ABC Primetime Entertainment President Stephen McPherson has been in the job for 29 days. It took him only that long to give the network's schedule an extreme makeover.

ABC's announced lineup for the fall includes eight new shows -- two comedies, four dramas and two unscripted series -- with three others ready to jump in at midseason. Several veteran series, notably "8 Simple Rules" and "My Wife and Kids," have moved to new time periods, while "Alias" won't premiere until January, but will run without repeats for its entire season.

"Twenty-nine days in, it's like being fired out of a cannon," McPherson told reporters Tuesday (May 18) in announcing the 2004-05 schedule. "But we're in a good place. We feel really excited about the material we've got and feel like we really have the pieces to start in the right place."

Those pieces look drastically different than ABC's schedule this year. New series are spread out through six of the seven nights; only Saturday, which will again feature the "Wonderful World of Disney" movies, is unchanged. The network has cut back a little on comedies, dropping from 10 to eight sitcoms for the fall, and upped the amount of unscripted fare, adding the Mark Cuban-led show "The Benefactor" and "Wife Swap," based on a British show of the same name.

"My Wife and Kids" is moving from Wednesdays to Tuesdays, where it will lead off that night's comedy block. "George Lopez" jumps to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday from Friday nights. Two former Tuesday shows, "8 Simple Rules" and "Less Than Perfect," make the switch to the network's "TGIF" slate on Fridays.

"Extreme Makeover" also gets a new spot, at 8 p.m. Thursdays, where it will lead into the drama "Life As We Know It." The other new dramas on the schedule are "Desperate Housewives," filling the 9 p.m. Sunday spot in the fall; "The Practice: Fleet Street," a spinoff following James Spader's "Practice" character that keeps its predecessor's 10 p.m. Sunday home; and J.J. Abrams' "Lost," about the survivors of a plane crash stranded on a remote island. It will air at 8 p.m. Wednesdays.

McPherson insists that there's a method to his scheduling madness. "I very much want to make sure that we launch [new shows] with a strategic eye," he says. The question he and his staff face is "how do we put all these things into places where they can succeed, rather than just kind of throw them on the air at some point because we think they're good shows and hope that America will come to them."

ABC also picked up three dramas for midseason. "Grey's Anatomy," about doctors in a tough surgical residency program, will air at 10 p.m. Mondays after "Monday Night Football" wraps its season. Steven Bochco's "Blind Justice" will take the "NYPD Blue" spot when that show, which will also go rerun-free next season, ends its run. "Eyes," an ensemble show about private investigators, doesn't have a spot yet.

The network is also proceeding with its miniseries "Empire," although McPherson says he doesn't yet know where it will fall on the schedule.