ABC's Steve McPherson: Pursuing His Passions

By Lunch at Michael's Archives
Cover image for  article: ABC's Steve McPherson: Pursuing His Passions

Originally Published: June 1, 2004

In the midst of network TV Upfront Week, ABC programming chief Stephen McPherson and I met for Lunch at Michael's, just two days after his triumphant presentation to advertisers at Lincoln Center. For Steve this year's Upfront was bittersweet. His return to New York each year for Upfront presentations traditionally included the ritual of attending a New York Knicks playoff game. With the Knicks again failing to make the NBA play-offs, Steve suffered some withdrawal pains. But any pain Steve may have felt this year was certainly alleviated by the stunning successes of his primetime schedule in the past season and the positive response of advertisers toward next year's new ABC shows.

"My favorite Knicks' player," Steve told me, "was Walt Frazier, who said the secret of the great Knicks' comebacks was to do it two points at a time. I thought that was a great analogy for ABC when were struggling. Thinking we could come back by depending on one hit would have been equal to depending on winning the lottery to retire."

Of course, Steve did win the network TV equivalent of the lottery with three huge and unprecedented new hits in the 2004/2005 season: Desperate Housewives, Lost and Grey's Anatomy, plus the hugely successful Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Steve's career in the entertainment business almost ended before it even began, however. "My good friend (and Cornell Phi Delta Theta fraternity brother) Kevin Reilly (now head of primetime programming at NBC-TV) was working at a public relations firm in Los Angeles and I was frustrated with my job on Wall Street. He suggested I come to L.A. and told me it would be easy to get a job. So I sold everything, bought a car and drove to L.A. Six months later, I still wasn't working and all my friends on Wall Street were telling me how great they were doing and Wall Street was the place to be. Of course, a few years later they all wanted to be at the Desperate Housewives party," he laughed.

After attending high school at the American School in Paris, where his father was head master, Steve returned to the U.S., attending Cornell and playing soccer all four years, losing the Ivy League championship game in his senior year to Columbia, which had been his alternative college selection. Although he had taken several electives in theater and film, Steve's college major was political science and international economics. In 1986, with the stock market heating up and international experience in demand, his most promising career opportunity was a foreign exchange trading job at a Wall Street brokerage house.

"I had a good understanding of world economics, which was the basis of the commodities business, but I realized I didn't love it. I was commuting in from Princeton and working the trading desk all night dealing with New Zealand, Australia and Japan. It was 18-months of an adrenaline rush, one year to get bored with work, and then 18-months to figure out something else. I began taking night courses and making student films at the Tisch School at NYU while I was working but I realized I couldn't make both work. That's when Kevin suggested L.A."

After six months of frustration in L.A., Steve was finally offered two jobs, one at talent agency CAA and the other as assistant to producer Tony Thomas at Witt-Thomas-Harris Productions. After a year, he was promoted into the development department, and then got his hoped for "big break" when he was recruited by Fox-TV to join their current programming department. From Fox, he joined ABC Productions the in house studio as SVP Creative Affairs and when the network was acquired by Disney, he joined NBC as VP Primetime Series, spending four years at the peacock network before returning to Disney as president of the Touchstone Television studio. Just weeks before last year's Upfront presentation, Steve was named president of ABC Entertainment.

As the typical Michael's lunch crowd of who's who in the media business stopped by to congratulate Steve (including actor Peter Boyle, Fox's Angela Shapiro, Michael Kassan, Brent Magid, Gerry Byrne and Sony's Steve Moskow), he pointed out TV audiences are becoming more sophisticated, demanding and attentive to every detail. It's not the time to take our foot off the gas and we're going to be making some big bets with well-made high concept programs," he says. Steve is especially enthusiastic about the growth potential for ABC's new situation comedies including mid-season replacements Sons & Daughters, Crumbs,andEmily's Reasons Why Not.

"The good news is the sitcom genre is so challenged people are taking risks. With more demanding audiences, we can't stick with the same formulas." Steve admits the laugh track, a standard part of most sitcoms, "is distracting. It takes away from the experience. People are getting the comedy of Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City without laugh tracks, and the greatest all-time classic sitcom, M*A*S*H had no laugh track."

Steve compares television programs to wine, commenting that "like wine variety is important in television programming; a broader palate and very different shows are important to the industry." It's an analogy that's especially appropriate considering Steve's love of wine. Last Fall he harvested the first vintage of his Promise Napa Cabernet. "My dad got me into wines. The way some people love to walk around in record shops, I love to browse in wine stores." The wine's name is derived from the "promise I gave my wife that I would pursue my passions. We were married at [former Disney president] Rich Frank's Frank Family Vineyard and Rich is my idol; he's had so many successes and has a great perspective on life. So for me, pursuing my passions included creating my own wine, and I'm fortunate that Rich was able to help me accomplish it." Steve's favorite wine is the 1985 Clos de Tart.

Following his passions has also led Steve to start the Linda Mancuso Foundation to support young arts students, named after the former head of programming for ABC Family who passed-over in 2003 after a seven-year battle with cancer. "She was an angel in life and is a guardian angel now," Steve comments sadly. He's also passionate about supporting his wife of one-year, Jennifer Lacorte, and her work with adolescent girls and young women. "Understanding through her the pressures the media put on kids gives me an important perspective," he points out. Steve's greatest passion, though, is their daughter -- due this summer.

Following his own passions has led Steve to "surround myself with great people who I believe in and to let them pursue their passions. If there's a magic formula for success in this business, that's it."

Steve McPherson can be contacted by e-mailing me at jack@mediavillage.com.

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