It hasn’t exactly been a bellweather season so far for ABC, even by the minimalist standards one needs to apply to broadcast television in this day and age. A quick glance at a season-to-date ranker dropped last month by TV LINE’s Matt Webb Mitovich reveals that the Alphabet network (there’s your token reference worthy of an “OK, Boomer” eyeroll) has but four of the Top 25 non-sports broadcast programs so far this year, and none in the top 12. And yes, that includes seven-day delayed viewing. So that may be why we haven’t heard much from their camp lately.
But yesterday, we got two stories that attempted to crow how they’re planning to deal with this underperformance. You tell me how excited you would have been to this breaking news from DEADLINE’s intrepid Nellie Andreeva:
ABC’s hit procedural The Rookie may spawn a second spinoff series — and unlike the first one, it would stay in the cop show arena. The network, Lionsgate Television and 20th Television are in early development on the offshoot, written by The Rookie creator Alexi Hawley, sources tell Deadline. The Rookie executive producer/showrunner Hawley is executive producing the offshoot alongside The Rookie star/executive producer Fillion and fellow Rookie executive producers Bill Norcross, whose real-life story inspired the mothership series, and Michelle Chapman. Lionsgate Television will co-produce with 20th Television.
Headed into its seventh season, slated to premiere Jan. 7, The Rookie remains one of ABC’s most watched series that also has emerged as a top performer on streamer Hulu amid a surge in popularity among young viewers. Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich revealed in February that The Rookie was at the time the #2 drama on Hulu and had generated more than 500 million hours viewed on the streamer since its 2018 launch, with nearly half of them in the most recent year.
If there’s a sense of deja vu in your mind, it’s because we saw much of the same rationale and spin when Hawley’s first attempt to become ABC’s answer to Dick Wolf was unveiled just about two years ago. THE ROOKIE: FEDS was the first spin-off attempt, and was, as Andreeva reminded, a two-episode backdoor pilot on The Rookie during the 2021-22 season that introduced a handful of characters, led by Emmy winner Niecy Nash-Betts as Simone Clark, the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy. Launched as part of a two-hour block with the mothership attached to it, as NBC has done with practically every LAW AND ORDER and ONE CHICAGO iteration and CBS has done with anything FBI, FEDS never made it to a second season. Somehow, ABC and apparently Hawley think the 2023 strikes kneecapped it prematurely, and as The Intrepid One further notes there are some business wrinkles and new voices in the room that have at least convinced some that what happened with FEDS was an aberration:
Lionsgate completed the acquisition of The Rookie producer eOne at the end of 2023, almost two months after The Rookie: Feds had been canceled after one season. The indie studio took over Hawley’s eOne overall deal and then extended it this past summer with expanding The Rookie franchise among the goals.
Nothing like a mission statement from one of the few remaining independent studios of consequence to motivate a revised history.
Then on the heels of that, we learned how Erwich and company plan to address their current dearth of comedies with yet another familiar title, as ROLLING STONE’s Larisha Paul revealed:
When Scrubs ended after eight seasons on NBC, it concluded with one of the all-time great sitcom series finales – then it got picked up for one actual final season on ABC and had to say goodbye all over again with a new cast of characters. Now, original creator and showrunner Bill Lawrence is returning with another revival of the show.
According to Variety, the series is in development at ABC through the Disney production company 20th Television. Lawrence reportedly wouldn’t be returning as showrunner, should the series be picked up.
Plans for casting and direction for the new series have also been kept under wraps. But earlier this year, Lawrence told Deadline: “Big chunks of the creative team behind the camera, and most of it from in front of the camera, are all super invested and excited.” Key players from the original cast that could potentially make a return include Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Sarah Chalke, Judy Reyes, Ken Jenkins, John C. McGinley, and Neil Flynn.
Paul is apparently not a bellweather for accuracy–SCRUBS actually ran just seven seasons on NBC and had flatlined for the final four to be among broadcast TV’s least-viewed series before ABC, whose syndication division was actually finding willing buyers eager to pair it as NBC did with its fully-owned buzz-worthy half-hours such as THE OFFICE and 30 ROCK, capitulated to beancounters and gave it home for what she considered to be that “all-time great finale” that wasn’t. Its ABC track record, even off the modest base they inherited, was underwhelming–season 8 declined -13% from its final NBC season, and season 9 dropped an additional -32%.
To be fair, this is merely something that is in development which may never even make it to pilot stage, as has been the case many times before–including a couple such instances while I was at SONY. Several version of a reboot of DESIGNING WOMEN were ordered and written before personnel shifts and frustration finally buried it. Same was true with a supposed “all but done” revisiting of WHO’S THE BOSS which ABC eventually passed on but Amazon MGM Studios, who would have partnered with them to supply it to inhouse partner Freevee, eventually had second thoughts on that, too. They were apparently so devastated by that development that they pulled the plug on the whole darn platform.
What’s especially disappointing, if not disconcerting, about these kind of uninspired approaches is that the few bits of actual good news around ABC these days actually involve ORIGINAL concepts that utilize talented people in front of and behind the camera to see if there’s actually another good idea in them. HIGH POTENTIAL, Kaitlin Olsen’s well-received tour de force, is actually ABC’s #1 show overall, let alone its top rookie, and the latest work from Ryan Murphy, DOCTOR ODYSSEY, is actually outperforming the year-ago delivery of another slightly successful quirky drama with a medical setting, GREY’S ANATOMY.
And it’s not like the folks behind these efforts aren’t capable of making something worthwhile outside of the comfort zones that ABC seems to be intent on keeping them in. As Andreeva noted, Hawley also is the creator/executive producer of Lionsgate TV’s Netflix series The Recruit, starring Noah Centineo, which is returning for a second season Jan. 30. And the reason that Lawrence would not be showrunning the SCRUBS reboot is that he’s busy with an apparent and unexpected fourth season for a small little Apple TV+ show called TED LASSO.
Were I running an also-ran network that is being reduced to a second window for the likes of MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL, ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING and even the little-known reality series THE SECRET LIVES OF MORMON WIVES, I might actually be looking for some other novel ideas in the spirit of the ones that actually have found traction on their own this fall–or at least be promoting the development process and the people attached to them.
I don’t have that job; Mr. Erwich does. Even after several consecutive years of finishing no better than third among broadcasters when sports isn’t part of the calculus. The one question I’d have at this point would be–why is that still true?
Until next time…