Ben Sherwood

The chief talks a Star Wars TV series, ABC’s primetime plan, his pick for Oscar host and learning from Michael Strahan’s Live exit (‘We made some mistakes’)

- Marisa Guthrie

IT’S WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 7, AND Michael Strahan has just wrapped day two of his full-time gig at Good Morning America — four months after a messy exit from the ABC daytime show Live. Ben Sherwood, who since 2014 has been running the Disney/ABC broadcast and entertainment networks, remarks that he “can feel the energy … feel the competitive fire.”

After a three-year stint as president of ABC News, Sherwood, 52, still is very much invested in the network’s flagship morning program. Perhaps his most significant accomplishment while on the job was GMA’s vanquishing of Today’s 852-week winning streak in 2012. Of course, Today last year regained the lead in the critical 25-to54 demographic. And so Sherwood, who takes his task as morale booster seriously, has made this one-day trip to New York in part to rally the troops.

From his office in Burbank, Sherwood also is very much in rebuild mode, overseeing more than 7,000 employees across ABC, ABC Studios, ABC-owned television stations, Disney Channels Worldwide (a portfolio of 116 kid-driven entertainment channels or channel feeds available in 163 countries in 34 languages), tween-targeted cable network Freeform and the company’s equity interests in A+E Networks and Hulu. He has recast his cabinet, tapping Channing Dungey as president of ABC Entertainment, charged with the task of arresting the network’s primetime ratings slide; it finished the 2015-16 season down 14 percent in the crucial 18-to-49 demo.