Abc

Steve Bornstein, president of the ABC television network, resigned yesterday as the struggling network made its first major move to improve its image with advertisers who will be spending tens of millions of dollars on fall lineups in coming weeks. Bornstein, 50, has been head of the ABC network for only a year, and is not of particular importance as an individual executive and programmer. What's significant about his resignation is how plain it makes the fact that the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, is deeply unhappy with the network's performance.

Could "The Bachelorette" go for a Bawlamer boy? Could be... When the ABC show has its season premiere Monday, May 27, one of the contenders for the hand of bachelorette Desiree Hartsock will be introduced as Brian, a 29-year-old financial adviser from Baltimore. Brian is, in fact, Brian Jarosinski, a financial services representative for Gateway Capital Financial, an office of MetLife (although the website misspells Brian's name as "Jaronsinski," it's him). According to his bio on ABC.com, Jarosinski was born in Olney; is 6'-2", wears size 13 shoes and has no tattoos; lists his three favorite movies as "The Rock," "'The Notebook" and "The Count of Monte Cristo"; and professes to be "very neat.

ABC announced yesterday it has canceled the acclaimed drama Once and Again. While it has one of the most devoted audiences on television, Once and Again never generated ratings numbers large enough to match that fan loyalty. It will end its three-year run with a series finale April 15. Part of the problem is that the show - which stars Sela Ward and Billy Campbell as a couple dealing with the everyday obstacles of their blended family - bounced around ABC's schedule. The network shuffled it around to seven different timeslots in its three seasons, finally placing it at 10 p.m. Mondays midway through this season.

After spending 15 hours Friday locked on coverage of the manhunt in Boston, here are my picks for the highs, lows and deeper media stories of this remarkable day and night. The best moment belonged to Diane Sawyer and ABC News for a phone interview Friday night with George Pizzuto, a next-door neighbor to the man who discovered a wounded and bloody Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lying under a tarp in a boat in his backyard and called police. The interview started at 8:02 p.m., and was the first clear explanation of how the police found the 19-year-old bombing suspect in Watertown Friday night.

In a bold move that reflects a revolutionary realignment taking place in American media, Disney-ABC will begin next month offering four of its most popular series, including Desperate Housewives and Lost, on the Internet for free. In doing so, the network will become the first to offer prime-time programming to Internet users without asking them to pay for it. Dubbed "experimental" by the media conglomerate, the strategy addresses viewers' growing desire to choose when and where they watch their favorite shows and the need of advertisers for their commercials to be seen by the targeted audience.

The news that Charles Gibson will be leaving Good Morning America to anchor World News Tonight solves one problem for ABC but raises another. Gibson's departure this week opens a spot at Good Morning America just when the show's producers were hoping to have a solid team in place to battle NBC's powerhouse Today show, which will lose longtime co-anchor Katie Couric after Wednesday. As soon as Gibson's move was announced last week, speculation erupted about the future of the show, a perennial runner-up to Today.

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune Nov. 24: IN THE battle of the networks to compete with cable TV's edgy and uncensored fare, a recent special on ABC scored unexpected attention - from the government. The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show opened more than a few eyelids when its televised lingerie exhibition uncovered body areas seldom seen on network TV. It also prompted about 600 telephone calls and e-mails to the Federal Communications Commission, according to Commissioner Michael Copps.

LOS ANGELES - Indicating that there is nowhere ABC won't go for viewers, the network yesterday announced an off-beat fall promotional campaign that targets men's restrooms, among other places. The restroom campaign will be on behalf of the prime-time sitcom "Norm," starring Norm MacDonald. Spoofing its own "Must See TV" slogan, ABC will put posters on the walls in front of restroom urinals in New York and Los Angeles featuring MacDonald next to such headlines as "Must Pee TV." And, using CD-ROM technology, MacDonald will "speak" to those standing at the urinals.

Top-rated ABC yesterday announced a fall schedule so conservative and seemingly uninspired that the biggest news is what isn't on it: The critically acclaimed, cutting-edge "My So-Called Life," starring Claire Danes and Baltimore native Bess Armstrong."

Chances are, you will remember your neighbor Marcy's guacamole, the beer-shilling frogs and the Phil Collins halftime spectacular from Sunday's Super Bowl better than anything from the four-hour pre-game show, and John Filippelli hopes to change that. Filippelli is the vice president of production for ABC Sports, and it's under his watch that the network's Super Bowl telecast falls. It's telling that the other day on a media conference call he was willing to invest the most promotional capital on the pre-game show rather than ABC's main game coverage.

