TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082790/0827250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.0 KB | 254 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 64

The Fox Trots Faster


With its biggest hit, The Simpsons, getting ready to challenge
NBC's The Cosby Show, Murdoch's network makes its boldest bid
yet for parity with the Big Three

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by Richard Natale/Los Angeles and
Linda Williams/New York


    In this corner . . . the champion. TV's No. 1-rated show for
four straight years. Slipped to No. 2 last season, but still
a powerhouse in the ring. Has the experience, the moves, the
fan loyalty. The only uncertainty: most of its victories have
come against weak competition. Can it still take a punch?

    In this corner . . . the challenger. Television's
fastest-rising new hit, a frequent finisher in the Nielsen Top
10 just eight months after its premiere. Its unorthodox style
has thrown opponents off balance, but experience is a question
mark. Can it go the distance against a wily veteran?

    Few battles in TV history have generated as much
anticipation as the one being joined this Thursday. That's when
The Simpsons, the Fox network's enormously popular cartoon
family show, moves from Sunday nights to the time period
opposite NBC's blockbuster, The Cosby Show. The scheduling ploy
caught most of the TV industry by surprise when it was
announced last May. With their audiences steadily shrinking,
the networks are more likely to be found in a protective crouch
these days, not lashing out with wild uppercuts.

    Fittingly, the big swing comes from Fox. One could hardly
imagine a better way for TV's burgeoning fourth network to
dramatize its bid for parity with the Big Three. Bart Simpson,
TV's bratty underachiever, goes head to head with the medium's
most famous father. Fox, the upstart outsider, launches an
attack on the very symbol of the network establishment.
Whatever the outcome, notice has been served: where once there
were three contenders on the network battlefield, now there are
four.

    The winner of this clash will not be clear for several
weeks, since both shows are still in reruns. (The Cosby Show
will have its season premiere in late September; new episodes
of The Simpsons will probably not arrive until October.) Most
network handicappers rate Cosby a slight favorite. One reason:
Fox's weaker affiliate lineup (133 stations, including a number
of UHF outlets, compared with 200-plus for each of the Big
Three) puts the network at an automatic disadvantage. Fox
executives are trying hard to lower expectations. "We are hoping
to come in in second place," says programming chief Peter
Chernin. "[We're] on such a different playing field that it's
tremendously unlikely that we can beat them." But the time
seems ripe for an upset. The Cosby Show, about to start its
seventh season, has passed its peak. Simpsons mania has swept
the nation, and the show has done better than Cosby in several
weeks this summer. Notes a TV executive, who picks The
Simpsons: "You don't see kids wearing Cliff Huxtable T-shirts."

    Even if Bart Simpson doesn't succeed in making TV's top dad
cry uncle, the face-off marks a milestone for Fox. The network
was launched, to much industry skepticism, in 1986 by
Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who had just bought
20th Century Fox studios and a group of independent TV
stations. Fox entered the prime-time arena with a single night
of shows in the spring of 1987, and they sank instantly to the
bottom of the Nielsen pile. By this past season, the network
had expanded to three nights and developed three major hits:
The Simpsons, Married...With Children and its new satirical
comedy, In Living Color. Even lower-rated Fox shows (and most
are still near the back of the pack) draw a high proportion of
young viewers, the kind that appeal to advertisers. The network
has sold more than $550 million worth of ad time for the coming
season, up from $300 million last year, and turned a profit of
$33 million for  the fiscal year ending in June. Some analysts
predict that a year from now Fox will be making as much money
as the No. 3-rated network, CBS.

    Fox's expansion is shifting into high gear this fall. The
network is adding nine new shows and two more nights of
programming (series fare on Thursdays through Sundays, plus a
movie night on Mondays). It will introduce a slate of
children's shows on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons
and launch a national news service for its affiliates early
next year. The network, meanwhile, is looking to improve its
affiliate lineup; talks are under way with cable operators
about getting their channels to carry Fox shows in areas the
network does not yet reach.

    Perhaps the most telling sign of Fox's success is the degree
to which its once scornful rivals are taking notice. Gone are
the days when NBC Entertainment chief Brandon Tartikoff could
dismiss the fledgling program service as a "coat-hanger
network" (referring to the homemade antennas used to bring in
weak UHF stations). This summer Tartikoff moved up the premiere
dates of several of NBC's fall shows to late August because he
feared being beaten to the punch by Fox. (The first of Fox's
new shows will debut on Sept. 2.) At a press conference in
July, CBS/Broadcast Group president Howard Stringer acknowledged
that Fox, with such taboo-busting shows as the raunchy sitcom
Married...With Children, has opened new boundaries for all of
TV. "We could not have put Married...With Children on the air
when it started," he said. "Now we can."

