Fall Schedules: ABC

ABC was the year's Big Story in TV land and the network's fall schedule is about building on their newfound success.

On paper it looks like a solid line-up, every show seems to have a compatible mate and it's clear the network will continue to go after large female audiences and hope the guys show up too.

Among the big decisions:

Lost will air one hour later, at 9, leaving more viewers available to sample NBC's Martha Stewart Apprentice but serving as a possible death blow to that network's Jerry Bruckheimer drama E-Ring. The castaway drama is followed by new sci fi series Invasion, which should be a good match and give Invasion a boost over the other new alien series on NBC and CBS. Since Lost doesn't need a lead in to generate ratings it doesn't much matter what airs before it but next season it will be the Latino comedy combo of George Lopez and Freddie (Prinze Jr.).

In fact, every ABC half hour is matched with a similar show. In addition to George and Freddie, the network is keeping its blue collar male combo of According to Jim and Rodney intact and shifting it to the 8 o'clock lead off position. The only other returning comedy, Hope & Faith, will be matched with Hot Properties, a real estate comedy with four female leads that sounds like Desperate Housewives meets Designing Women. That makes the Friday night schedule a lot less kid friendly than usual at ABC, but the night will wisely kick off with Supernanny (which will have to take on new NBC reality series Three Wishes).

One of ABC's biggest changes comes in January when Monday Night Football exits the schedule permanently. The network will be able to program the Monday night slot all season long and, at least initially, is opting to skew female. The proposed line-up of The Bachelor (couldn't they just put a bullet in that one?) followed by Sex and the City knock-offs Emily's Reasons Why Not (a new comedy starring Heather Graham) and Jake in Progress (yes, it's back, don't ask me why) followed by relationship drama What About Brian doesn't really look like it will do much damage to the strong line-ups at NBC and CBS on that night.

Boston Legal will air Tuesdays at 10 since the surprise success of Grey's Anatomy made its old Sunday timeslot unavailable. Legal's success will probably depend on just how good, and successful, its new lead-in is. That show is Commander-in-Chief starring Geena Davis as the first female President of the U.S.

And Alias is now forced to lead off Thursday nights, its trickiest timeslot yet. The network must figure it doesn't have much to lose since very little works on Thursday nights anyway. There's definitely room for growth there since the only show in the timeslot that's working in a big way right now is Survivor. Prospects for Alias' designated companion, supernatural detective drama The Night Stalker, look a little dicier since it faces the similar but wildly popular CSI. Stalker, which comes from X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz and is a loose update of Kolchak a show that directly inspired The X-Files, looks to be one of fall's most promising new shows so hopefully ABC will show some patience with it in the tough slot.

Of course in the unlikely event that all the new shows turn out to be disasters the network also has ordered several midseason options including two awful-sounding procedural dramas (The Evidence and In Justice) and a couple dysfunctional family comedies (Crumbs and Sons & Daughters).

Less Than Perfect will return (for some unknown reason) later in the season but Blind Justice and Eyes will not.

Among the pilots the network apparently passed on were comedies starring Brenda Blethyn, Peter Dinklage, Chris Kattan, Bernadette Peters, Kevin Sorbo and Tom Everett Scott. Also two J.J. Abrams produced shows (including his long in development The Catch which would have starred Abrams staple Greg Grunberg), a Desperate Housewives-ish detective show with Kristin Davis, a real estate soap opera and the twentysomething drama from Ed Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz.