With 2 Hit Series Ending, a Transformed AMC Is at a Crossroads

It was less than a decade ago that the AMC network was known solely as a vintage movie site, if it was known at all, and seemed destined to sit out the creative revolution taking place on cable television.

The network was so nondescript, said Charlie Collier, AMC’s president, that it was often confused with the movie theater chain or the bowling supplies seller.

But over the last six years, the network has ridden the critical acclaim of two dramas, “Breaking Bad” and “Mad Men” — along with record-setting ratings for a third drama, “The Walking Dead” — to a new identity as a purveyor of sophisticated, dark television drama.

Now “Breaking Bad,” the hugely discussed series about a teacher turned drug kingpin, starts its final run of episodes next Sunday, and “Mad Men,” its partner in impact on the cultural zeitgeist, is also down to its own final season. That leaves AMC  at the crossroads of celebration and challenge.

Even as they revel in the klieg lights shining on the last season of “Breaking Bad” (one prominent television producer, Damon Lindelof of “Lost,”  offered $1 million — facetiously, in a Twitter message — for a sneak peek at the first of the new episodes), AMC executives acknowledge that their two departing shows will be near-impossible acts to follow.

“I would love to say there’s no pressure,” said Joel Stillerman, head of original programming for AMC, “but that would be a lie.”

AMC has been preparing for this sea change, ramping up its roster of potential new series and reconfiguring its business model to take advantage of the elevated stature the channel now enjoys.

“Everyone is saying this is the moment for AMC’s future,” Mr. Collier said. “I would say it is a moment.”

It would seem to be a moment to seize for AMC. The channel has never before been as popular a destination for top creative talent, and has never made as much money. The network has 67 projects in development, by far the most in its history.

Financially, AMC has secured advertising sales for the new television season that, according to its estimates, are nearly 20 percent higher than last year, to go with a similar rise in the subscriber fees from cable companies. Mr. Collier did not disclose the total figures, but said, “All revenue streams are on the upswing.”

In addition, the success of the two departing dramas, along with “Walking Dead,”  has enabled AMC to shift from licensing its shows from outside studios to insisting on ownership in future series, a transformation that means “much more upside, a lot more money,” said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research.

“We have mass and distinction,” Mr. Collier said. “That’s the mother lode.”

It has ratings, too. In the past season, “Walking Dead” averaged 8.2 million viewers for its initial broadcast, but that grew to 15 million after seven days. “Mad Men” averaged 1.6 million on its first night, but that grew to 4 million after seven days. “Breaking Bad” had an audience of 1.7 million in its first airing, and expanded that to 3.9 million after seven days.

Now all the network has to do is keep it going.

Mr. Collier expressed a high degree of confidence that it could build on its success, based on how far AMC — owned by AMC Networks, which also owns the Sundance Channel and IFC — has traveled in the last seven years. Before that, the channel had no special identity beyond its slate of older movies, and no cachet with younger audiences.

Vince Gilligan, 46, a respected writer from “The X-Files,” had a vague sense of AMC as the movie channel with commercials, he said. When he wrote an uncompromising pilot script with a lead character developing cancer and shifting from teaching high school to cooking crystal meth, he was unsurprised that networks like HBO and Showtime “were not remotely interested.”

 Then his agent told Mr. Gilligan he had offered the script to AMC. His reply mixed skepticism with dripping sarcasm: “I said: ‘Why didn’t you send it to the Food Network? It’s a show about cooking, after all.’ ”

 AMC not only bought the show, it promised creative freedom. “I didn’t believe a word they said,” Mr. Gilligan.

ABC Unveils a Fall Schedule With 13 New Series

ABC introduced a new fall schedule on Tuesday that, like those unveiled by the network’s competitors, was heavily dependent on new series — 13 in all, in ABC’s case.

The network will open the fall season with eight of these series on its prime-time schedule, five of which are comedies as ABC tries again to make Tuesday a second comedy night.

