TV Ratings Struggle: How ABC Became the New NBC

[TMC]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...-became-663970

But even if NBC can't shake the banner of industry whipping boy (after
all, when Voice and Sunday Night Football disappear in January, so will
many NBC viewers), a quiet but persistent narrative has been emerging
among ratings-watchers: ABC actually is much worse off. CBS and Fox
aren't doing so hot either this season, but ABC, the No. 4 network of the
past two seasons, increasingly has grown vulnerable to the criticism
typically reserved for the Peacock.

"There's no real secret to it," Disney CEO Robert Iger told analysts
ahead of the May upfront. "On the network front, we'd like a stronger
primetime schedule, particularly with programming that we own."

Consider the evidence: The network's fall offerings fell mostly flat, and
its splashy launch, Agents of SHIELD, premiered to a huge 4.7 rating
among adults 18-to-49 in September but was down almost three points from
its bow in its most recent new episode. ABC's reality franchise, Dancing
With the Stars, is down again this season, as are several of its
trademarked female-skewing dramas, including Revenge and Nashville.

Most alarming, observers note that the Alphabet net's biggest successes,
Modern Family and Scandal, have failed to serve as a launchpad for other
programs the way The Voice has at NBC. Scandal, pacing 61 percent north
of last season, does nobody any favors at 10 p.m. Thursdays, and Modern
Family, though not for any lack of trying, apparently is incapable of
building another comedy. (Modern is down 24 percent in its fifth season,
finally showing its age.) The network's latest stab at 9:30 p.m.

Wednesdays, the Rebel Wilson vehicle Super Fun Night, seems destined to
go the way of failed occupants Happy Endings, Don't Trust the B---- in
Apt. 23 and How to Live With Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life)
after steep drops from its lead-in prompted an abbreviated back order.
Many critics consider ABC's inability to find a partner for Modern Family
as its biggest shortcoming.

So why has ABC largely escaped the type of venom directed at NBC?
"NBC still seems to be the focal point of negative press, while others,
like ABC -- or have you seen Fox's ratings this season? -- are largely
ignored," notes one TV exec.

One reason could be that Paul Lee, ABC Entertainment Group's genteel Brit
president, maintains a low profile, and his misses -- there are many --
have not been as spectacular as, say, Greenblatt's megaflop Smash (snarky
tweeters still were making Smash jokes Dec. 5 even as 18.5 million
watched the Sound of Music telecast). Plus, NBC's Thursday night,
middling as ever this season with Sean Saves the World and The Michael J.
Fox Show, serves as a painful reminder of the block's fall from the boom
years of Seinfeld, Friends and ER.

CBS, which celebrated its first season atop the demo heap in 20 years in
2013, indeed is down by the same measure as ABC this season. But the
steady tenures of CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves and
entertainment chief Nina Tassler and what is regarded as the most defined
brand in broadcast largely keeps them out of the debate. Fox
entertainment chief Kevin Reilly is well-liked and is able to deflect the
brunt of criticism for his network's dramatic drops (22 percent last
season) to its ailing flagship American Idol.
PHOTOS: 81 of Fall TV's Biggest Stars

Some suggest ABC has received its own executive pass thanks to Disney's
Iger. The parent company CEO appears to inspire an appreciation for the
bigger picture he's trying to paint. Iger's sprawling TV strategy, after
all, in many ways sets up ABC for a certain amount of failure. The
network lost Monday Night Football in 2006 to Disney sibling ESPN (TV's
most-lucrative property, achieving a projected $10 billion in ad revenue
in 2013), leaving ABC the lone broadcaster unable to capitalize on the
booming NFL ratings. With sports taken out of the equation, ABC actually
would have topped the Big Four among adults 18-to-49 during the recent
November sweep.

Still, ABC's successes are becoming few and far between. The play to
reinvigorate Dancing With the Stars by cutting it down to a single two-
hour weekly broadcast failed to curb declining ratings. It closed its
17th cycle down 5 percent, with its average viewer a not-so-ad-friendly
62.1 years old. Worse off are two of the network's boldest scripted
names: Sunday duo Once Upon a Time and Revenge. Halfway into their third
seasons, the former darlings are pacing a troubling 24 percent shy of
last season. Things are so rough for Revenge, the breakout soap from the
2011-12 season, ABC is shuffling it from its prime 9 p.m. Sunday slot
(once home to yesteryear behemoth Desperate Housewives) to the network's
deeply troubled 10 p.m. hour. Current occupant and latest non-starter
Betrayal will end very quietly before midseason.

Yes, ABC has had a triumph in Agents of SHIELD, which has boosted the
Tuesday 8 p.m. slot. But it comes with the caveat of largely
underperforming lofty expectations -- both creatively and in viewership
-- for Marvel's TV foray into Disney synergy. Still, it ranks as
broadcast's No. 5 show with an average 4.9 rating among adults 18-to-49,
both significant feats.

It's that creation of a viable new time slot that many consider integral
to NBC passing its pariah status on to somebody else. And while the
network readies more attempts at a success that can't be chalked up to
The Voice or football, its competitors will play hot potato, hoping not
to be next. "As long as Thursday night is as bad a problem as it is, it's
going to be hard for NBC to turn perception," says one insider. "NBC was
built on Thursday night."

