NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
What do you get when you mix spouse-swapping, anxious housewives and yet more lawyers behaving badly?
If you're the ABC Television Network, hopefully a much-needed ratings boost. And if you're Michael Eisner, the CEO of The Walt Disney Co., hopefully a lot more job security.
Money-losing ABC, now No. 4 in prime time ratings, unveiled a fall lineup earlier this week that was short on new comedies but heavy on dramas and reality shows. Among the big bets: "Wife Swap," yet another pirated version of a popular British reality show -- this one about women who trade families. (Note to indecency crusaders: They don't trade marital beds.)
Analysts said the ABC lineup was unexpectedly strong. "I think advertisers were expecting the worst this year from ABC," said Jack Myers, an independent media research analyst in New York. "[But] the advertisers walked away with the sense that they have potential."
Embattled CEO Eisner needs ABC to score a win.
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 The networks are rolling out their plans for the upcoming season during upfront week, when advertisers buy their spots. CNNfn's Allan Chernoff looks at how the media company stocks are faring.
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Ratings at the network have steadily declined as the network has cast around for its first big hit since the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" craze of the late 1990s.
Eisner himself has come under relentless attack in recent months, fending off both Comcast Corp.'s now-defunct hostile bid and investors unhappy with Disney's performance and Pixar's defection. Even though Disney is having a good year thanks to higher theme park attendance and booming DVD sales, some angry shareholders still want Eisner ousted. A win at Disney's highly visible broadcast network could give Eisner more breathing room.
ABC isn't banking on "Wife Swap" alone to pull it out of a ratings slump. In addition to wives trading places, Disney has high hopes for "Desperate Housewives," a drama about the dysfunctional lives of five married women, one of whom is dead, and "The Practice: Fleet Street," an offshoot of "The Practice."
"There's definitely potential for [ABC] to be turning things around," said David Mantell, a cable and media analyst with Loop Capital Markets, a Chicago-based investment bank and securities firm.
But will it be enough?
Whether the fall lineup is strong enough to free Eisner from the ABC mousetrap remains to be seen.
Total viewers at ABC were down to 5.6 percent of prime-time households for the 2003-04 season that ended Sunday, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.
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| Disney CEO Michael Eisner |
And despite the generally warm reception for next season's TV rollout, analysts are still forecasting ABC's ad sales during the crucial "upfront" period will fall to about $1.65 billion or less from $1.71 billion a year earlier.
That's bad news even in a year when overall ad sales during this week's "upfront," the annual period when networks begin selling commercial time for the coming season, are expected to be flat or up slightly overall for the broadcast networks.
While analysts said ABC is unlikely to post the sharpest slip in ad sales of the six major networks, its ability to lure advertisers is of prime interest to Disney and its investors.
On the revenue side, ABC is clearly a shrinking slice of the Disney (DIS: Research, Estimates) corporate pie. Last year Disney's broadcast unit, which includes the ABC network and TV and radio stations, took in $5.4 billion in revenues, or about 20 percent of Disney's $27.1 billion total, and earned $37 million, down from $695 million in 2001.
This year, Loop Capital Markets projects television and radio broadcast revenues will drop to 17.8 percent of Disney's total revenue.
Cable, meanwhile, is going gangbusters thanks largely to Disney's wildly popular ESPN sports channel. Disney's cable network revenues were up 17 percent to $3.1 billion in the first two quarters of fiscal 2004 compared to last year. Cable sales will reach $6.5 billion for the year, up from $5.5 billion in fiscal 2003, according to Loop Capital.
To turn around ABC, Disney shook up the broadcast unit's management in April and installed ABC Cable Networks President Anne Sweeney as head of the ABC Television Network. Disney also named Steve McPherson, the former president of Touchstone Television, to oversee its prime time operations.
Together Sweeney and McPherson presented ABC's fall lineup Tuesday in Manhattan. Loop Capital's Mantell said he liked their energy and ideas. "They're under an amazing amount of stress and so early on [in their new jobs]," he said. "But, you know, sometimes that pressure is good."
Mantell said he does not own Disney stock. Loop Capital Markets co-managed a Disney debt offering last year.
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