Desperate Housewives is a tv series.
The American Broadcasting Company ( ABC ) is an American English language commercial broadcast television network that is owned by the Disney -- ABC Television Group , a subsidiary of the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company . The fifth-oldest major broadcasting network in the world and the youngest of the Big Three television networks , ABC is often nicknamed as `` The Alphabet Network '' , as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet , in order . Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama and mystery series created by Marc Cherry , and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions . It originally aired for eight seasons on ABC , from October 3 , 2004 to May 13 , 2012 . In 2007 , it was reported to be the most popular show in its demographic worldwide , with an audience of approximately 120 million and was also reported as the third most watched television series in a study of ratings in twenty countries .