[tlc38tlc38]

Not really news to me. I've always liked ABC better than NBC. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy some shows (past and present) on NBC, but I've just always liked ABC better, especially in the 90's...come to think of it...everything was better in the 90's.

[TMC]

http://t.co/F558HNvD2G

As the NY Times reports, ABC has had to depend on female viewership since it's the only major network without NFL games: "More strikingly," reports Bill Carter, "the top five most popular shows among women are on ABC, as well as seven of the 10 most popular. All of those shows have an audience that is more than 70 percent female. (No. 1 is “Grey’s Anatomy” with an audience just under 76 percent female.)"
Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/tv-tattle#iges5kCY9cCMrUAC.99

[yankeesrj12]

People ripped on The CW for being the "rich white girl" network, but ABC is essentially the "soaps for women" network. I don't know when it all started happening, but the network has narrowed its focus way too much. I realize they are trying to broaden out (with male-skewing Agents of SHIELD, for example) but it is still too female focused. Castle, Nashville, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Once Upon a Time, Revenge; it's just too much.

[icecream]

Castle isn't a soap nor would I consider it female skewing. I'm a straight male who likes a lot of ABC shows: the Once Upon a Times, The Middle, Castle, and The Goldbergs. Wouldn't touch Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, or The Bachelor with a 10 foot pole though.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by yankeesrj12

People ripped on The CW for being the "rich white girl" network, but ABC is essentially the "soaps for women" network. I don't know when it all started happening, but the network has narrowed its focus way too much. I realize they are trying to broaden out (with male-skewing Agents of SHIELD, for example) but it is still too female focused. Castle, Nashville, Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Once Upon a Time, Revenge; it's just too much.

I think ABC's real problem is (and I don't mean to repeat what others have said) is their otherwise non-cohesive or slapdash scheduling (more importantly, their handling of sitcoms). For example, ABC moved Happy Endings around until it ensured it's death by the final move to Friday. They did pretty much, the the same thing to The Neighbors by moving it to Fridays in only its second season. Stuff like this does not really allow a show to establish any rapport with audiences. More to the point did not renew Suburgatory until very late, and only gave it a half season.

I also don't understand why ABC won't put The Goldbergs and Trophy Wife (two family oriented sitcoms) w/ The Middle and Modern Family on Wednesday nights. Instead, ABC tends to schedule two "weird" sitcoms (e.g. Super Fun Night, which for the most part, is terrible from what I've heard) to follow The Middle and Modern Family respectively. ABC also for some strange reason, likes broadcast shows (e.g. Don't Trust the B...) out of order.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

http://t.co/F558HNvD2G

As the NY Times reports, ABC has had to depend on female viewership since it's the only major network without NFL games: "More strikingly," reports Bill Carter, "the top five most popular shows among women are on ABC, as well as seven of the 10 most popular. All of those shows have an audience that is more than 70 percent female. (No. 1 is “Grey’s Anatomy” with an audience just under 76 percent female.)"
Read more at http://www.hitfix.com/tv-tattle#iges5kCY9cCMrUAC.99

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.

[Frenky]

ABC doesn't have football or overrun, otherwise ABC has solid lineup, Scandal and MF are above 3s, Castle, OUAT, GA and MAOS are above 2s in demo with Shark Tank and DWTS reaching also 2s, but upcoming problems with ABC are falling Sundays, GA reaching its end and finding replacement for Modern Family.

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

I think ABC's real problem is (and I don't mean to repeat what others have said) is their otherwise non-cohesive or slapdash scheduling (more importantly, their handling of sitcoms). For example, ABC moved Happy Endings around until it ensured it's death by the final move to Friday. They did pretty much, the the same thing to The Neighbors by moving it to Fridays in only its second season. Stuff like this does not really allow a show to establish any rapport with audiences. More to the point did not renew Suburgatory until very late, and only gave it a half season.

I also don't understand why ABC won't put The Goldbergs and Trophy Wife (two family oriented sitcoms) w/ The Middle and Modern Family on Wednesday nights. Instead, ABC tends to schedule two "weird" sitcoms (e.g. Super Fun Night, which for the most part, is terrible from what I've heard) to follow The Middle and Modern Family respectively. ABC also for some strange reason, likes broadcast shows (e.g. Don't Trust the B...) out of order.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...k/LiveActionTV

• ABC doesn't have a Friday Night Death Slot, it has Thursday Night Death Slot. The network has tried and failed to get a successful show going at 8:00 PM (Ugly Betty was the only scripted exception, although Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently Wipeout have both managed to run a few years by being low-cost filler) for over 30 years. So, naturally, in 2012 the geopolitical/military thriller Last Resort was aired Thursdays at eight. The ratings started as bad as you'd expect from a show that had to compete directly against (among other things) The Big Bang Theory and The X Factor, and got worse to the point where it finished last in its timeslot twice in a row, after which ABC killed it. Mildly subverted in that ABC is airing the remaining episodes and allowing its studio to give the series an actual ending.

