Genre fans who are, shall we say, untrusting of ABC after it quickly ended fan favorite Life on Mars can breathe a sigh of relief for V and Flashback. During a press conference ABC Entertainment Group President Stephen McPherson told reporters that the network has a clear plan for both series.

For V McPherson said that the plan was always to tell the story in chapters, but because of production problems the initial chapter had to be shortened to just 4 episodes.

“The original V was two minis and then a series,” McPherson said “The two minis did incredibly well, and the series did not do as well. Now there was a huge creative change between those two, but I think as long as you market them appropriately, I do think the audience is willing to come in for chapters.”

“Those shows are always about ‘How do you balance character with concept?’ Obviously, it’s a huge concept, but I think we were getting away early on, and the reason we put a stop to things is we were getting away from having a real character drive throughout. It was just literally burning through concept story, and I think he has a real sense of how this can have chapters, what each of those chapters will be, much the way Lost has been, certainly, in the past few years. They look at a season and they say, ‘Here’s the beginning, middle and end of the season.’ Maybe they’ll learn something from that and bring their own thing to it.”

On the topic of FlashForward, co-creator David Goyer told reporters that he had pitched a second season storyline to ABC and McPherson confirmed the story and said he has hopes for the show returning next season.

“Its prospects are really good,” McPherson said. “We love the show. David’s been fantastic. He was talking about season two when he pitched the show. He’s had such a kind of long-term vision for it. That was one of the things that made us comfortable about it. So we’re excited to be able to air consecutive episodes. I think as much as taking the break has its downside, I think the ability to really take a beat after this fall launch, adjust some things, make some changes and move forward is great.”

I haven’t been able to watch V yet, but I’m really into FlashForward. It’s nice to see that ABC isn’t going to abandon either show too quickly.