Is ABC The New Lifetime?

While putting together the TV Guide over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that ABC is suddenly on our radar again with several new shows that appeal to the Nice Girls. Of the 19 scripted shows on the network, seven have females as the lead character (Cougar Town, Eastwick, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, The Middle, Private Practice, Ugly Betty) while three are ensembles/co-leads with prominent female characters  (Brothers & Sisters, Castle, Modern Family). Even sci-fi offerings FlashForward, V, and Lost feature strong women in prominent roles. When did ABC become the modern woman’s network?

ABC's new series, Eastwick, features strong female leads

It would be easy to point at Anne Sweeney, Co-Chair/Disney Media Networks President of Disney/ABC Television Group, as the source of these programming decisions. Sweeney was appointed to her post in 2004, and since then ABC has become a force to be reckoned with in the ratings and in terms of buzzworthy shows. She helped launch Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and Dancing With The Stars. Her vision for quality programming has seen Sweeney repeatedly been named the “Most Powerful Woman in Entertainment” by The Hollywood Reporter, one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune and one of “The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women” by Forbes.

On the other hand, Stephen McPherson, President of ABC Entertainment Group, deserves a lot of credit for ABC’s current lineup. McPherson answers to Sweeney and is responsible for all development and current programming at ABC. He brought Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Lost from his previous job in development for Touchstone, giving ABC show that brought ratings, critical acclaim and pop culture cachet. McPherson also developed series like Alias for ABC at his previous job, showing a knack for finding strong, female-centric shows.

ABC has evolved from a discordant lineup of movies, game shows, sitcoms fronted by men, and a few cop & lawyer shows at the beginning of the decade to the current fairly consistent lineup of strong, female-centric shows. Even their reality offerings – Dancing With The Stars, Supernanny, Wife Swap – seem designed to appeal to women. As a branding idea, it’s not a bad move. Studies show that women, particularly Moms, are the ones in charge of the budget now, so advertisers want to buy ad time on shows aimed at that demographic.

As it turns out, the answer to my titular question is “No”. ABC is earning a reputation for quality series featuring modern women in all our incarnations, not the movie-of-the-week victims and vixens on Lifetime. Maybe the cable network needs to start paying attention to ABC’s model.