After the first two weeks, when the ratings for “Dancing With the Stars” were down about 20 percent and one new entry, “Charlie’s Angels,” had quickly fizzled, a senior executive at a competing network said in an e-mail message, “The Paul Lee death watch has started.”
Not quite. As the season heads for its midpoint, ABC and Mr. Lee have managed to defy early expectations by devising an emerging success story in prime time with a handful of new shows demonstrating the kind of steady appeal that usually guarantees extended runs.
One show, the fairy-tale drama “Once Upon a Time,” probably could be considered the strongest new entry of the season because it has attracted hit ratings without the benefit of a strong lead-in show. Another drama, “Revenge,” is performing consistently and generating passionate talk online.
Two comedies, “Suburgatory” and “Last Man Standing,” have settled in with solid ratings. And one holdover comedy, “Happy Endings,” has rewarded Mr. Lee’s faith in it by improving 55 percent this season.
Over all, ABC has managed to stay just about even with its ratings for last season, which comes as a surprise to some, given the continued decline for several of the network’s longtime hits. Many of the pillars of ABC’s prime-time success were facing either retirement (“Desperate Housewives”) or a steady decline in ratings (“Grey’s Anatomy” and “Dancing With the Stars.”)
But now, Mr. Lee and other ABC executives are promoting several of their coming midseason entries as perhaps stronger than those introduced in the fall.
All of this comes from Mr. Lee, a programmer who stands out not only for his British accent, but also for his background in cable television — and his demeanor. Robert A. Iger, the chief executive of ABC’s parent company, Walt Disney, said, “The best thing about Paul is that he’s a grown-up.”
At 51, Mr. Lee indeed is grown up. And he may be the only top network programmer ever to graduate from Oxford with fluency in both Portuguese and Russian. That doesn’t precisely translate to being able to recognize which sitcom or reality show might find an audience of 18- to 49-year-old women, but Mr. Lee said it doesn’t hurt either.
“You have to bring some humility to it if you’re an outsider,” he said in a telephone interview. “If you’re lucky, you can use an incredibly talented team around you and your own approach and really make something different.”
Given the situation ABC faced at the end of last season, with “Desperate Housewives” ready to end after an eighth and final season, and the “Dancing” franchise starting to leak younger viewers (it remains hugely popular among older women), Mr. Lee faced considerable pressure as he introduced the first slate of shows he had personally developed and selected.
“But to some degree, pressure is liberating,” Mr. Lee said. “I came in thinking we absolutely had to take some big swings.”
He also thought “about what’s going to work well in tough times.” That led to comparisons “to the 1930s and the 1970s,” Mr. Lee said. “Comedy was so big then. Fairy tales were big then. Horror was big; the underdog was big.” He added, “And were we ambitious? Superambitious.”
He also conceded that luck played a significant role. While some of the bedrock hits of ABC were unquestionably in decline, Mr. Lee retained an ace no other network could match: the comedy “Modern Family,” already a hit, exploded this fall after a deluge of Emmy Awards.
“Some of this is definitely luck,” he said. “You can have the best ideas but they don’t always click.”
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=255959925d59345269305ed1ff094efe
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.