​Fresh off ingratiating critics with the incomparable 1-2 punch of Tyra Banks of FABLife and Kermit and Miss Piggy of The Muppets, Paul Lee, president of ABC Entertainment Group took the stage at the TCA summer press tour.

And, unsurprisingly, he’s pumping #TGIT and the network’s performance over the past year.

“If you take one thing from my comments this morning, it’s that I think Viola Davis should win that Emmy,” Lee said. “We’re obviously very pleased with the year we had last year,” Lee continued, pointing to the 10 Emmy nominations for John Ridley’s American Crime and the numbers for #TGIT. “We really think we managed to add a whole lot of new programs that have taken the ABC brand forward yet again and really defined it as that defining No. 1 brand.”

When you add multiplatform usage, #TGIT beat out CBS’ NFL Football on Thursday nights, and also net more than 5 billion Facebook impressions over the past year.

Lee attributed ABC’s success to the distinctive voices of their showrunners, from Shonda Rhimes and John Ridley to the creators behind Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish. “I think it really shows that incredibly specific voices can actually be deeply universal and relatable for the whole country. We’ve really honed our position as the home of single camera, sophisticated family comedies with those shows,” Lee said.

ABC is excited about its new crop of shows, with Blood & Oil and Quantico placed as a soapy “power pack” of dramas on Sundays. Dr. Ken is a “much better, very good match for Last Man Standing” on Friday nights. The Muppets, a mockumentary parody show coming to Tuesdays this fall, is reinventing and reinvigorating the Muppets brand. “Who thought Kermit would be stuck on the 405?” Paul asked.

Given the choice of international star Priyanka Chopra for Quantico, Paul Lee was asked if the decision was made due to her appeal abroad and to get an international audience.

“The reality is no. But what we do here is we make great television. That’s what sells. And when we fail to do that, when we don’t make a good show, it won’t go around the world,” Lee said. “Specificity is critical. And there’s nothing about the American experience that doesn’t resonate around the world.”

“We didn’t sit there and say, you know, ‘We think we are going to be able to sell this show, you know, in India. Let’s take Priyanka,’ We looked at Priyanka and thought she’s a fabulous actress; she’s incredibly relatable to our audience; she’s empowered and fierce the way only ABC heroines are empowered and fierce. If we can place her in a great show and it’s a very American tale, then it will become relevant around the world. So we never lead with international. We lead with quality,” Lee said.

Lee, of course, was tight-lipped about the future of their Marvel shows, merely stating that the network is “very bullish on Marvel on the network and its future.”

With Dr. Ken and Last Man Standing, Lee believes ABC is set to continue their winning streak on Friday nights. “We’re always No. 1 on Friday nights,” Lee said. “I don’t think Tim gets enough credit, or the show gets enough credit, for bringing in family audiences.”

Dr. Ken was designed for Friday, and was very specific to writer-producer-star Ken Jeong. “What drives us is the power of the storyteller,” Lee said. “We absolutely believe in Dr. Ken this fall. It’s not our mission to do anything else but reflect the country.”

“In the end, what we’re looking for is incredibly personal stories,” Lee said. “The real fun of my job, compared to some of the other brands, and some of the great brands out there, is that there are some brands who do better by repeating and by driving through the process. Our brand is driven through innovation and character. So for us to really do well, we have to get out of the way or at least create a structure around strong voices that will allow them to take risks and enjoy themselves. The most successful ones we’ve had are not cookie cutter; they’re risk taking, where we’ve gone to people and said, ‘Bring us your personal stories.’”

“What we found has worked in a world of On Demand is passion. Passion of the audience is [important], obviously, because I want to watch that show, and I want to watch it whenever I can. But passion of the showrunners. What the real gauge for us is passion,” Lee said.

Passion, and serialized story telling. A lot has changed for network TV in the past five years. “We’re in that world—because certainly when I started the job, it was written in stone that procedurals were bigger than serialized shows. But now in an On Demand world, serialized shows can really drive things,” Lee said,

Lee is hoping their new shows, from Shondaland’s newest show The Catch starring Mireille Enos to Joan Allen’s The Family, continues to drive the conversation to ABC.

“ABC is an inclusive brand, including everybody in America,” Lee said. “When I look at our portfolio of assets at ABC, I’d put that against any portfolio on any platform.”

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