Prime-Time Go Time

ABC's Lagging Fortune Counts on a Solid Fall Lineup

Monday and Tuesday will be critical days for the ABC television network. In Los Angeles, it will hype its fall prime-time lineup to critics, who may write that fourth-place ABC finally has the roster of shows to turn around its lagging fortunes -- or that the Walt Disney Co.'s network faces yet another year in the cellar.

The other networks will do the same next week, in an annual, pressure-packed several days, as television executives work the critics and needle each other. For networks such as ABC, which hasn't been in first place since the 1999-2000 season (and only twice during the past 20 years) it may not be a make-or-break week, but it comes close, thanks to all the dollars hanging in the balance.

In this past television season, for instance, ABC had to charge about $30,000 less per 30-second commercial than CBS and NBC, both of which earn much higher ratings, according to Nielsen Media Research. During a single 30-minute sitcom with 11 commercials, this difference amounts to $330,000. Over an entire prime-time season, with about 20 programs in a weekly lineup, it equates to hundreds of millions in ad revenue lost for one reason -- ABC has been unable to pick shows that viewers like better than those on other networks.

Although ABC accounts for only a thin slice of Disney's revenue, it remains a target of unhappy shareholders and is one reason that Disney stock trades at half the price it did in 2000. ABC's most recent No. 1 prime-time show was "Who Wants To be a Millionaire" during the 1999-2000 season. Before that, you have to go back 15 years to "Dynasty," the top-rated show during the 1984-85 season. (ABC hit No. 2 in the early '90s with "Rosanne" and "Home Improvement.")

In the past decade, "from an outsider's standpoint, it seemed [ABC] lacked a point of view, lacked purpose," said Brandon Stoddard, a part-time motion picture professor at the University of Southern California who ran the network for four years before Disney bought it in 1996. "If you don't know where you're going, it's hard to get there."

Disney chief executive Michael D. Eisner has said that fixing ABC is the company's top priority. He and Disney president Robert A. Iger, a former head of ABC, have been telling investors that the money-losing network will be profitable by 2005. In April, they fired ABC's leaders and tapped Anne M. Sweeney from Disney's cable channels to become president of Disney-ABC television, and Stephen McPherson, head of Disney's Touchstone Television, to run prime time.

ABC has lacked two crucial elements that its more successful rivals have: stability in top management and franchise dramas. Since 1995, ABC has had six heads of prime-time programming. At Fox, Gail Berman has headed primetime since 2000. Jeffrey A. Zucker has led NBC prime time, maintaining top-ranked shows such as "Friends," since late the same year. At CBS, the top-rated network, chief executive (and Viacom Inc. co-president) Leslie Moonves has picked the prime-time lineup since 1995.

Building-block franchise dramas have proved highly lucrative for NBC and CBS. NBC launched "Law & Order" in 1990, spinning off "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" in 1999 and "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" in 2001, all of which deliver high ratings and an affluent audience that advertisers like. CBS has done the same with its "CSI" series. ABC's last successful dramas were "NYPD Blue," which began in 1993 and hasn't been in the top 10 since the 1995-96 season; and "The Practice," which began in 1997 and only this fall has produced a spinoff, "Boston Legal."

Thus weakened, ABC may be more vulnerable to larger forces acting against networks -- the rise of cable.

That explains why the stakes will be high next week for ABC's new leadership when ABC cranks up its latest prime-time effort.