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The networks run for cover in a disastrous fall season
BY JOYCE MILLMAN
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That flapping sound you hear? It’s the broadcast networks waving the white flag. According to the A.C. Nielsen ratings, viewership for every network except CBS during this year’s November sweeps period is lower than what it was for the same period last season. The networks are disputing Nielsen’s figures — especially the company’s claim that male audiences in the coveted 18-to-34-year-old demographic are down a staggering 10 percent. Still, they’re being unusually merciless toward underachieving new series. CBS dumped David E. Kelley’s The Brotherhood of Poland N.H. after five episodes. NBC has gone on a plug-pulling rampage, yanking big-deal star turns by Alicia Silverstone (Miss Match) and Rob Lowe (Lyon’s Den) from the sweeps schedule (Miss Match is being moved to a new night) after they failed to win their time slots in the first couple of weeks of the season. And NBC has cancelled outright the wretched Coupling, a puerile Americanization of a British sex-com that was being positioned as a possible time-slot successor to Friends (which finishes its run next May). Addressing an international broadcasting conference last week, the programming chiefs of the major networks displayed remarkable contrition. I believe Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC Entertainment, put it best with this eloquent assessment of the new season’s failure to spark viewer interest: "Some of the programming just sucked." Well, duh! This season, viewers are simultaneously being underwhelmed by the networks’ offerings and overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices they face. Between broadcast and cable (or satellite), there is just too much TV. And as Zucker says, too much of it sucks. It’s also harder than ever just to watch television. You have to be a motivated viewer indeed to wade through hundreds of channels, decide which show to become attached to in busy time slots like 9 p.m. on Sunday, learn how to program the TiVo or the DVD recorder or synch up your VCR with your digital cable (not exactly a snap, thank you very much Comcast). And of course, watching HBO and other premium channels has made viewers more impatient than ever with commercials on network TV. Who wants to make all this effort when the payoff is Threat Matrix or Two and a Half Men? There are no breakout hits among the new series, with the possible exception of CBS’s family drama with a spiritual bent, Joan of Arcadia, which has already trounced the frisky Miss Match in their 8 p.m. Friday match-ups. Viewers are sticking with shows that feel familiar (Joan plays like a cross between Touched by an Angel and My So-Called Life) or with shows that are familiar, like CSI, Survivor, and Friends. In such a precarious climate, it’s easy to see why ABC decided to continue running 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter without the late John Ritter — viewers prefer a familiar show with a dead star, it seems, to a new show with a live one. The November 4 episode, in which Ritter’s TV family coped with his character’s death, scored the show’s highest ratings ever. Whereas ABC is leaving its new series on the air for sweeps, NBC and Fox have made frantic changes for the period. Last week, Fox cancelled Skin, which was supposed to be its prestige drama of the season. The time slot is being filled with additional episodes of The Next Joe Millionaire, itself a ratings disappointment. The story of Skin illustrates the desperation, confusion, and viewer apathy that define network TV this season. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (the CSI franchise, Pirates of the Caribbean), the show was a Romeo and Juliet remake in which the teenage daughter of a wealthy Beverly Hills porn magnate (Ron Silver) falls in love with the son of the crusading district attorney (Kevin Anderson) who has sworn to put the porn magnate behind bars. But the softcore romance between Adam Roam (D.J. Cotrona) and Jewel Goldman (Olivia Wilde) was Skin’s least alluring element. It was the parents’ uncontrolled, single-minded passion for power (Rachel Ticotin as Adam’s mother, an ambitious judge, and Pamela Gidley as Jewel’s respectability-hungry mother were shaping up to be formidable prime-time-soap adversaries) that gave Skin its expertly polished glow. And those who pay attention to subtext could have seen the show as Bruckheimer’s amusing flipoff to conservative critics of Hollywood. Silver’s liberal adult-entertainment mogul and not Anderson’s hypocritical pol was the more honorable man. Skin was a well-made, absorbing drama. But Fox promoted the show with typically salacious commercials — loud pulsating music, strippers, explosions, bedroom scenes — that played during its baseball-playoff telecasts (fun for the whole family!). And a surprising thing happened. Viewers have become so inured to Fox’s hyping its shows like a peep-show barker that America opened one eye, saw the Skin ads, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
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