Nellie Andreeva

Another veteran ABC executive is heading to NBC. I’ve learned that Quinn Taylor, SVP Movies, Miniseries and Acquisitions at ABC Entertainment Group, will be leaving the network after almost 20 years to join rival NBC, which is looking to restart a longform division. I hear his title will be EVP Movies, Miniseries and International Co-Productions.

NBC has The Sound Of Music staging coming up, which would be right up Taylor’s alley as he has overseen a number of TV musicals at ABC, including Meredith Willson’s The Music Man starring Matthew Broderick. ABC is the only broadcast network that kept its longform division, headed by a high-level executive, while TV movies and miniseries dwindled on broadcast TV during the past several years.

Given the longform drought, Taylor had been focused on lower-budget and acquired series recently, overseeing such ABC shows as this summer’s newcomers Motive and Mistresses and returning Rookie Blue. NBC has been also very aggressive in acquired/lower-budget series, including this summer’s Camp and Crossing Lines.

In light of the blockbuster success of History’s Hatfields & McCoys and The Bible, miniseries and limited/event series are making a big comeback, something NBC clearly wants to be part of. Fox and FX launched a long-form unit last fall and recently greenlighted their first three event/limited series, Fargo on FX and 24: Live Another Day and Wayward Pines on Fox.

At NBC, Taylor joins head of scheduling Jeff Bader, who was poached last summer after a 24-year stint at the alphabet network. (Bader also brought over his top lietenant Steve Kern.) Taylor, who joined ABC’s telefilm department in 1996, served as SVP, Movies and Miniseries, ABC Entertainment, from 2002 to 2009. Some of the long-form projects he shepherded include Like With Judy Garland: Me And My Shadows, Anne Frank, A Raising In the Sun and several Oprah Winfrey Presents and Stephen King productions.

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