November 22, 1998

Shrinking Network TV Audiences Set Off Alarm and Reassessment

By BILL CARTER

For many who work at the broadcast television networks, the new season of prime-time programming that began in September with the usual high hopes for a batch of 37 new weekly series has already degenerated into a disheartening and increasingly panic-stricken game of "what's wrong with this picture."

With more on the line than ever before, as costs of programming mount and advertisers are increasingly courted by the expanding number of cable stations, the networks, by their own reckoning, have failed to add even a single new show this season that falls indisputably into a category known as "appointment viewing" -- a show that viewers make a point of watching every week.

The networks' share of the television audience has fallen steadily for years, but this year's performance is particularly stark: Through the middle of November, network viewer totals were down by about 5.75 million viewers, or about 9 percent from last season.

Not coincidentally, the ratings for cable channels were up about 10 percent, thus proving the conclusion of many network executives that cable channels, and not other broadcast channels, are now the default channels for viewers when they decide they are uninterested in a network's offerings.

More tellingly, a disproportionate amount of the network falloff is taking place at NBC, the network that had provided most of the big hits of recent vintage. NBC has seen its audience levels fall by about 15 percent.

The most significant change for NBC has been the departure of "Seinfeld," its top comedy for five years.

" 'Seinfeld' is so much more important than anybody understood," said Peter Tortorici, a former head programmer at CBS, who is now president of the Spanish language network Telemundo. "How do you replace a show that's popular in Alabama and Boston, even though it was about Jewish characters from New York? That just doesn't come along every day."

There is no shortage of reasons being cited for what one television studio head called "this sorry state of affairs" -- from the thinning of the talent pool of writers to the reliance on the timeworn formats of situation comedies and dramas.

But numerous executives point to an overall lack of distinctiveness in many of the series. These executives attribute the sameness of much of the programming to the often slavish devotion of most networks to grabbing an audience of younger adults between the ages of 18 and 34 or 18 and 49, especially viewers from urban areas with substantial incomes, because of advertisers prefer to reach those specific viewers.

 

"The young, upscale viewer doesn't watch enough television to build a seven-night-a-week schedule around them," said Steve Sternberg, a senior partner with TN Media, a company that advises advertisers on buying time on television.

Four of the six commercial networks -- NBC, ABC, Fox and the WB -- consciously aim almost their entire entertainment output at viewers in these younger audience groups. And many believe that given the difficulties of reaching a mass audience in the factionalized modern entertainment universe, this is the only way to go, particularly because advertising is the main source of income for the networks.

But the result, many executives and television producers said, is a lack of originality in concept, casting and writing, ending up in a raft of programs that look and feel so much the same that viewers are apparently being left cold.

In addition, despite ample evidence that the shows that have broken through as hits in recent years have been totally fresh ideas, delivered in a distinctive voice, network executives continue to be wary of taking risks, several producers and studio executives said.

The results from this fall have been sufficiently dire that executives in charge of programming have already been replaced at two networks, NBC and Fox.

But the falling ax this time had special meaning for network watchers. In this case, longtime broadcast veterans, Warren Littlefield at NBC and Peter Roth at Fox, were replaced by executives who built their careers at cable channels: Scott Sassa from the Turner channels and Doug Herzog from MTV and Comedy Central.

Herzog, the executive who brought the outrageous cartoon "South Park" to Comedy Central, said his and Sassa's arrivals at broadcast networks signaled a "sea change" in the business.

Even one holdover top network programmer, Leslie Moonves at CBS, while disputing the notion that the traditional network hit program is threatened with extinction, said, "It's time for re-invention" in the program selection process.

Executives, producers and agents shared broad agreement that the system that creates hits, the lifeblood of television for half a century, has begun to sputter and cough, to a point where at least some predict that no program will ever come near to the ratings enjoyed just last year by "Seinfeld" and "ER" on NBC.

"I don't think even a 30 share is possible for any show again," said one senior network entertainment executive. The share is the percentage of viewers a show attracts at a given hour. Both "Seinfeld" and "ER" routinely surpassed that figure for years; only "ER" eclipses it now. A show can now be considered a hit with just a 15 share, especially if its audience is mainly young adults.

Even NBC's own executives concede that their greatest failure was in not being able to find a show remotely close to "Seinfeld" in appeal, despite four years of golden chances on Thursday nights to launch series in the spots adjacent to "Seinfeld."

But NBC's critics say the network failed because of a strategy that insisted on appealing to the same audience with every show. A string of shows about young, single New Yorkers in the advertising, magazine or some other media industry has produced no discernible hit.

