ABC loads fall schedule with comedies

NEW YORK — Add ABC to the list of broadcast networks loading up on comedy next season.

In addition to its successful Wednesday comedy block, the network will launch another block on Tuesdays and will resurrect its Friday family comedy block, last seen during ABC’s “TGIF” days.

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A new comedy about aliens — seems they’ve snapped up all the real estate in a gated New Jersey community — won the lottery for the coveted post-“Modern Family” time period Wednesday. And Tim Allen’s returning “Last Man Standing” will be paired with the new Reba McEntire sitcom, “Malibu Country,” to jump-start the Friday comedies push.

Meanwhile, the sophomore soap “Revenge” is the heir to the defunct “Desperate Housewives” 9 p.m. time slot Sunday — the most-watched night of the week. “Revenge” will be sandwiched between the returning fairy-tale horror drama “Once Upon a Time” and a new Faustian soap about an evil Upper East Side residential building, to get a whole Good vs. Evil thing going on that night.

And on Mondays in the fall — against NBC’s returning singing competition “The Voice” — ABC’s going to take it up a notch with an all-star edition of “Dancing With the Stars.” ABC programming chief Paul Lee did not name names, saying it’s still casting.

On Tuesday, ABC will move the “Dancing” results show to 8 p.m. to make room for “an incredibly inappropriate comedy block at 9,” Lee told reporters in a phone conference call Tuesday, a few hours before he was scheduled to unveil his new schedule to advertisers at Lincoln Center.

And by “incredibly inappropriate comedy,” Lee explained that he meant “two of my favorite shows” — “Happy Endings” and “Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23.”

If you think this move sounds suspiciously like NBC’s Monday announcement that it will move its Tuesday “Voice” results show to 8 next season — to make room at 9 for a new two-comedy block (Matthew Perry’s “Go On” and Ryan Murphy’s “The New Normal”) — you go to the head of the class.

Anyway, both Incredibly Inappropriate Comedies previously enjoyed the cushy time slot after “Modern Family.” Lee thinks those shows will survive the move because both have “passionate, rabid fanbases” and “light up Twitter and Facebook every time they go on.”

And come January, when “Dancing” is resting — and “The Voice” is not — ABC (unlike NBC) will be able to grow its two-comedy Tuesday block into a four-comedy Tuesday block from 8 to 10 p.m.

ABC will add two midseason comedies: the much-ballyhooed Sarah Chalke/Brad Garrett/Elizabeth Perkins vehicle, “How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life)” — the highest-testing show title of the year, Lee said — and “The Family Tools,” about a guy who’s failed at every career move and now takes over Dad’s handyman business. That arrangement presumably continues until “Dancing” picks up again in March.

And that new our-neighbors-are-aliens comedy, “The Neighbors,” is the creation of Dan Fogelman of “Crazy Stupid Love” fame. Lee pointed out that Fogelman movie credit by way of noting how many film creative types he’d snagged for ABC’s lineup next season.