ABC Itself Must Face the Tough Questions

Although ABC is still a few weeks away from setting next season’s prime-time lineup, the top-rated network finds itself with plenty of questions to answer and political fires to douse, many of them raised by the show that thrust it onto that perch, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

One question that could have particularly significant ramifications: Will Barbara Walters stay at “20/20”? Or, feeling that the news magazine doesn’t have enough support and a strong enough lead-in such as “Millionaire,” will the veteran newscaster give it up to focus exclusively on her daytime talk show, “The View”?

NBC actually unveils its revised program schedule to advertisers first, but most of the speculation surrounds ABC because of its ratings dominance. Competing networks are watching to see how the network will deploy “Millionaire,” which currently airs three times each week and could possibly add a fourth hour in the fall.

With “Millionaire,” multiple editions of “20/20” and “Monday Night Football,” producers are also nervously wondering just how much time ABC will have left over for traditional sitcoms and dramas.

As it stands, ABC has developed only five new comedy series pilots for next season, roughly a third as many as the network considered this season. By way of comparison, NBC has 19 new sitcom candidates from which to choose, and more pilots were ordered by both the WB and UPN networks, which air half as many hours of prime-time programming as ABC each week.

Despite the continued popularity of “Millionaire”--whose installments on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday average 28.5 million viewers, tops among prime-time series--some suggest that ABC is mortgaging its future, garnering a huge financial windfall now at the expense of planting seeds.

“They like to keep saying that in spite of ‘Millionaire’ they are not going to program fewer hours of [entertainment] series, but then why the drastic cut in pilots?” asked one producer with a show on ABC.

ABC must also grapple with several nagging political problems, including the annual jockeying between its entertainment and news divisions over the 10 p.m. Wednesday hour currently occupied by “20/20” as well as the desire of its news stars to latch onto “Millionaire’s” coattails.

Walters--longtime anchor of the Friday night “20/20”--and Diane Sawyer, who anchors the Wednesday edition, have noticed along with the rest of ABC News that “Millionaire’s” lead-in gives the Thursday edition of the newsmagazine, known as “20/20 Downtown,” a sizable ratings boost.

During the February ratings sweeps--the month after “Millionaire” became a regular component of ABC’s lineup--”20/20 Downtown” outperformed both the Walters- and Sawyers-hosted editions. Moreover, two weeks ago, the Thursday show, anchored by Jay Schadler, was the most-watched “20/20” episode of the week, even beating a rerun of NBC’s powerhouse “ER.”

With ABC’s Friday “TGIF” kids lineup stumbling this season, so have the Friday “20/20” ratings, though the show still tends to spike upward when Walters does one of her big interviews, such as the recent session with John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenet Ramsey.

Walters has let it be known, ABC sources said, that she is concerned about the program’s future--from the lead-in to what resources it gets and who is working on the production--and is thinking about stepping down when her contract allows her to do so in the fall.

ABC executives are very anxious to have her stay, and one notes they are just as concerned about having a strong Friday show as she is. It’s also possible, a source said, that Walters would do other shows for the news division if she decides to step down from “20/20.”

ABC News declined comment, as did Walters; however, a person familiar with the anchor’s thinking said that her “contract is up, and she has some concerns, but she’s made no decision.”

Meanwhile, sources said Sawyer has been angling for the Thursday “20/20” slot, with the possibility it would be renamed.

Such a move might allow ABC’s entertainment division to reclaim “20/20’s” Wednesday time slot, an hour it has lusted after for years as fertile ground to launch a new drama series.

Sources at both the news and entertainment units called all the speculation highly premature, noting that ABC News has been told to be ready to produce anywhere from two to four hours of prime-time news programming per week.

The entertainment arm also declined comment, stressing that officials are in the early stages of evaluating new-series candidates for the fall.

Still, industry sources anticipate that ABC will schedule only a few new programs and will stagger premieres through the fall, seeking to avoid a unique array of disruptions that will affect next season’s schedule. Those include the Olympics, which NBC will televise in September, followed by presidential debates and the baseball playoffs in October, concluding with the World Series on Fox.

For all “Millionaire’s” success since joining the prime-time lineup in January after trial runs in August and November, a guessing game persists as to when viewers will tire of the show.

Comedy and drama producers alike were heartened last week when the trade paper Daily Variety ran a story charting a gradual decline in the show’s ratings; however, a closer inspection of the numbers indicates that ABC has relatively little cause for concern, since much of the drop appears to be the result of the overall decline in TV viewing that normally follows the switch to daylight saving time.

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Staff writers Brian Lowry reported from Los Angeles and Elizabeth Jensen from New York.