How ABC Became the New NBC

[SV Fan]

Amazing what happens when you lose football. That's why networks pay the big bucks for the NFL, it's a loss leader that basically helps you promote other shows.

 

[TMC1982]

Amazing what happens when you lose football. That's why networks pay the big bucks for the NFL, it's a loss leader that basically helps you promote other shows.

Yeah, CBS had to learn the hard way when they lost the NFL to Fox back in 1994. NBC too had to learn the hard way when they lost the AFC package to CBS back in 1998 (and tried to substitute the NFL w/ the XFL and later Arena Football League).

If you ever get a chance to read the book about the history of ESPN called Those Guys Have All the Fun, you'll learn that it was Michael Eisner who was up front about him not wanting Monday Night Football to be on ABC anymore because he felt that it was costing Disney too much money.

Also, addressed in that book, ABC could've had a chance at landing the more flexible Sunday Night Football package before NBC but Bob Iger completely screwed the whole thing up. At the end of the day, Disney wound up having to overpay for Monday Night Football to go to ESPN (since it became apparent that not having live NFL telecasts on ESPN would be very bad for the brand). ESPN got in effect, the old ESPN Sunday Night Football package for Monday Night Football while NBC became the new home for the NFL's marquee TV package.

 

[BestGirl]

Are there any TV stations that are doing well? Seems like I'm always hearing that shows' ratings are going down across the board.

 

[TheNextNolan22]

Maybe CW? AMC?

 

[Primal Slayer]

CW has gone up a bit but their Friday line up has dipped.

 

[enterthemadness]

......... are you Bizarro Sawyer?

I dunno, you're Sawyer, so look in the mirror and tell me what you see?

 

[Dr. Evil]

How are the friday shows still hanging in there? That's usually the day you don't want you show to be on.

Shark Tank and 20/20 have been steady.

Nobody gives a rats rear about Tim Allen's latest TV show, especially when it doesn't have Richard Karn for him to pick on.

The Neighbors is an okay show. Not terrible, not great but does have its funny moments.

 

[Dr. Evil]

With but a few flecks of gold sprinkled in there just to keep things interesting enough.

Elementary, HIMYM, NCIS, NCIS:LA and Person of Interest.

 

[enterthemadness]

You just gone done piss off a soap fan, ABC.


http://watchabc.go.com/info?cid=abchp_around_watchinfo


Beginning Jan 6th, ABC wants you to use a cable/Sat provider (that is listed) to sign into ABC.com to watch full shows on ABC.com. If not, wait a week I guess. Or pay for Hulu Plus, or get **** off of iTunes or Amazon Instant Video.


B-B-B-B-General Hospital isn't on Hulu Plus. It's on Hulu. So if the local news interrupts GH for 10 minutes, guess I am ****ed?

 

[Donut]

That's what soap fans get

 

[enterthemadness]

That's what soap fans get

it's a conspiracy. although ABC is suppose to be tracking GH's numbers on ABC.com and Hulu.com, which is why they are just taking down all the fan channels on youtube.


no cake for you, ABC.

 

[TheNextNolan22]

You got what you deserved.

 

[enterthemadness]

You got what you deserved.

your trolling is hilarious.


ABC is only doing this cause they are worse off than NBC...they are actually 4th place again.

 

[Mrs. Sawyer]

Cancelling Happy Endings, Don't Trust the B, and, going further back, Better Off Ted (putting it after a declining Scrubs show ratingswise instead of the juggernaught Modern Family) in addition to cutting the budget on Scrubs in the final season and extending it after it's final season for a "ninth season" topped a bunch of miscues that ABC has had the past few years.

On a separate note, it's funny how ABC's luck started changing when Scrubs moved to its channel.

That's what soap fans get

This.

 

[superion]

I like how the article seems to say that and Don't Trust the B**** failed in the post-Modern Family time slot like Super Fun Night is likely to, but no, they "failed" because ABC ****ed with a good thing and took them out of that time slot.

ABC took them out of that time slot because they were losing a ton of Modern Family's lead in including Happy Endings. ABC could have put any show in that time slot and it would have gotten decent ratings. Just like CBS can put anything after Big Bang Theory (like the Millers and S*it your Dad Says) and get ratings. Doesn't mean those shows actually have any following on their own.

The fact they all failed after they lost the Modern Family lead in means none of them really had much of a following.

 

[enterthemadness]

How is this our soap fans fault? HOW?!


come at me.

 

[Specter313]

ABC took them out of that time slot because they were losing a ton of Modern Family's lead in including Happy Endings. ABC could have put any show in that time slot and it would have gotten decent ratings. Just like CBS can put anything after Big Bang Theory (like the Millers and S*it your Dad Says) and get ratings. Doesn't mean those shows actually have any following on their own.

The fact they all failed after they lost the Modern Family lead in means none of them really had much of a following.

It's hard for any show to have a following when the network it is on does a poor job promoting it, then never keeps a consistent schedule for it, which it did to a RIDICULOUS degree for the third season of Happy Endings, so that anyone who did follow the show had a horrible chance of catching the new episodes. Add to the fact that they aired them out of order so that anyone who did watch them got confused, and you have a problem with how the network handles the show, not with the fans not tuning in. And stuff like Super Fun Night tanking shows that you can't put anything after Modern Family and it will be a success. Happy Endings ratings were actually going up compared to the first season once it was put in that slot, and more and more people were talking about it as it went on before ABC screwed up in the third season.