ABC’s current comedy night is Wednesday, where its biggest hit, “Modern Family,” resides at 9 p.m. ABC will hand the 9:30 slot on that night to “Super Fun Night,” a comedy about female friends starring a stand-up comedian, Rebel Wilson.

The network is also adding a new comedy in front of “Modern Family,” this one called “Back in the Game,” which stars James Caan as a grandfather and one-time would-be ballplayer who takes over as coach of his grandson’s inept Little League team.

ABC will introduce a whole new night of series on Tuesday, after jettisoning the “Dancing with the Stars” results show (results of the dance competition will now be included in the program’s Monday show). The new Tuesday schedule will be led off with by the network’s highest-profile drama, “Super Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” a comic book-based adventure from Joss Whedon (“Buffy”).

ABC will also add a drama at 10, “Lucky 7,” about a group of co-workers at a gas station who share a winning lottery ticket.

The rest of the night is new comedy: a quirky family comedy set in the 1980s called “The Goldbergs,” and another odd family mix in “Trophy Wife,” about a man on his third wife who retains relationships with the first two. It stars Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”).

ABC will try a spinoff of “Once Upon a Time,” its Sunday night fairy tale drama, in “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” at 8 on Thursdays, a take on the Alice in Wonderland tale with John Lithgow as the White Rabbit.

Having moved its densely plotted soap “Revenge” to Sundays, ABC will try to follow it with another soapy saga, “Betrayal,” about a married woman having an affair with a defense lawyer who happens to oppose her husband, a prosecutor in a big murder trial. ABC says it will be a limited series, running only in fall.

ABC will save the remainder of its new shows for later in the season, including a new reality show called “The Quest,” which takes real people on a “Lord of the Rings” sort of adventure.

ABC said it would run its serialized shows in 12-episode arcs, which will take breaks filled with other original shows.

One of its holdover comedies, “Suburgatory,” will be held off until midseason.

The ABC fall schedule:

DAY TIME SERIES

MONDAY: 8:00 p.m. “Dancing with the Stars”

10:00 p.m. “Castle”

TUESDAY: 8:00 p.m. “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

9:00 p.m. “The Goldbergs”

9:30 p.m. “Trophy Wife”

10:00 p.m. “Lucky 7”

WEDNESDAY: 8:00 p.m. “The Middle”

8:30 p.m. “Back in the Game”

9:00 p.m. “Modern Family”

9:30 p.m. “Super Fun Night”

10:00 p.m. “Nashville”

THURSDAY: 8:00 p.m. “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland”

9:00 p.m. “Grey’s Anatomy”

10:00 p.m. “Scandal”

FRIDAY: 8:00 p.m. “Last Man Standing”

8:30 p.m. “The Neighbors”

9:00 p.m. “Shark Tank”

10:00 p.m. “20/20”

SATURDAY: 8:00 p.m. “Saturday Night College Football”

SUNDAY: 7:00 p.m. “America’s Funniest Home Videos”

8:00 p.m. “Once Upon a Time”

9:00 p.m. “Revenge”

10:00 p.m. “Betrayal”

Advertising: National Geographic Channel Shifts Its Programming to TV Series

Courteney Monroe, the channel’s chief marketing officer, said its executives had worked since 2011 to switch its programming from being four-fifths documentaries and one-fifth series to four-fifths series and one-fifth documentaries. “It’s very hard to build a big, loyal audience without recurring series,” she said.

Those series include “Wicked Tuna,” about fishermen from Gloucester, Mass., and “Doomsday Preppers,” about Americans preparing for the end of the world, both introduced last year; “Brain Games,” introduced last month; and “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” which is set to premiere on Sunday. The channel, a joint venture begun in 2001 between the National Geographic Society and Fox Cable Networks, also recently began producing factually based dramas, like “Killing Lincoln,” which ran in February.

The final episode of the current season of “Wicked Tuna” will be shown on Sunday, followed by the first episode of “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” which Ms. Monroe said makes the evening “the ideal launch for the new brand campaign.”

