by Kimberly Potts
Sep 16, 2002, 3:15 PM PT

How desperate is ABC to live down its dismal 2001-02 season that was led by bad-TV punchline Bob Patterson?
They're relying on Jack Tripper and repeats from another network.

Jack Tripper, aka John Ritter, is the star of the network's highly touted (well, by the network, anyway) new family sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, which premieres Tuesday night, but ABC announced Monday the surprise decision to put the USA Network's Monk in the net's Thursday night, 8 p.m. time slot this fall. (Yes, that means it's up against NBC's Friends-powered "Must-See" lineup.)

The series, about an obsessive-compulsive detective played by Wings star Tony Shalhoub, has been a hit for the original series-minded USA, and it performed well this summer for ABC when the network "second window"-ed it (aired repeats a few days after they originally ran on USA) for a limited run Tuesday nights at 9 p.m.

Opposite the hit show of the summer, Fox's American Idol, Monk nabbed second place in the ratings for ABC, averaging more than 8 million viewers an episode.

Impressive numbers for ABC, which totally revamped its 2002-03 schedule--dropping shows like Dharma & Greg, Spin City and the critically acclaimed but underperforming The Job--after a ratings plummet that followed the overzealous scheduling of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and several seasons of lackluster new programming. In fact, ABC had just one show--Monday Night Football--finish among the top 20 shows of last season, according to Nielsen.
But the move to second-window Monk isn't without some embarrassment for the Disney-owned network: Touchstone Television, corporate brethren of ABC, originally produced Monk for ABC, but the network passed on it. That forced ABC, Mouse tail between its legs, to take USA's reruns and then, according to the Los Angeles Times, to even approach Barry Diller-owned USA with a new proposal: Let ABC run the original episodes, with USA picking up the repeats.

The negative reply from USA was a no-brainer. "It's our hit," USA Network President Doug Herzog told the Times. "You can't give them away."
So for now, ABC will have to be content with sharing, adding Monk reruns to its lineup beginning September 26 and continuing through Thanksgiving night, when Dinotopia, the series that continues last season's miniseries of the same title, debuts.

Dinotopia was scheduled to premiere in October, but the Monk reruns will cut the show's production company, Hallmark Entertainment, some slack on finishing the special-effects-laden episodes on time.

Meanwhile, we have a memo for Disney honcho Michael Eisner and Co. re: that John Ritter show. One simple rule for launching a new series: have fewer than eight words in the title.