 

[superion]

It's hard for any show to have a following when the network it is on does a poor job promoting it, then never keeps a consistent schedule for it, which it did to a RIDICULOUS degree for the third season of Happy Endings, so that anyone who did follow the show had a horrible chance of catching the new episodes. Add to the fact that they aired them out of order so that anyone who did watch them got confused, and you have a problem with how the network handles the show, not with the fans not tuning in. And stuff like Super Fun Night tanking shows that you can't put anything after Modern Family and it will be a success. Happy Endings ratings were actually going up compared to the first season once it was put in that slot, and more and more people were talking about it as it went on before ABC screwed up in the third season.

Happy Endings 2nd season ratings went up because Modern Family's ratings went up that year. Modern Family had its strongest ratings during Happy Endings 2nd season. Super Fun Night ratings aren't as strong as Happy Endings and Apt 23 were at the same time slot because Modern Family has suffered a big drop in ratings the last year and half as the article states.

All these shows were dependent on Modern Family's lead in which is why ABC ditched all of them and continued to try new shows in that time slot to find a show that could build on Modern Family or at least retain a larger percentage of its audience.

HE and Apt 23 got a stable time slot last year Tuesday's at 9:00 and 9:30. Both shows got such horrible ratings that ABC had no choice but to eventually move them both. It's not as if the competition was that tough either. NBC had Matthew Perry's latest bomb which was cancelled after one season and NBC's 9:30 show was cancelled as well. Fox had New Girl whose ratings have been tanking since its first season and Mindy which also has horrible ratings. NCIS LA on CBS was the only show that could be called a hit in that time slot.

ABC does for some stupid reason like to broadcast shows out of order. They mixed up the order of Apt 23 shows as well. Season 2 had unaired season one episodes intermingled with season 2 episodes. Super Fun Night also supposedly had the same issue.

 

[TMC1982]

Amazing what happens when you lose football. That's why networks pay the big bucks for the NFL, it's a loss leader that basically helps you promote other shows.

Here's some more info about the transition of Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN:
Reconciling the Dream: 2005172008

One thing that really grabbed me was the comment from Steve Bornstein (the former president of the ABC Network as well as ABC Sports and ESPN) that there comes a point in time in which broadcast TV networks really need a strong "male delivery system". Since a large percentage of ABC's viewers these days are female, the particular analysis now seems awfully prophetic.

 

[TMC1982]

ABC is known for crappy scheduling. Plenty of good shows have gotten canceled because of ABC moving things around for no good reason. Samantha Who? was doing amazing on mondays, Ugly Betty was doing great on thursdays. What do they do? Move Ugly Betty to a new night, later timeslot and tried to create a comedy block in front of Greys with Samantha Who? and another show. What happened? All those shows were canceled and nothing has survived that Thursday 8pm time slot since.

I seriously believe that at the end of the day, ABC's biggest problem is the fact that they're Disney owned, who has always micromanaged the network for what turned out to be the worst results:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/11/the-queen-of-tween/303541/

Who runs ABC at any given moment has been an ongoing trivia question for the past ten years or so. Since 1995 when Disney merged with Capital Cities/ABC in a $19 billion deal the top job at the network has been like the post of manager of the New York Yankees in the 1980s, when George Steinbrenner fitfully hired and fired skippers almost annually, only to finish the decade without a World Series ring. As executives have come and gone, the product on the air has been inconsistent and ultimately unwatched by an American public that in the age of cable no longer has to give network television the benefit of the doubt.

At every turn during this period, it seems, ABC called for the wrong play at the wrong moment. There was the attempt to make the network into a clone of NBC, which was then achieving ratings bonanzas with Friends and Seinfeld hip young stars sitting in apartments furnished by Ikea. There was the brief success and then the overuse of a game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? that seemed to run every night, over and over and over again, to the point where we didn't care whether or not someone won the $1 million prize or how many damn lifelines were left. And then there were the unseized moments, any one of which might have helped make ABC the broadcast juggernaut it seemed destined to be when it first gained access to the resources and power of mighty Disney: the network turned down Survivor (now a perennially top-ranked show for CBS) not once but three times; it balked at Scrubs (now a hit comedy on NBC) and CSI (now a hit franchise, with two spinoffs, on CBS), both of which, gallingly, were developed by Touchstone, Disney's in-house television production unit; and when Survivor's creator, Mark Burnett, came to ABC with The Apprentice, the network's inability to move quickly enough allowed that show, which became a huge hit last year, to land at NBC.

 

[Teelie]

That was nearly a decade ago... not much has changed for ABC since.

 

[Sawyer]

ABC was practically a non-entity until the 2004-2005 trifecta of LOST/Desperate Housewives/Grey's Anatomy (Modern Family pretty much served the same purpose comedy-wise when it premiered in 2009). Now the first two are gone and the third has dragged on so long that it's overshadowed by another show from the same creator.

They're practically back where they started.

 

[Specter313]

Elementary, HIMYM, NCIS, NCIS:LA and Person of Interest.

Yeah, I know I'm late to this list, but I'd add The Crazy Ones to it.