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...wait, never mind - they're doing that one already. That's right, Mel Gibson is following up "The Passion" with "Savages," a new ABC sitcom about a widowed dad raising his sons alone. (Theologically speaking, I guess "The Passion" was also about a father-son relationship, so maybe it's not such a stretch.) But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Before ABC executives announced their new fall schedule at the New Amsterdam theater in New York, they first had to explain to the assembled advertisers why they should have faith ABC would deliver anyone to actually watch their commercials...
...toughest lifting fell to Mike Shaw, the network's president of marketing. Valiantly, he mentioned a statistic that showed viewers watch ABC continuously for 24 minutes on average, compared with 14 minutes for cable. (New slogan: "ABC: still bigger than Outdoor Living Network!") And he noted the number of ABC programs that are not repeats, including its sports events, which, he said, are "first-run, 100 percent of the time." ("ABC: Our football games are never reruns...
...executives also had to pledge their confidence in ABC's management, even though given the company's recent turbulent history, nobody can say with confidence what that management will be in another month or so. Stephen McPherson, ABC's new entertainment president after a management shakeup about a month ago, introduced the lineup, wisely, without dwelling on the problems of the past but rather saying that the important thing was the programs to air in the "months and years ahead." (Years! Isn't that cute!) Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, doing a monologue in the middle of the upfront, joked...
...First, McPherson introduced ABC's reality programming, one of the few bright spots on ABc's lineup lately. The segment began with a syrupy clip reel about ABC's returning reality shows, making the case that The Bachelor and Extreme Makeover were a benevolent entity, like UNICEF: "They make you laugh, make you cry, and make a difference." Joining the schedule next year is "Wife Swap," in which mothers from two different households change homes for a week to live with each others' families. Scenes from the pilot, in which a crunchy vegetarian from California swapped with a neat freak...
...Aside from "Savages," ABC picked up only one other sitcom, "Rodney," a star vehicle for Rodney Carrington - a standup comic who you may not have known was famous - about a man who wants to be a standup comic. But the network made up for it with dramas, planning so many new ones that I am forced to employ bullet points...