Will ABC’s Grumpy Affiliates Get Happy?

ABC television affiliates aren’t the happiest campers right now, so what better place to take them than to one of the happiest place on Earth?

That seems to have been the logic behind this week’s ABC affiliates meeting, the first annual gathering of executives who own and operate TV stations carrying ABC programming since the Walt Disney Co. acquired the network.

Disney is known for its promotional clout, so observers weren’t surprised when ABC announced plans to move the affiliates gathering from Los Angeles--where it’s been held for years--to Orlando, Fla., land of a thousand theme parks including Disney World.

In that venue, Disney can bring its considerable resources to bear in an effort to impress station general managers and owners, beginning with a welcoming reception tonight at the Disney-MGM Studios. The event continues through Thursday.

“They’ll put on one hell of a show,” noted an executive at a rival network.

Whether that will be enough to mollify station executives--who were in first place just a year ago and appear at risk of dropping to third in prime time next season--remains to be seen.

Disney already irked station executives on a point of etiquette, offering them a discount, instead of a free pass, to the Disney theme parks during their stay in Florida. ABC officials quickly changed that policy, but the incident reinforced concerns that Disney might be arrogant in its dealings with stations.

Some affiliates are also upset about NBC snagging rights to the Olympics for the years 2000 through 2008, locking out ABC--once strongly associated with the Games--from that showcase.

“There’s a lot of problems there right now,” said an ABC station owner, requesting anonymity.

Still, Cox Broadcasting executive Andrew S. Fisher, chairman of ABC’s affiliates board, maintained that most stations are taking a wait-and-see approach.

“I think people are coming [to the meeting] looking forward to seeing what the development has been, and what tone Disney brings to the company,” Fisher said, adding that Disney’s marketing savvy is “very encouraging” over the long haul.

Despite the ratings decline, most ABC stations “still do very well,” Fisher noted, and understand the cyclical nature of the broadcasting business. As a result, he said, “they want better shows, but it’s not a year when they say, ‘I’m crippled.’ ”

Disney executives may be considerably less patient, after paying $19 billion to acquire parent Capital Cities/ABC in a deal announced last August.

ABC has seen its prime-time ratings drop substantially since the turn of the year. With midseason shows such as “Champs” and “The Dana Carvey Show” faring poorly, the network fell to second place for the season and third place in Nielsen homes during the February and May ratings sweeps, key periods in determining local advertising rates. (ABC did retain second place in younger demographics, but at significantly lower levels than a year ago.)

After February, Disney Chairman Michael Eisner and President Michael Ovitz spoke to affiliates at regional meetings, pledging that those subpar results would not be repeated. Eisner, Ovitz and ABC executives are also scheduled to meet with station brass at the meeting.

Eisner spent the early part of his career at ABC and is said to have relished taking an active part in its management. As one former network executive put it, “He’s not coming back here just to read in the newspaper how ABC is doing.”

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When the merger was set, Disney couldn’t have foreseen the sudden prime-time misfortunes that have befallen ABC. The question now is what the network can do to correct them under the studio’s guidance.

ABC has already loaded up its Saturday morning children’s lineup for September with shows produced by Disney, including “The Mighty Ducks” and “Jungle Cubs,” based on the animated Disney movie “The Jungle Book.”

Only two Disney-produced shows--”Dangerous Minds,” adapted from the movie, and the sitcom “Life’s Work”--made ABC’s fall prime-time schedule out of eight new series. Plans continue, however, to offer a weekly Disney movie franchise on the network, to be hosted by Eisner.

ABC earned a reputation as the most stable and well-managed network under Capital Cities/ABC and former Chairman Tom Murphy, but executive changes have already occurred and more are anticipated as Disney takes control.

Still to be determined is the future of ABC Entertainment President Ted Harbert, who has endured months of speculation about NBC senior vice president of prime-time series Jamie McDermott joining ABC once NBC’s contractual hold on her expires in mid-June.

McDermott, 32, would be one of the youngest people ever to head a network entertainment division and the first woman to hold that job. As for Harbert, it’s expected he’ll either shift to a newly created position or leave the network.

On Monday, the network announced that John L. Rouse, a distribution executive at Disney, would become ABC’s head of affiliate relations.

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ABC’s Downward Slide

Monthly prime-time ratings averages over the past two seasons:

Source: Nielsen Media Research from September 1994 through August 1995, each point represented 954,000 homes. Since September 1995, each point represented 959,000 homes.