Jake Tapper's new show on CNN, "The Lead," is premiering at a time when cable TV keeps moving further down the road of partisan news presentation. But ask him about it, and there's no waffling. "I am not a partisan, and I am a journalist - not an ideologue," he said in a telephone interview last week. "I want to know information. I want to force people in power to tell me the truth - whether that's a football owner, a president or a CEO. And CNN felt like the best fit to do that.

First comes love, then comes marriage and then comes time to pick out the baby carriage - and decorate the nursery. Already the tabloids are speculating on the room where England's heir to the throne will lay his royal head when Prince William's and Kate Middleton's baby is born in July. And even though Kim Kardashian and Kanye West aren't quite in sync with the old rhyme, the gossip magazines are anticipating the extravagant nursery the couple will add to their $11 million mansion in Bel Air. Not to mention the nursery that Joe Flacco and his wife, Dana, can create for their second child with the Ravens quarterback's new $120.6 million deal.

It's going to be dueling Ravens in late night Thursday with Jacoby Jones on Jimmy Kimmel and John Harbaugh on David Letterman . Both shows air at 11:35 p.m. -- Kimmel on ABC and Letterman on CBS. Talk about TV suddenly paying national attention to the Ravens in the wake of their Super Bowl victory Sunday. For years, no one had them on the national shows. Now they are being counterprogrammed against each other. Monday night, Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco , did an impressive turn on Letterman , who came calling for more with the Harbaugh booking.

Chris Cuomo is leaving ABC to join CNN, where he will have a "major role in a new CNN morning show," the cable channel announced Tuesday. Cuomo, who has served as co-anchor of "20/20" and chief law and justice correspondent for ABC, will also anchor and report on "major events" for CNN, Jeff Zucker, the channel's new president, said in making the announcement. “Chris is an accomplished anchor who is already an established name in morning television, as well as a widely respected investigative journalist,” Zucker said in a CNN release.

The sorry tableau of two replacement referees standing side by side in the end zone making opposite calls on a controversial play at the end of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" led to the largest audience on record for the post-game SportsCenter show. That image of those two hopeless referees making the opposite call on a contested reception will long serve as the symbol of what has happened to the game in this labor dispute between the real referees and owners. But the ratings for the games, compromised as they might be by utterly inept officiating, just keep going up. Sunday's contest between the Ravens and the New England Patriots was seen by 21.3 million viewers.

Journalistic mistakes are easy to make in the immediate wake of events like the horrific shootings last week in a movie theater in Colorado. Bits and bites of information explode across myriad media. Meanwhile, revulsion at the violence mixes with adrenaline, leaving some reporters at less then their intellectual and emotional best - especially when they are on live TV. Still, that's still no excuse for what happened with ABC News veteran Brian Ross Friday morning on “Good Morning America.” There's a journalistic lesson to be learned - and it's not as simple as all of us in the media are too obsessed with trying to be first.

ABC News management abruptly canceled a report about abuses by Congress that was scheduled to be broadcast Friday night on its newsmagazine program "20/20," and one participant in the report contended that the network had acted out of fear of alienating members of Congress.ABC News executives dismissed the contention as groundless, saying the report was pulled simply because its reporting was inadequate.The "20/20" report, based on a book to be published next week by Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post reporter, had been scheduled for Friday and promoted on earlier ABC shows.

PASADENA, Calif. -- A top ABC executive stoked a Washington-Hollywood dispute yesterday, saying the network stopped participating in part of a federal program after a policy change put the government in a position to influence the content of ABC's programming. The remarks, made by ABC Television Network President Pat Fili-Krushel at a seasonal media gathering to promote ABC shows, appeared to contradict statements earlier in the week by officials of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

I did not think I'd ever see a better medical documentary series than the Emmy-Award-winning “Hopkins 24/7” that aired in 2000 or its sequel, “Hopkins,” which won a Peabody Award in 2008. The backstage access, immediacy and range of gripping real-life drama that ABCNews Executive Producer Terence Wrong and his team captured at Baltimore's world-renowned medical institution were landmark. But with “NY Med,” which premieres at 10 p.m. Tuesday, Wrong surpasses his earlier work in terms of prime-time storytelling without sacrificing any of the cultural seriousness or grand reach of the Hopkins series.

Here's hoping that news of guilty verdicts in the Jerry Sandusky case took a huge bite out of the audience ABC's  "20/20"  expected for its hour-too-long interview with Rielle Hunter Friday night. I say that because then ABC News will have gained nothing for debasing itself by giving an hour of prime time to this wretched woman so that she could sell more copies of her new book. In fact, I am really hoping ABC News lost some credibility with viewers for sticking with this tabloid con job instead of breaking away at some point to cover the real news that the former Penn State coach was found guilty on 45 of 48 counts in connection with the sexual molestation of minors.