney Co
Chief Executive Bob Iger’s handpicked successor to lead
ABC after the abrupt resignation of Stephen McPherson two years
ago.
Lee is considered a rising star in the Magic Kingdom, having
turned ABC Family into a top 10 cable network in terms of total
viewers during his seven years at the helm.
With the cable network division in ascendance at Disney,
Lee’s promotion coincided with that of another cable hitmaker
handpicked by Iger: Rich Ross of the Disney Channel, whom the
Disney CEO elevated to run the company’s movie studio. However,
Ross resigned under pressure in April after failing to translate
his cable success into movie blockbusters.
Before joining Disney in 2004, Lee founded the BBC America
cable channel in 1998, where his successes included bringing to
U.S. audiences the British comedy “The Office,” a show that
earned two Golden Globe awards.
Early in his career, Lee worked as a journalist covering the
conflict in Northern Ireland.
ABC BEFORE LEE
The schedule Lee inherited when he took charge of ABC
included several strong but aging hit shows, among them reality
shows “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Bachelor,” and dramas
“Grey’s Anatomy” and “Desperate Housewives,” an anchor show that
ended its 8-year run Sunday.
He also inherited one new and massive comedy hit, “Modern
Family,” which has blossomed into one of TV’s most-watched
shows, averaging about 13 million viewers weekly.
“Dancing” remains ABC’s most-watched show, drawing 18
million viewers on average this season, though ratings for the
seven-year-old program slipped this year. Lee has ordered an
All-Star edition of the popular reality show featuring past
contestant favorites for the fall in an attempt to reinvigorate
the franchise.
Beyond that, however, there wasn’t much else when Lee came
aboard. He had to build a full schedule around those shows, and
industry executives and analysts said he did an admirable job of
refreshing the lineup with a crop of new hits that leave fewer
gaps in the network’s lineup.
“Paul has had good solid singles and built a schedule so he
doesn’t have as many huge holes,” a former Disney executive
said.
Overall, “they have a decent batting average in the past
year,” Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan said.
In a business where shows fail more often than they succeed,
six of the 13 freshman programs Lee put on the air last season
will return to ABC’s schedule this fall.
Among them are fantasy drama “Once Upon a Time,” which has
surprised TV observers by attracting an average of nearly 12
million viewers, or about the same size of the audience for
“Grey’s Anatomy,” against very tough competition on Sunday.
Soapy drama “Revenge,” which averaged more than 8 million
viewers, and comedy “Suburgatory,” which averaged around 7
million, are both coming back as well. Also renewed were
comedies “Last Man Standing” and “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt.
23,” along with political drama “Scandal.”
Of course, Lee launched some bombs as well. Cross-dressing
comedy “Work It” was ravaged by critics and canceled after two
episodes.
Kimmel, who hosts ABC’s late-night offering and regularly
does a short standup routine during the network’s upfront show,
poked fun at Lee for giving the greenlight to “Work It” onstage
Tuesday.
“You know we were kidding about that right? That was a joke.
The fact that Paul Lee greenlit ‘Work It’ should tell you all
you need to know about what British people think of us,” said
Kimmel, who mocked Lee’s accent and punctuated his sentences
with a playful “pip pip.”
Other duds credited to Lee include a “Charlie’s Angels”
reboot that quickly got the ax, the heavily hyped 1960s drama
“Pan Am,” paranormal mystery “The River” and comedy “GCB.”
BATTLING WITH NBC
ABC has long ranked third in the ratings behind CBS
and News Corp’s FOX in terms of total viewers, with NBC
fourth.
“ABC is scraping along, but struggling to get to the network
level performance of CBS and Fox,” Morningstar analyst Michael
Corty said.
More troubling, however, is the fact that ABC has fallen
behind NBC in the 18-to-49-year-old demographic most prized by
advertisers. Comcast-owned NBC averages 3.2 million
weekly viewers in that category, or about 100,000 more than ABC.
ABC executives argue that NBC is ahead only because it got a
lift from the Super Bowl, the most-watched program on television
with an audience that heavily skews younger. ABC said it leads
NBC by 4 percent in the demographic when the Super Bowl is
excluded.
“Certainly, when you take the sports out of it, we are a
very strong third behind CBS and FOX and we are going to
continue to press the strength we have on the network,” Lee
said.
Overall, ABC “has a deeper bench” than NBC, according to
Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon
Media.
“(ABC) doesn’t have a lot of huge hits, but they’ve got a
lot of shows doing reasonably well,” he said.
And Lee’s new shows appear to have struck a chord of
optimism among media buyers in attendance at Tuesday’s upfront
presentation.
“I thought it looked strong,” said one media buyer of ABC’s
schedule who asked not to be named because he would be
negotiating ad deals with the network. “The show ‘Neighbors’
looked pretty original as well as the midseason show ‘Zero
Hour.'”
