ABC does the right thing

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — ABC didn't air a questionable reality show it had already bought and paid for because it just wasn't right.

So says the network's chief programmer, who insisted the decision to dump "Welcome to the Neighborhood" was not the result of outside pressure from a variety of groups that raised holy heck over the show.

"This was our decision. I mean, if I stopped airing things just because advocacy groups had issues with it, we would run a test pattern," said ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson. "That's just the bottom line. I mean, I can't tell you how much of that stuff goes on."

Fair enough. And believable, given that just about everything these days upsets somebody.

The problem with "Welcome" wasn't in the concept, it was in the execution, according to McPherson. The show featured three white, conservative, religious families in Texas deciding who would win a house in their neighborhood — choosing from various minorities. And making derogatory comments about those minorities along the way.

"The show was just not right," McPherson said. "We knew it would be provocative. We new it would challenge biased and preconceived notions. But we did not anticipate that the episodic nature of it would be as problematic as it was."

While we are assured the neighbors actually learned to overcome their biases by Episode 6, Episodes 1 and 2 just showed their bigotry.

"You could, in fact . . . confuse the audience as to what the message you were trying to get across and what you were trying to show," McPherson said. "And it really became a question of what's responsible.

"We didn't want to air something just because of the controversy. And I really felt when I looked long and hard at it in this form, it wasn't right. The show was not right, and it wasn't ready to go. And the responsible thing to do was to not air it."

He rejected suggestions that he sell the show to another network in order to recoup some of ABC's costs.

"If I don't think something is responsible to be broadcast, why would you encourage it to be broadcast elsewhere?" McPherson said.

He did not promise the show will never air.

"We're trying to figure out if there's a way to edit it and air it in a different form that can really execute what our original intention was about that transformative process," McPherson said. "At this point, we haven't figured that out, so I don't know if it will air or not."

All of which sounds pretty good and pretty unusual — a television executive doing what's right instead of what's profitable. And, believe him or not, McPherson makes some excellent points.