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ABC’s ‘Body Of Proof’ Looking To Break The Retool Curse

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Tuesday February 19, 2013 @ 11:54am PSTTags: ABC, Body of Proof, Dana Delany
Nellie Andreeva

This month marks the return after extensive retooling of three drama series fronted by bona fide TV stars — Fox’s Touch starring Kiefer Sutherland, NBC’s Smash starring Debra Messing and ABC‘s Body Of Proof toplined by Dana Delany — just as the proposed retooling of another young broadcast series with top-notch cast, NBC comedy Up All Night, is going up in flames. Touch opened its second season with an underwhelming 1.0 rating among adults 18-49 and this past Friday plunged to a 0.7 rating in its second airing, effectively sealing its fate. (For now, Fox is not talking about pulling the show the way CBS did with The Job after its 0.7 showing last Friday but that seems a matter of time.) Smash‘s second season premiere also crashed with a 1.1 demo rating.

Going against the second episode of Smash tonight, ABC’s tweaked Body Of Proof will be making its third-season debut as the crime procedural is looking to avoid the plight of many of its predecessors which didn’t survive a retool. Ironically, the biggest new addition to the cast of Body Of Proof as part of the overhaul, Mark Valley, was the star of another series, Fox’s Human Target, that was unsuccessfully revamped after its freshman season and didn’t last past Season 2. “This has been a unique experience in that…  I’ve been actually retooled myself,” he quipped at the Body Of Proof TCA session last month. Other recent series that didn’t last after a revamp include NBC’s Law & Order: LA, retooled midway through a first season that became the series’ last, as well as NBC’s Harry’s Law and USA’s Fairly Legal, both rebooted after Season 1 and cancelled after Season 2. (In another coincidence, Valley was one of the new additions in Harry’s Law‘s revamp.) In most cases, the networks like the overall premise and love the show’s star (Sutherland, Delany, Up All Night‘s Christina Applegate, Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph; Human Target‘s Valley, Harry’s Law‘s Kathy Bates and Fairly Legal‘s Sarah Shahi) and/or the series’ auspices (Harry’s Law‘s David E. Kelley, L&O: LA‘s Dick Wolf) but are looking to shake up soft ratings. Unfortunately, a reboot almost never provides the desired ratings jolt and often has the opposite effect as fickle viewers are rarely willing to give a show a second look, and cast changes sometime alienate core fans. (Body Of Proof axed three regulars in the reboot: John Carroll Lynch, Nicholas Bishop and Sonja Sohn). READ MORE »

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‘Supernanny’ In For ‘Millionaire’ On ABC

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Wednesday October 13, 2010 @ 10:26am PDTTags: ABC, ABC Paul Lee, ABC Scheduling, Body of Proof, Dana Delany, Dana Delany Body of Proof, Primetime: What would You Do?, Secret Millionaire, Suppernanny, TV, TV Scheduling, Wipeout
Nellie Andreeva

New ABC programming chief Paul Lee is looking to upgrade another series his predecessor put on the low-trafficked Friday night. Beginning November 5, ABC will air reality veteran Supernanny in the Friday 8 PM slot. That is where Secret Millionaire, … Read More »

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Is Dana Delany ABC’s Best Hope This Fall?

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Friday October 8, 2010 @ 9:59pm PDTTags: ABC, ABC Body of Proof, ABC My Generation Cancelled, ABC Scheduling, Body of Proof, Body of Proof Scheduling, Dana Delany, Dana Delany Body of Proof, Steve McPherson, TV, TV Scheduling
Nellie Andreeva

Back in May, ABC’s previous boss Steve McPherson went for younger, hipper fare when programming new series Monday through Thursday. The show that seemed to be the closest to the ABC brand, Body of Proof - a female-driven procedural with a quirky central character and  headlined by a familiar ABC star, Dana Delany – was sent to Fridays. Now, with many of those Monday-Thursday series crumbling and one, My Generation, already canceled, new ABC chief Paul Lee is taking a second look at Body of Proof and is planning to give it a time slot upgrade. Read More »

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Fall Season Launch: The Big Four’s Standings Going Into Premiere Week

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Sunday September 19, 2010 @ 5:00pm PDTTags: ABC, Broadcast Networks, Broadcast Networks Premiere Week, CBS, CW, Dana Delany, Detroit 1-8-7, Fox, Glee, Hawaii Five-0 Reboot Premiere, HBO Boardwalk Empire, Jimmy Smits, NBC, Network Broadcast Sports Ratings, Raising Hope, The Event, Tom Selleck, TV, TV Premiere Week, TV Premiere Week Wrap-up, TV Scheduling
Nellie Andreeva

Overnights aren’t supposed to matter, as any broadcast executive will tell you these days because a larger and larger chunk of the TV audience time-shift their primetime viewing. And yet, we know that every morning next week the TV brass … Read More »

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TCA: ‘Body Of Proof’ Not Dad’s ‘Quincy, ME’

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Sunday August 1, 2010 @ 1:21pm PDTTags: ABC Body of Proof, Body of Proof, Dana Delany, Nathan Fillion, TCA, TV Casting
Nellie Andreeva

ABC’s new character-driven procedural Body of Proof stars Dana Delany as an ambitious medical examiner whose first career as a brilliant neurosurgeon was dashed after a car crash. Executive producer Matthew Gross dismissed parallels to the 1970s NBC series Quincy, M.E. “This is not your father’s Quincy; it’s a new take on medic examiners,” he said. “We set out to do a character-driven procedural, started off with Dana’s character, and grew form there.” With that, Delany cracked a joke about her resemblance to Quincy star Jack Klugman. Read More »

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