The channel’s strategy so far appears to have had mixed results: according to Nielsen, the Sunday night showings of “Wicked Tuna” during Season 1 averaged 805,000 viewers, climbing to 953,000 in Season 2 through May 5. Average viewership of Tuesday night showings of “Doomsday Preppers,” however, fell from 936,000 in Season 1 to 736,000 in the second season.

Created by the New York office of BBDO, part of the Omnicom Group, the advertising is the channel’s first new branding campaign since 2009. It includes three spots on three of the new series, each 30 and 45 seconds long. The first, based on “Doomsday Preppers,” depicts a birthday party for a little girl in an underground bunker, who receives a gas mask as a present.

The second spot features Dave Marciano, a fishing boat captain who appears on “Wicked Tuna,” anxiously awaiting a possible catch, while the third spot, promoting “Ultimate Survival Alaska,” follows two adventurers racing to catch an airplane through snowy, icy terrain.

All three ads also feature viewers immersed in the environment of each series, watching the action unfold alongside characters representing the series while dressed in sweat pants and nightclothes, and engaged in activities like brushing their teeth and eating. They are invisible to the characters.

There is also a fourth spot, in 60- and 90-second versions, showing segments of the other three. None of the spots has dialogue; each ends with the tagline, “The places we take you ... aren’t just on the map.”

Greg Hahn, an executive creative director at BBDO New York, said the agency “knew we needed to show some original content and to bring the viewer into it, but we didn’t want to show clips, or people at home watching TV.”

He added, “We wanted to show the emotional response of people to the programming. It’s not just about the geographic places it takes you but also the emotional places. National Geographic magazine and National Geographic Channel have a long history of taking you to exotic places, showing you new locations. We wanted to build off that, open up a new way of looking at the brand.”

The new advertising will first appear on Sunday night on National Geographic Channel in the United States; it will also appear, starting Thursday, on the channel’s Web site and its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.

The spots will run in the future on sister channels of National Geographic Channel, Nat Geo WILD, which offers wildlife and natural history programming, and Nat Geo Mundo, a Spanish-language channel. They will also run later on National Geographic channels outside the United States, in 170 countries.

ABC Introduces 12 New Series for Next Season

The network, which saw its prime-time fortunes flag this season with no real new hits, announced that it will present at least 12 new series next season: five comedies and seven dramas. As has been ABC’s penchant in recent years, the shows tend to appeal to women, which is consistent with the network’s current roster, with holdover hits like “Modern Family,” “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal.”

ABC also showed affection for projects that have some connection to its parent company, the Walt Disney Company, with two new dramas.

One is “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D,” which beyond being a test of keyboard dexterity makes a show out of a Disney property from Marvel comics that involves daring special law-enforcement agents. The big name associated with the show is the creator, Joss Whedon (“Buffy The Vampire Slayer”).

ABC will try a spinoff of “Once Upon a Time” with “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland,” showing a lack of concern about a drop in ratings for the original. The new show takes Alice, the White Rabbit and others down the rabbit hole for new adventures. John Lithgow is the White Rabbit.

In “Resurrection,” ABC will go for a little scare with a show about an 8-year-old boy who apparently comes back from the dead.

The network will try a cop show with a woman in the leading role in “Killer Women,” about a tough young female Texas Ranger.

And it will go with a psychological crime drama in “Mind Games,” about two brothers who head a firm that uses psychological manipulation to solve problems. Christian Slater will here try again to find a hit TV series.

Soapy mystery has worked well for ABC in the past two seasons, so it will go back to the well with “Betrayal,” about a young woman, married to a prosecutor, who begins an affair with a defense attorney — and guess who wind up opposing each other in a murder trial?

“Lucky 7” is a comedy-drama about what happens to a crew of co-workers at a gas station when they win a lottery prize.

The hot comic Rebel Wilson appears in “Super Fun Night,” about a young woman on the rise in her career and romantic life who still tries to share Friday nights with her girlfriends. It is produced by Conan O’Brien’s company.

