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ABC Announces Fall TV Lineup
14-May-2008
Written by: Malia Brown
On the second day of the weeklong “upfronts,” ABC announces its upcoming shows.
ABC announced a familiar fall television lineup at Tuesday’s “upfronts” in New York City.
The “upfronts” are annual presentations of all major networks' new programming.
According to the Los Angeles Times, ABC President of Entertainment Steve McPherson confirmed that the network has picked up Scrubs, which NBC canceled, will launch two new shows, and will spend most of its promotional budget on relaunching returning shows.
New shows include Opportunity Knocks and Life on Mars.
Opportunity Knocks is a game show produced by Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst Films and will air at 8 p.m. Tuesdays. “This show is basically an amazing game show where we go to different neighborhoods around America and knock on people's doors and bring the game show directly to their front lawn,” McPherson said. “It kind of combines Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”
Life on Mars is a remake of the popular BBC series about a detective who finds himself in 1972 after he's run over by a car, and it will air at 10 p.m. Thursdays.
David E. Kelley created and produced the pilot, but he gave up his rights to the format as part of his negotiation to keep Boston Legal on the air a little longer.
The final 13 episodes of Boston Legal will air at 10 p.m. Mondays with its two-hour finale slated for December.
Scrubs will begin airing midseason at 9 p.m. Tuesdays, and could extend to future seasons if it performs well, McPherson said.
The network also picked up the animated comedy, The Goode Family, and a Kutcher-Tyra Banks untitled reality co-production, a “beauty pageant you've never seen before,” McPherson said.
ABC may even pick up more shows midseason. There are 17 pilots in contention for slots, and that’s the time of year when the network's strong fall performance weakens, in part, because of Fox's American Idol.
“For us, midseason sets up as a time when we have a lot of opportunity, and those pilots will be ready and can go through the full process without cutting corners,” McPherson said during a press conference at ABC headquarters. “We don't really feel comfortable picking stuff up until it's been fully developed and piloted and tested.”
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