Pretty Good Move for Ugly Betty With a bit of shuffling, ABC has a great Thursday-night lineup

• Aug 10, 2006 04:00 AM ET
• by Stephen Battaglio

It's nice to see that ABC wised up and invited Ugly Betty to the Thursday-night ball.

The new show — which will now be paired with Grey's Anatomy this fall — has been getting raves from those who have seen it. Executives from other networks have called it the best pilot they saw from their competition this year. Adapted from a telenovela that's been wildly popular for years in Latin America, Ugly Betty stars America Ferrera as a glamour-challenged woman from an immigrant family trying to make it at a flashy fashion magazine.

Salma Hayek and producer Ben Silverman have been trying to sell a U.S. version of Betty for several years. When ABC screened their pilot last spring, there were plenty of concerns.

Some inside the network thought its appeal was too young and narrow, and it got a mixed reaction from test audiences. When the show finally got picked up for the fall, it ended up in a dead zone: Friday at 8 — a strange scheduling move, since the largest audience segment available on that night is older women. The message sent was, "We'll give it a shot, but we don't really believe in it."

But now Ugly Betty will be on TV's marquee night. Credit ABC execs for listening to the strong buzz that's out there for the show. It probably didn't hurt that there's a little movie out right now called The Devil Wears Prada — another story about an ugly duckling at a fashion mag — which has earned more than $106 million at the box office.

The move may also be influenced by the awareness study the networks do every summer to measure whether anyone is paying attention to the promos for their new shows. Among ABC's new entries, Ugly Betty and Six Degrees, a soapy drama from J.J. Abrams, have scored the highest.

ABC improves its Thursday night with this shuffle. While Grey's Anatomy is the hottest show on TV, it could have ended up as a lonely island at 9, with new comedies Big Day and Notes from the Underbelly as lead-ins. Now Grey's has one of the most anticipated new shows of the season in front of it. And Betty gets help from Grey's fans who tune in early. Really — even Lost fans watched the end of Freddie.