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Unveiling its prime-time lineup for the 2006-07 television
season, ABC also said it had decided to impeach "Commander In
Chief." The White House drama starring Academy Award winner
Geena Davis languished after a promising start last fall. "It's frustrating," ABC Entertainment President Stephen
McPherson. "Creatively, the show didn't build to where it
needed to be." McPherson, who described the network's schedule as
"aggressive," said the new shows would rely on the sort of
strong, well-rounded characters that had proven successful for
ABC in the past. "Characters are what drives audiences who come
back week after week," he said. Like the majority of shows unveiled on Monday by rival
network NBC, the new ABC schedule rolled out at the second day
of presentations to advertisers relies heavily on dramas, six
in all. Two of the new shows at ABC, a unit of Walt Disney Co.,
bear a striking resemblance to "Lost," whose plot revolves
around plane crash survivors on a mysterious island. That
program helped reverse ABC's ratings slump and inspired a new
wave of spooky TV themes. "Six Degrees," centering on six New York City strangers
enmeshed in a web of mysterious coincidence, is the latest
offering from "Lost" co-creator J.J. Abrams, whose other
credits include big-screen thriller "Mission: Impossible III." ABC also seized on the theme of ordinary individuals
connected by extraordinary happenstance in "The Nine," about a
group of people taken hostage in a bank robbery gone awry. The top U.S. networks are beginning their annual
negotiations with advertisers to book the bulk of commercial
time in advance of the fall season. CBS and Fox present their
prime-time programming later this week. Media buyers expect advertisers' spending at this year's
upfront to be flat to slightly lower than the $9.1 billion
booked a year ago. While television still commands the largest
audiences overall, it faces growing competition from other
media outlets, from video games to portable music players. Two years after trailing its three major network rivals,
ABC has bounced back in the ratings because of such hits as
"Lost," prime-time soap "Desperate Housewives" and hospital
drama "Grey's Anatomy." The network now looks set to finish the current season a
close second behind Fox in the race for viewers aged 18 to 49
-- the group advertisers most cherish -- and as the second
most-watched network overall, behind CBS. ABC is the only major network up year-to-year by both
measures. For the upcoming season, it is rolling the dice by
moving its popular "Grey's Anatomy" from Sunday night to the
highly competitive Thursday night slot. The ABC lineup will feature two well-known actresses. "Ally
McBeal" star
Calista Flockhart will return to series television
as the star of family soap opera "Brothers & Sisters," while
film actress
Anne Heche will play a divorcee who moves to
Alaska in "Men in Trees." Rounding out ABC's roster are "Betty the Ugly," based on a
popular Spanish-language program about a plain woman trying to
make it in the fashion world; national security thriller
"Traveler"; and crime thriller "Day Break," starring
Taye Diggs
as a policeman framed for murder. On the comedy front, ABC renewed family sitcoms "According
to Jim" and "
George Lopez," while picking up six new shows that
include "Help Me Help You," featuring "Cheers" veteran
Ted Danson as a troubled celebrity psychologist. NBC is owned by General Electric Co., CBS is owned by CBS
Corp., and Fox is owned by News Corp.
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ABC, looking to extend its
ratings rebound, is banking on two new dramas about strangers
thrown together by unusual circumstance, one of them from a
creator of the hit castaway thriller "Lost," the network said
on Tuesday. 
