ABC's Schedule Woes

[KMan101]

If this needs to be moved to regular primetime discussion, that's fine. Wasn't sure but it relates to ABC primetime so....

Personally, I think ABC *sucks* with their scheduling. I'm honestly shocked they're keeping Paul Lee around. He picks up some good shows, but the scheduling of them is just awful.

Soooo many good (imo) ABC shows are killed because of the awful timeslots they're placed in.

Not to mention they have a Tuesday @ 10 death slot as well as Thursday @ 8 death slot. Bet they wish they never cancelled Body of Proof now. Stupid. Cancel a show that got 9 million viewers.

And they pretty much killed any shot Apt 23. and Happy Endings had (still burns me).

And then in 2008 (or 2007?) (who was in charge then?) Eli Stone, Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money were all pretty much killed.

Just a small list of mistakes in scheduling.

And they should be very grateful The Goldbergs and Last Man Standing have managed to develop a solid audience. I also think Trophy Wife is hilarious but it wasn't really given a shot. It was probably the perfect show to go after Modern Family.

I also don't understand why they cancelled How To Live With Your Parents ... (with Sarah Chalke, Brad Garrett). They only did because I think they didn't own it, or something like that.

I also think it's dumb that a country soap opera airs after sitcoms on Wednesday night.

They also haven't done a good job of developing shows that they can depend on to anchor their schedule in the future. Revenge and Once Upon a Time are sinking in the ratings. OUAT has a better younger demo.

So what's ABC's problem?

[DRW50]

I know a lot of fans blame scheduling for the fate of OUAT and Revenge, especially always having them run against awards shows.

[Chris B]

I think scheduling has hurt OUAT a bit, but Revenge's problems have always been with the quality of the show IMO. Every time it manages to get a boost they run the viewers off again. I do agree that ABC has made a lot of bad decisions with when to stick with certain shows, especially when it comes to hour-long shows. When it comes to How To Live..., I feel that was a huge mistake. It was their first sitcom in ages that was doing well and it had a strong cast and wasn't your cookie-cutter sitcom either. That didn't make much sense, but the fact that it wasn't owned by them is the obvious reason.

Now that they've killed so many potential hits, it's clear their problem is development.

[gtru1981]

This year, it seems like every show they put out got canceled. In all honestly, its not just ABC, its every major network. The ratings have been terrible for quite some time and it seems to only get worse. Its all about viewing online and cable now. Cable you can get away with more and network tv is just getting boring and stale at this point.

[ChitHappens]

Great thread, K!

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah, I'd blame Revenge on the material. It would have been a good candidate maybe for 13 episode seasons, like Sleepy Hollow is doing. But the buzz the show had died quicker than it did for The OC (which is saying something.) My mom recently was visiting and saw an advert for it and commented "That show's still on?"

Agents of SHIELD has *so* many issues that it's hard to fault their scheduling, but forcing it to be a TVPG, and a lead in to sitcoms and reality tv has done it no favours.

[JackPeyton]

I this this has been revenges best season.

The problem with it was a absolutely dreadful season two and a time change switch too early into its run.

[Soapsuds]

ABC has a lot of stinkers of shows. I do like a few though. The Goldbergs is a failure. The ratings are in the 2's and low 3's in the ratings. I dont know why its still on the air.

[wingwalker]

Where to begin. ABC's problem goes back years ago. ABC failed to groom new hits while Grey's, Desperate Housewives, LOST, etc were still really big, so that when they declined/ended, they had nothing waiting in the wings. Only new(er) successful drama on ABC is Scandal. That's it. While on CBS, NCIS franchise has largely replaced the CSI franchise that once dominated that network, and on NBC they now have Blacklist, Chicago PD & Chicago Fire to replace the L&O franchise that once dominated them. Which brings me to, ABC has no procedurals outside Castle, they have pretty much all serial dramas. Critics might not like precedurals, they might not be sexy, but they bring in eyeballs. It's what kept CBS #1 in total viewers for 10+ years and what's helping turn NBC around, all of NBC drama hits, Blacklist, Chicago PD, Chicago Fire all have least some element of a procedural in them.

Or take Modern Family, that's a hit, but none of ABC other comedies have come close to the success of Modern Family. This coupled with TERRIBLE schedules in the past. Take Castle, that show has aired behind DWTS it's entire run. Why? They never tried a new drama in that slot when DWTS was big. Now that DWTS gets only fraction of the ratings it did, it's too late to try that now. Or how about Scandal, it's developed it's own audience now it shouldn't need to Post Grey's slot anymore, move to part of the schedule where you have a hole, like Tuesday's 10pm, allowing for the post Grey's slot to be free again for another new show. Maybe switch Grey's to a new night or time? CBS realized CSI couldn't anchor that slot anymore and moved it, maybe it's time for ABC to do the same with Grey's?