"On close analysis, one could question NBC's broadcast plan over the last three years," said one longtime packager of television programs.

This plan called for establishing NBC, in the words of one NBC executive, as a "premium brand" -- one with an audience of young, wealthy city dwellers.

Because NBC was also the only network making real profits -- up to $500 million a year -- its strategy was widely imitated. "At one point, every network was trying to be NBC," Tortorici said.

There is another issue, illustrated by the popularity of wrestling shows, now the biggest audience draw on cable: the alienation of blue-collar viewers. "Look at what's popular on cable," said David Poltrack, the executive vice president of research for CBS. "Wrestling, football and 'Walker Texas Ranger.' That programming appeals to male, blue-collar viewers. They're not getting anything to watch on the networks, most of which now only want to reach yuppies."

Similarly, Fox, after seeing a batch of sitcoms wiped out early this season, has begun to score -- and to damage NBC's mighty Thursday night lineup in recent weeks -- by using down-and-dirty video specials geared to young, decidedly un-yuppie men, shows like "When Good Pets Go Bad" and "Busted on the Job."

The pressure to tailor shows for the specific target group of affluent young adults inevitably affects the process of program creation, as network executives try to force shows to conform to what they expect will appeal to that group.

"Too many times a writer is asked to add or change an element or character of a show, even if it makes no creative sense, merely in an attempt to reach a specific demographic," said Bob Broder, one of the most prominent agents in the television business as head of the agency Broder, Kurland, Webb, Uffner.

And though there is near uniform agreement that only shows with truly original concepts seem to be connecting with viewers, an unwillingness to take risks often derails ideas before they are even tried, several executives said.

One head of a television production studio, who spoke on condition of anonymity, outlined how the fear of risk undermined the networks' acknowledged need for truly new ideas. "We go into development meetings after they see how all their shows are failing, and they tell us we have to give them our wildest, most creative ideas," the executive said.

"So we tell our writers to come up with most original ideas they can. Then we come back, and we've got about eight ideas to pitch, four that are truly out there and four that are more like original spins on familiar formats.

"The first thing that happens is they throw out the four wilder ideas because they're just too risky. Then they start to tinker with the others. And every change they suggest makes the show more conventional. Then they give you a list for actors and say don't cast anyone not on this list. Then there's a list for directors. And by the time they get the shows, they wonder why they have no original ideas."

One way to get a truly distinctive show through is to be a producer with a track record. Many of the biggest hits on the air now are the result of the influence of one strong creative voice, shows like Steven Bochco's "NYPD Blue," David Kelley's "Ally McBeal" and "The Practice," Chris Carter's "The X-Files" and Dick Wolf's "Law and Order."

The one new show this season that many in the business see as the best bet for developing into a hit is "Sports Night" on ABC, precisely because of its distinctive style (somewhere between comedy and drama) and the voice of its creator, Aaron Sorkin.

Complicating everything else is the increasing pressure from network executives to own part of every show they put on, as a way to find profits. Shows get on the air because they are network investments, not because they are good ideas.

Still, several executives said the notion that hits can no longer be found is greatly overstated. "You can still make hits," Moonves of CBS said. "But more and more you have to show patience."

Indeed, many shows in recent years have broken through after some careful nurturing. These include NBC's "Law and Order," Fox's "Party of Five" and ABC's "Drew Carey." Two that seem poised to break through this year are "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "JAG," both on CBS.

But calling a show a hit on CBS, which has the oldest audience in television by far, is still near anathema to many television executives, who count only young viewers. Compared with a show like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on the WB, which has been on numerous magazine covers and has the buzz that usually accompanies a hit, "JAG," never on a magazine cover, is widely dismissed. But last week "JAG" had 10 million more viewers than "Buffy."

"I'm sorry, that's a hit," Sternberg said. He noted that the networks that seemed to be making headway this season, CBS and the WB, "are the ones that are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, with the WB attracting teens and CBS attracting older adults -- they are not going after that same 18- to 49-year-old audience."

None of this concern about overemphasizing young viewers had an influence on Fox's decision to bring in Herzog, whose resume at MTV and Comedy Central is a blueprint of how to succeed by targeting narrow, advertiser-friendly audiences. Fox liked the edgy image Herzog carved out for Comedy Central, and is looking for him to bring the same to Fox.

Herzog has already put the sitcom genre on notice, saying it is badly "in need of updating." Overall, his promised approach sounds a lot like what those worried about the current television season think has to be done: "More risk-taking and a willingness to look at things differently."

Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company