• ABC started airing season 2 of Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and Season 3 of Happy Endings on Tuesdays on October 23, a month after the start of the season, and more importantly after the start of popular Tuesday comedies New Girl and Raising Hope and new comedies Go On, The New Normal, The Mindy Project and Ben And Kate, all of which share the same time slot as the B and HE. Then they began seriously effing with Apt. 23 airing unaired episodes from Season 1 while airing episodes from Season 2 at random, resulting in serious discontinuities between episodes (like June working on Wall Street and then not, then doing it again the next episode; the entire "James on Dancing with the Stars" plot via airing order was scrambled beyond belief to the point a Dub-Induced Plot Hole had to be created to scrub a DWTS mention). Then, on January 22, 2013, they cancelled the show and announced they were not going to air the remaining 8 episodes on the network. After the end of the 2013 broadcast season the missing eight episodes were placed online and Hulu, allowing some kind of closure.
  This was actually a result of being screwed in Season 1 when, after a positive response at upfronts, ABC had ordered 13 episodes and scheduled it as an actual midseason replacement with a premiere date in February. But then...perhaps ABC got cold feet about the title, not least because they were taking similar heat over Good Christian Bitches, which became Good Christian Belles and finally just GCB. After putting Apt. 23 through the same rollercoaster, they rescheduled its premiere date to the end of April, allowing just 6 episodes or so and forcing the mixed-up order in Season 2.

• ABC is pretty much the Fox of the 2010s. Pan Am, Missing, Body of Proof, Zero Hour, No Ordinary Family, Better with You, How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life), Red Widow, and countless other series have gotten yanked off the air pretty quickly, some as a result even ending on cliffhangers!

[70s show watcher]

the only things that i have watched on abc this season are the nba the first eps of derailed and back in the game and sometimes i still watch dancing with the stars outside of that there are no shows ether comedy or drama on abc that interest me i know that its odd to not be able to find at least one show on a network that will hold your interest but this season abc really struck out at least with me

[Mr. Television]

Castle and The Middle are about the only things I watch on ABC.

[icecream]

Originally Posted by 70s show watcher

the only things that i have watched on abc this season are the nba the first eps of derailed and back in the game

What's Derailed? I haven't heard of it.

[70s show watcher]

Originally Posted by catsrule

What's Derailed? I haven't heard of it.

i meant to say betrayal i have no idea why i wrote derailed

[TMC]

Originally Posted by TMC

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...k/LiveActionTV

• ABC doesn't have a Friday Night Death Slot, it has Thursday Night Death Slot. The network has tried and failed to get a successful show going at 8:00 PM (Ugly Betty was the only scripted exception, although Whose Line Is It Anyway? and more recently Wipeout have both managed to run a few years by being low-cost filler) for over 30 years. So, naturally, in 2012 the geopolitical/military thriller Last Resort was aired Thursdays at eight. The ratings started as bad as you'd expect from a show that had to compete directly against (among other things) The Big Bang Theory and The X Factor, and got worse to the point where it finished last in its timeslot twice in a row, after which ABC killed it. Mildly subverted in that ABC is airing the remaining episodes and allowing its studio to give the series an actual ending.

• ABC started airing season 2 of Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and Season 3 of Happy Endings on Tuesdays on October 23, a month after the start of the season, and more importantly after the start of popular Tuesday comedies New Girl and Raising Hope and new comedies Go On, The New Normal, The Mindy Project and Ben And Kate, all of which share the same time slot as the B and HE. Then they began seriously effing with Apt. 23 airing unaired episodes from Season 1 while airing episodes from Season 2 at random, resulting in serious discontinuities between episodes (like June working on Wall Street and then not, then doing it again the next episode; the entire "James on Dancing with the Stars" plot via airing order was scrambled beyond belief to the point a Dub-Induced Plot Hole had to be created to scrub a DWTS mention). Then, on January 22, 2013, they cancelled the show and announced they were not going to air the remaining 8 episodes on the network. After the end of the 2013 broadcast season the missing eight episodes were placed online and Hulu, allowing some kind of closure.
  This was actually a result of being screwed in Season 1 when, after a positive response at upfronts, ABC had ordered 13 episodes and scheduled it as an actual midseason replacement with a premiere date in February. But then...perhaps ABC got cold feet about the title, not least because they were taking similar heat over Good Christian Bitches, which became Good Christian Belles and finally just GCB. After putting Apt. 23 through the same rollercoaster, they rescheduled its premiere date to the end of April, allowing just 6 episodes or so and forcing the mixed-up order in Season 2.

• ABC is pretty much the Fox of the 2010s. Pan Am, Missing, Body of Proof, Zero Hour, No Ordinary Family, Better with You, How to Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life), Red Widow, and countless other series have gotten yanked off the air pretty quickly, some as a result even ending on cliffhangers!

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/...-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.

[icecream]

Scrubs was not a hit like the other ABC passes mentioned. It rode off the coattails of Frasier, Friends, and Will & Grace, all of which were lead-ins for Scrubs, it could not anchor a night. ABC did end up airing Scrubs when NBC didn't want it, the last season did absolutely terrible.