By all rights, ABC should be doing much better than its overall Nielsen numbers would suggest. It's got the No. 1 scripted show on all of TV, plus the top drama among viewers under 50 ... and yet it may finish the season in fourth? A lot of the network's woes can be traced back to parent company Disney's decision to shift Monday Night Football to ESPN. At a time when broadcasters were looking to shrink their commitments to scripted fare, the move forced ABC to suddenly come up with three more hours of programming every week, while also denying the network a reliable source of strong ratings and a promotional platform for male-skewing shows. ABC has tried to fight back by regularly trying out more new shows each season than any other network, but while that's yielded some success stories (Modern Family comes to mind), it's also turned ABC into an almost brandless machine that keeps throwing out new shows every month. Yes, contrary to what the Nielsen numbers suggest, ABC is in much stronger shape than NBC, with newer, younger hits and a much deeper (if rapidly aging) bench. Lee's challenge now is to try to form a coherent identity for his network.
