Pioneer ABC Lost Its Way in the End : Television: Robert Iger, the network’s entertainment president, worries about the future of innovative programming and the hourlong drama series in prime time. He blames the remote control.

On the threshold of the fall TV season a year ago, ABC was considered by critics to be the freshest and most daring network, thanks in part to a drama lineup that included “Twin Peaks,” “thirtysomething,” “China Beach,” “Equal Justice” and Steve Bochco’s bold musical “Cop Rock.”

A year later, those series are gone--all canceled by the network.

“Last year, we were the innovators. This year, I don’t think we have the edge we once had,” ABC Entertainment President Robert Iger told a gathering of television critics Monday in Los Angeles.

“Each of the shows, in canceling them, were canceled for reasons germane to those shows individually,” Iger said. “Not because we were pursuing as a network one direction: to rid our air of quality dramas.”

But that’s not the way it looks. Despite two new dramas--”Homefront” and “The Commish”--ABC’s fall schedule is chock-full of dependable sitcoms, which in today’s fragmented TV environment draw more viewers and pay higher dividends in reruns than one-hour series.

In searching for an explanation why there will be less drama next season at ABC, Iger landed on the TV remote control. “I think the remote control device actually has hurt the drama form more than anything else,” he said. “Comedy requires less of a commitment on behalf of the viewer to watch. And I think it’s sort of less susceptible to flipping around.”

Iger went on to detail the reasons ABC scrubbed five of its best series:

* “Cop Rock” “didn’t work, period. . . . It was a good idea the viewer just didn’t embrace.”

* “Equal Justice” “never truly opened. . . . Maybe it was considered a bit of an imitation of ‘L.A. Law.’ ”

* “thirtysomething” “ran its course (creatively).”

* “China Beach” “we kept alive for a couple of years, and I just don’t think overall it was a substantially high enough audience (to) stick with it on a weekly basis.”

* “Twin Peaks” “had big problems creatively, and maybe we would have been better off with ‘Twin Peaks’ as a seven-episode order. . . . But we tried it as a multiple season series and it couldn’t sustain itself.”

In addition, Iger attributed the dwindling ratings of “Twin Peaks” and “China Beach” to his decision last season to move those series to Saturday night, when more TV viewers tune out. “I take the credit for that mistake, and I’m sorry for it,” he said.

Iger also explained that he picked up the mediocre rated--and critiqued--drama “Young Riders,” which ABC has bounced around its schedule four times, because it has “durability.”

Regarding the post-series fate of “thirtysomething,” Iger said that he had suggested to MGM a series of TV movies. He feels that ABC and the show’s creative staff “owe it to the viewer to try to give them more, or give them some conclusion.” Then he heard about co-star Ken Olin’s expressed disinterest during a Fox press conference over the weekend. Now he calls the chances for a project “very, very slim. And I think it’s unfortunate. But there are so many competing interests at this point.”

Nonetheless, Iger insisted that ABC is on a quest for quality, which the network is pursuing “with a vengeance,” perhaps to restore some of last season’s lost luster (although he admitted that nothing on the current network schedule could be considered as innovative as “Cop Rock” or “Twin Peaks”).

To that end, ABC has multi-series deals with producers Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (“thirtysomething”), Neal Marlens and Carol Black (“The Wonder Years”), John Sacret Young (“China Beach”) and James Brooks (“Taxi,” “The Simpsons”). Bochco, meanwhile, has produced the divorce-courtroom drama “Civil Wars” as a mid-season replacement.

“The whole issue of failed quality drama is very, very frustrating because we need dramas on our air,” Iger said. “We cannot in any way occupy all time periods with comedies or reality shows or escapist dramas. We need those dramas to work. And yet there does seem to be, at least in the last couple of seasons, if not a viewer apathy, almost a viewer impatience of sorts with this kind of show.”

Looking ahead to the fall season, Iger said that ABC will try to keep more shows in their time slots so viewers can find them. Last January, he said, ABC began to fuss with its schedule because the network grew impatient waiting for hits to emerge.

“We ended up moving shows on and off our air, in and out of time periods, at a level that I think ultimately hurt our overall performance as a network,” he said. “And it was a lesson we’ve learned, a hard lesson as a matter of fact. . . . We have to improve. We got trigger-happy and we were bouncing things around. I don’t know how the hell the viewer found them.”

While NBC continues to strut its peacock feathers as the highest-rated network, and third-place CBS racks up summer ratings with original programming, backed by entertainment division president Jeff Sagansky’s prediction that CBS will be No. 1 next fall, Iger resorted to Fox’s tactics when questioned about ratings. He cited the inestimable value to advertisers of demographics over household ratings.

“It’s demographics all the way. Pure ratings, we don’t sell,” Iger said. “We all talk about the season and whose going to be No. 1. The only value to that is ego--the only value. There isn’t one, not one single business reason, in terms of the season-long average, to being No. 1.”

Iger suggested bigger concerns looming on the horizon for the networks. As network advertising dollars shrink, viewer choices expand and network audiences erode, there are destined to be major changes in network television.

Already, ABC has turned to cable television to supply programming: ABC’s current Friday-night sitcom “Hi Honey, I’m Home” from Nickelodeon and a 10th anniversary special from MTV in November. Regarding future MTV Networks projects with ABC, MTV programming vice president Doug Herzog told reporters last week, “If something comes up that makes sense for both of us, we’ll do it.”

“That’s immediate,” Iger said of the cable-produced projects. “But I think long-term and probably more significant, we’re going to see possibly fewer networks, probably fewer networks. I’m not sure that all of us will survive a new age. I think we will certainly witness in a relatively short period of time fewer hours of network programs.”

As it stands, the bottom third of ABC’s prime-time schedule is losing money, Iger said. If the networks reduce some of their 22 hours of weekly prime-time programming, those hours would be turned over to affiliates to fill with syndicated or locally originated programming.

“It might be in a network’s best interest to concede those hours and those unprofitable programs to their affiliates,” Iger explained. “We have to adjust. Because as the shares decline, it obviously creates significant economic hardship. And if we don’t adjust to these more difficult times, we’re simply not going to survive financially.”