James Caan is in “Back in the Game,” playing an ex-ballplayer who gets roped into coaching the Little League team of his grandson and friends, all of whom stink at baseball.

“Trophy Wife” stars Bradley Whitford (“The West Wing”), who is on his third wife but harassed by the previous two.

In “The Goldbergs,” created by Adam Goldberg, a child named Adam spends his ’80s childhood driving his family crazy by videotaping everything in their lives. Jeff Garlin (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) plays the father.

“Mixology” takes place supposedly all in one night in a single bar in Manhattan with a group of young people pairing up.

Some threatened shows survived on ABC, including “Nashville,” but some did not, including “Body of Proof” and “Happy Endings,” which may find a happy landing on the USA Network. Still up in the air: the fate of the comedy “The Neighbors.”

NBC Saves ‘Community,’ but Drops Two Other Series

Against all expectations, NBC renewed its quirky comedy “Community” on Friday night, at the same time that it quietly pulled the plug on the eventually ill-named “Smash.”

The network also announced a few more new shows, bringing its total for the new television season to 13, one more than ABC has picked up — so far.

“Community” surely benefited from having NBC as one of its owners, but the comedy seemed to find some new legs late in its run this season. It has been written off after the departure of its creator Dan Harmon.

For “Smash,” it was simply a story of a promising idea that could not survive a disappointing execution. Though close to the heart of the head of NBC programming, Robert Greenblatt, the show tried to retrofit this season and sank quickly. NBC also dropped the comedy “The New Normal.”

But it kept up the announcements of new shows, adding another comedy and two more dramas. The comedy “Welcome to the Family” is a broad sitcom about a teenage couple who wind up pregnant and are forced to mix their Anglo and Hispanic families.

NBC is known to be high on the drama “The Blacklist,” which has an odd premise: one of the most wanted men in America is arrested and promises to help law enforcement but only by working with one obscure F.B.I. agent. James Spader stars.

The other drama, “The Night Shift,” is an homage of sorts to “E.R.,” telling stories about the graveyard shift at a hospital.

NBC will also offer a limited series “Dracula,” with Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the king vampire. And though announced long ago, NBC’s highest-profile new comedy will have Michael J. Fox playing a version of himself, a dad with Parkinson’s in “The Michael J. Fox Show.”

Condé Nast Introduces Web Series for Its Magazines

Last year, the latest innovation every magazine wanted to release was an iPad edition. This year, it’s online video content.

Condé Nast’s Entertainment Group introduced 30 programs at its first presentation made during the Digital Content NewFronts. Dawn Ostroff, president of Condé Nast Entertainment, presented shows that have already started to appear on Glamour’s Web site, like “Fashion Week Ride-Along” with its editor in chief Cindi Leive and “Elevator Makeover,” in which a woman receives a fashion makeover during an elevator ride. She also offered a glimpse of the 10 programs scheduled to begin soon on Vogue’s site, like “Vogue Weddings” and “Vintage Bowles,” in which the Vogue editor Hamish Bowles shops the world for clothes.

Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, Teen Vogue, Epicurious and Style.com are also expected to unveil programs by the year’s end, and Condé Nast said it hoped to distribute content through partnerships with Yahoo, AOL and Twitter.

“Each brand will have its own mix,” said Fred Santarpia, executive vice president and chief digital officer of Condé Nast Entertainment.

The company officially introduced its entertainment group in October 2011 to expand into film and television, but before Wednesday, the group had received little attention except for criticism from some writers who said the venture was curbing their film and television options.

The presentation on Wednesday also let the entertainment group finally show the fruits of its video labors, which appear to be in all stages of development. Glamour and GQ are the furthest along because they have already unveiled programs. Vogue will start to introduce shows on May 8, and Wired magazine will follow a week later with four programs, including an animated series.

Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., president of Condé Nast, stressed that the company’s new focus on video would never surpass its interest in print.

“Our company is founded in print,” he said. “This is an extension of what we are doing. We see this as a new business that is not in lieu of but in addition to.”