[Vee]

The problem - with dramas, anyway - is that network television is so starved for success at this juncture that it seizes on one popular concept that hits once, and then keeps trying to reprint it again and again with disastrous results.

A good pitch for a single-season idea? Great, let's try and make it run five to seven years! That's Revenge, Hostages, The Following (one of the worst shows I've seen in years), a lot of others - trying to make long-running dramas out of singular premises with a finite lifespan. Then they start getting into dumb bullshit trying to 'open their show up' beyond the initial gimmick, and that's how they always fail. The bigger issue is that there's no 'there' there after the pitch gets greenlit. What happens on Crisis after the crisis? On The Event after The Event? How long is Emily VanCamp going to take to get her [!@#$%^&*] revenge? How many times can the serial killer escape on The Following (and no, a retool won't work)? And all these fantasy shows - each retelling different old nursery rhymes and bedtime stories with some weird goofy-ass contemporary hook. I can't tell any of them apart. I guess Sleepy Hollow has done well; the rest look awful, including OUAT.

There's almost nothing worth watching on network primetime anymore, drama-wise. Hannibal is pretty much all I bother with, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for silly fluff (though it has improved quite a bit, it's still just borderline okay at best). It's too bad.

[DRW50]

The Goldbergs is one of their more successful new shows this season. It beats NBC's sitcoms most weeks in the demos they prize. It's probably the first new sitcom they've had in a while that doesn't fall into the same hipper-than-thou routine that sank shows like Happy Endings and the James van der Beek thing with the general public.

One of the problems with ABC is their dramas tend to be very smirky, noisy, and hollow, like Shonda and Marc Cherry had a baby. Their one procedural that was successful, Castle, tends to coast along on Nathan Fillion grinning at people and that woodpile woman talking at length about how she needs to learn who killed her mother. Their main attempt at a more somber drama, Nashville, is marred by casting issues (overrated Connie Britton continuing to turn "bored now" faces into critical acclaim,, Hayden Panitierre doing the same pinch-faced squint-acting she's done for a long time now, soft and pointless leading men who have zero purpose or chemistry or reason for breathing), an inability to write for women, and a gay "story" that Dallas treated more respectfully nearly 30 damn years ago.

[EricMontreal22]

I sorta like Nashville lol. And SHIELD has improved, but I don't think I watch anything else on ABC--even Modern Family (which, admittedly I was never a huge fan of but has improved--it should have been a 13 episode series if they knew this Cap America 2 tie in was the end game as they seemed to have.) I also liked Happy Endings, but they shoulda just stuck with it, instead they got the gimmicky Super Fun Night which did worse, and now they've replaced that with the BEYOND gimmicky Mixology which is doing worse than that (seriously--who greenlit that as a potential *series*?)

[P.J.]

The problem with both ABC and NBC is that they bought into "win right now" philosophy, chased the young, hip demos, and fell off the proverbial cliff. Sure....it used to work. It no longer does. For example, scheduling SHIELD against NCIS. It's a tactic that's worked in the past (Cosby blowing up Magnum PI comes to mind...). Strategically, it's a bold move. But they banked on Avengers movie fans to flock to it, and couldn't create the same kind of product. They didn't try and tap into their core audience by pairing it with an already established hit. Huge mistake.

Meanwhile CBS plays small-ball, pays the bills, keeps the turnover low and builds the audience they have. I couldn't even guess what shows are the highest rated on either is on ABC/NBC right now.

Disney made critical mistakes in giving up Monday Night Football and siphoning off viewers to ESPN, and then oversaturating with stuff like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, or DWTS.

[Soapsuds]

And now CBS gets Thursday night football which will boast its ratings. It looks like they will move TBBT to Monday's to lead off its troubling Monday's.

[P.J.]

It's eight games, with none in November. Disrupting the schedule like that could backfire on them, delaying whatever other comedies they schedule behind BBT. But yeah...all of the sudden CBS' Monday night looks like it's in trouble without HIMYM. I saw 2BG tanked trying to lead off the night. And I'm still not convinced HIMYD isn't going to suffer some backlash from pissed off HIMYM fans disappointed with the finale.

While NFLThursdays seems like a lock to pull in viewers, those Thursday night matchups have historically stunk. I never saw the NFLNetwork numbers for those games, but the players just aren't as ready to play on a short week of prep.