The Safe House - Expositions

ABC's super-chick action show "Alias" has won the coveted post-Super Bowl time slot on Sunday, Jan. 26. This even though ABC is debuting several drama series the next night and you'd think the network would want to get one of them the Super-sized sampling that inevitably befalls whatever show lands the plum post-Super Bowl slot.

ABC suits made this decision after remembering that a) the last time a new show successfully launched after the Super Bowl was "The Wonder Years" in 1988 -- programs tend to do a gigantic number that night and crash and burn thereafter, b) more lasting benefits were had when older shows got the post-bowl treatment, including "Friends," "Malcolm in the Middle" and ABC's own "The Practice" and c) "Alias" creator J.J. Abrams had written a "kick-[heinie] episode" specifically for post-Super Bowl airing, as one ABC source put it.

ABC Entertainment chief Susan Lyne, on the other hand, put it this way, in a statement no less: "The episode that J.J. Abrams has written to air post-Super Bowl is a phenomenal hour of television, maybe the best hour of pure entertainment we've seen."

Plus, in another so-sensible-I-can't-believe-it's-ABC move, the alphabet net has decided not to air three new drama series on Monday nights after all but instead will move David E. Kelley's "The Practice" into Ally McBeal's old time slot, Mondays at 9 p.m., starting the night after the Super Bowl. You'll remember that ABC had announced at the "upfront" presentations to advertisers in May that after football season, it would debut three drama series on Monday night: "Veritas" at 8, "Dragnet" at 9 and "Miracles" at 10. The last time a network successfully launched a whole night of prime-time programming is never.

The network shrewdly figured out that maybe fans of Kelley's 8 p.m. Fox drama "Boston Public" would change channels to ABC at 9 for Kelley's "The Practice," and that they might pick up some former fans of Fox's "Ally" as well. Plus, the move gives ABC an established show in the 9 p.m. slot; this is known as a "tentpole" in Network Scheduling 101.

And as if that's not enough, the ABC suits also figured out that if they put Dick Wolf's "Dragnet" remake into the Sunday 10 p.m. slot, starting Feb. 2, the show might snag a few Wolf fans who had just finished watching his "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" at 9 on NBC. Plus, the ABC lead-in for "Dragnet" will be "Alias," which of course will have millions and millions of new viewers following its post-Super Bowl broadcast.

Sweet.

Thanks to vaughnetc.!

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