ABC's Steve McPherson Talks "Pushing Daisies," "Dirty Sexy Money," and "Eli Stone," But No Return Dates

Fans of Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone shouldn't hold their collective breath waiting for ABC to run the remaining episodes of their favorite series, all of which the Alphabet cancelled last year.

Speaking at the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, ABC Entertainment president Steve McPherson was maddeningly vague when questioned several times about when viewers could anticipate seeing the leftover episodes of Pushing Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone.

"I wish that we had been able to give the producers really series-ending notice to some extent so they could really get that done and really have kind of a finale, if you will," said McPherson. "Because of the way the timing worked out, we didn't, and we weren't able to. But I'd love to find a way to get those out, because Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money for me -- most of the time when shows don't work, you can really, in hindsight, look back and kick yourself and say, 'I should have seen that.'"

"I really love those shows [and] commend those producers," continued McPherson. "They delivered what they promised. For us, it was just a frustration that we couldn't get a larger audience or that Nielsen said we couldn't get a larger audience."

Still, ABC did not announce any scheduling of those remaining episodes today and McPherson pointed to a number of obstacles standing in there way from airing those installments, including the preciousness of "real estate on air," especially in these economically uncertain times, rights clearance issues, and just scheduling dilemmas.

So, would McPherson have done anything differently coming out of the writers strike in regard to these series? Would he have brought them back in the spring rather than attempt to "relaunch" them in the fall?

"It wasn’t like there were a lot of options," said McPherson, who said that they could have "maybe gotten two or three episodes of the Wednesday night shows back on the air in the spring... So we made the gamble. Hindsight is 20/20. People did not come back to them the way we hoped. I don’t know that we had a better option. But I wished the strike didn’t happen because we are all trying to recover."

As for Pushing Daisies, McPherson didn't really have any answer about why the series underperformed on ABC. "You could look back and maybe say, okay, Pushing Daisies was a little bit too much this or that, but [Daisies, Dirty Sexy Money, and Eli Stone] are great shows. There may be something out there in terms of the way we promote these shows, the way we deliver these shows, and the way that the viewership is actually counted. I think that there's a tremendous amount of viewership that nobody, no network gets credit for. And hopefully, if we can get those viewers and get them counted for, we can keep great shows like that on the air."

Stay tuned.