Desperate? Lost? Not this network

Few Hollywood executives enjoy the kind of good luck Steve McPherson has seen over the past year, but ABC’s entertainment czar doesn’t sound ready to take a victory lap just yet.

When he was hired in April 2004 to oversee ABC’s prime-time lineup, the network was mired in fourth place. But last season the dramas “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” -- both developed by McPherson’s predecessors -- turned into major hits. And “Dancing With the Stars,” a summer dance competition, proved so popular that ABC is bringing it back midseason.

Even so, caution was the watchword for McPherson when he met reporters Tuesday at the semiannual Television Critics Assn. press tour in Beverly Hills.

“The success of last year, I take that with a grain of salt,” McPherson, who formerly ran ABC’s sister studio, Touchstone Television, said. “With this job, you’re judged on what you did well last week, not last year.”

ABC has good reason to be wary of overconfidence. Five years ago, network executives gloated over the success of their game-show smash “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” But viewers tired of the program when it began airing as many as four nights a week, and ABC’s overall fortunes sank with it.

McPherson said the phenomenal ratings for “Housewives” and “Lost” are sure to inspire similar “serialized” dramas, in which the plotlines and characters develop subtly from week to week. That’s a shift from the last few years, when TV has been dominated by police dramas like NBC’s “Law & Order” and CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

“Serialized dramas are here to stay,” McPherson said. But he added that “Housewives” and “Lost” could not be duplicated because of the unique visions that inspired them.

McPherson brushed off a reporter’s question about whether “Dancing With the Stars” might have been rigged because the eventual winner, Kelly Monaco, stars on ABC’s soap “General Hospital.”

He defended the network’s decision not to air “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” a reality program that featured families from various racial and cultural backgrounds vying to win a house in a predominantly white neighborhood. Some critics said the program perpetuated stereotypes and might have violated housing laws.

“The show wasn’t right. It wasn’t ready to go,” McPherson said of “Neighborhood.” But he disputed that activist groups forced ABC to yank the show, saying, “This was our decision.”

McPherson said the elevation of Robert Iger, who will take over from Michael Eisner as chief executive of ABC parent Walt Disney Co. on Oct. 1, has not affected network decision-making.

“They’re really letting me run the show,” he said. “It’s our team that makes the decisions.” He added, however, that “it’s reassuring to know that the guy who hired me will be the one making the decisions.”