I emailed it to myself so I'll share it anyways
ABC: First In Blunders
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Marvin Kitman
June 22, 2003
There are two things a network can do when it is in ratings trouble.
One is to firmly set jaw in place and say the best way to get people to watch is to give them something really good to watch.
The second is to give them something really bad. TV is so good at that.
Faced with the perplexing situation in which its programming doesn't seem to be winning back audiences, ABC chose the easy way.
The Disney-owned network has a tradition of choosing the self-destructive way out of the programming dilemma. Instead of doing the best shows viewers may have wanted to see in the late 1990s, it chose to kill "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" by running it four nights a week. Nothing fails in TV, ultimately, like excess.
In the current ratings-drought emergency, ABC has come up with all sorts of bizarre theories about what people want to watch.
There were "Are You Hot? The Search for America's Sexiest People" and "I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here," forms of pure torture, especially for the No Longer 18-to-49s who still watch prime-time TV. Jonathan Dolger of Manhattan has called them "an endangered species."
It was not surprising. ABC may be fourth in the hearts of its countrymen, but it is first in blunders.
As I was explaining two weeks ago, regarding the brilliant cast changes on "The Practice" - six of the leading cast members were fired - that was the depth of stupidity in finding new ways to win back an audience. I erred in calling it the worst improvement since NBC neutered "Homicide." "Let me remind you what the masters of brilliant cast changes did just prior to the murdering of 'Murder One,'" said Ed Burke of Riverhead.
Michael Eisner, head of Disney's Always Blundering Conspicuously network - as Burke believes the initials stand for - may not be concerned about its mistake-prone record, as one might gather from his inability to get Disney-ABC back on its mouse legs.
Everybody loses sight that the purpose of Disney's acquisition of ABC in 1996 for $19 billion was for it to be an infomercial for Disney's other products. The world's most expensive infomercial has done for TV culture what McDonald's has done for cuisine.
I'm usually quick to blame management in cases like this. And I did so over the years, starting with Ted Harbert, the first Disney-ABC programming head, whose head rolled in 1997 to make room for Jamie Tarses.
The new Disney business plan, which brought the network from first to third faster than you could say ABC, was bad programming, bad scheduling and bad promotion.
It was almost as if the Always Blundering Conspicuously network had a quality alarm, as Burke, who is in training to become a budding network executive, explained. "The alarm goes off the moment a quality show and talented cast appeared on a TV show."
This allowed the we-can-fix-it Network Brain Trust at ABC to cancel with confidence "China Beach," "Homefront," "My So-Called Life," "Murder One" and "The Critic."
After Tarses' head rolled, Eisner brought in apparently no-talent managers such as Stu Bloomberg and the latest mini-mouse, Susan Lyne, whose major achievement so far has been the cancellation of "Once and Again."
Nobody thinks of blaming Alex Wallau, the former ABC Sports promo maker and boxing aficionado now nominally running the network, or even his boss, Robert Iger, who picks and then fires managers as if ABC were the Mets of TV networks.
It's a dog-eat-dog world in Hollywood. Every two years the chiefs at Disney seem to fire somebody else at ABC, and another head goes on Eisner's platter. They put on some new programs that are acclaimed as the hottest things since last season. That buys them two more years before they have to blame somebody else for the stuff that doesn't work. Any day now they'll be firing Lyne. And then Lloyd Braun, chairman of ABC Entertainment Television Group, and Wallau, not to mention Iger.
If that's the direction Eisner still wants to go.
What's happening to ABC is more insidious. Remember the movie "Network"? Remember Faye Dunaway transforming her network with a wild medley of reality garbage?
My usually reliably informed sources tell me the ghost of "Network" writer Paddy Chayefsky has become a dybbuk. The dybbuk possesses all the commercial networks, but particularly ABC.
What dybbuks do today, I'm told, is strange things, self- destructive things, as in "The Practice." Or in the making of "Bachelor 4" - the show that will find a girl for poor Bob, the only contestant on the reality smash hit "The Bachelorette" that didn't look like a model. Or weird things, such as thinking that Kelly Ripa and Faith Ford in "Hope & Faith" could be called a comedy.
The dybbuk made Disney kill "The Job" and opt for such bad stuff as "Who's The Hottest in Hot Zone 3 (The Northwest)." The dybbuk is the poison in the system making all the conspicuous blunders.
The only answer for Disney is to call in an exorcist. It should make a great movie.