    Guided by chairman Barry Diller, the steely former chief of
Paramount Pictures, Fox has made its mark through a mix of
experimentation, counterprogramming and luck. From the start,
the network pursued two main tactics: go for younger viewers
and take more chances. Fox provided a home for the offbeat
sketch comedy of The Tracey Ullman Show and the Pirandellian
zaniness of It's Garry Shandling's Show. It tried cerebral
science fiction with Alien Nation and ersatz cinema verite with
Cops. With In Living Color, Keenen Ivory Wayans' rowdy,
occasionally hilarious sketch comedy that debuted in April, Fox
has brought the spirit of the original Saturday Night Live into
prime time.

    But Fox's successes have not always traveled the high road.
Married...With Children, Fox's longest-running show, straddles
the line between wicked satire and toilet humor. Shows like
America's Most Wanted and The Reporters have resorted to
tabloid sensationalism, while Totally Hidden Video is a tacky
knock-off of Candid Camera. The network is already drawing
critical derision for one of its fall newcomers: Babes, a
sitcom about a trio of overweight sisters.

    A peek at Fox's new lineup reveals a network-like mix of
formula fare and the marginally offbeat. Among the shows are
D.E.A., a drama about drug cops; Against the Law, starring
Michael O'Keefe as an unorthodox, system-bucking lawyer (yes,
another); and True Colors, a sort of interracial Brady Bunch.
Parker Lewis Can't Lose!, a sprightly, freewheeling comedy
about high school life, is a bit fresher -- at least for those
who have never seen a John Hughes movie (Ferris Bueller's Day
Off, Sixteen Candles).

    The network's most unusual new offering is American
Chronicles, a documentary series from David Lynch and Mark
Frost, the creators of Twin Peaks. Good pedigree, bad
miscalculation: the pilot episode, a film essay on the Mardi
Gras in New Orleans, is larded with over-fancy camerawork and
pompous narration. The most promising of Fox's fall entries is
Get a Life!, from ex-David Letterman writer Chris Elliott. The
sitcom, about a 30-year-old underachiever who works as a paper
boy and lives atop his parents' garage, is a deadpan
(sometimes too  deadpan) send-up of the genre. Typical gag:
after Dad finishes a heart-to-heart lecture, son has a blank
look. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says with a start. "I wasn't
listening."

    Fox's march toward the network mainstream has not come
without some stumbles. The fledgling operation made its first
splash in 1986 by hiring Joan Rivers to act as host on a
late-night talk show. But it fizzled in less than a year. Fox
tried fruitlessly to come up with a successor, and even let its
most promising replacement, Arsenio Hall, slip away to a
competitor. In prime time, Fox showed an early preference for
sappy, network-like sitcoms (Mr. President, Down and Out in
Beverly Hills), most of which failed quickly. "The problem was
that typical network programming would not succeed on Fox," says
Garth Ancier, the ex-NBC programmer who became Fox's first
program chief at age 28. "We had to do shows that demanded your
attention, that yanked you by the throat to get you to change
the channel."

    Eventually, Fox found them. The network hit the teen
audience dead center with 21 Jump Street, about a band of high
school undercover cops. With America's Most Wanted, Fox scored
an unexpected hit with the novel idea of enlisting viewers to
help track down dangerous criminals. Nothing, however, matched
the ballistic success of The Simpsons, Matt Groening's animated
family comedy that began as inserts on The Tracey Ullman Show
and made its series debut last January.

    A try-anything underdog, Fox has cultivated a reputation as
the network most receptive to new ideas and willing to leave
producers alone to develop them. The reputation may be somewhat
overblown, especially now that such networks as ABC are
developing shows like Twin Peaks. Some insiders contend that
Fox executives are, in fact, more intrusive than the other
networks'. "They are overaggressive in terms of what they
want," says the producer of one Fox show. "They've got to relax
a little." Yet Fox remains more willing than the Big Three to
test the boundaries of permissible content. In Living Color has
aired such eyebrow-raising sketches as "Riding Miss Daisy" (a
parody of the movie in which the chauffeur and his employer
couple in the back seat) and a recurring bit in which a pair
of gay entertainment critics snicker over titles like Moby
Dick. Says producer Tamara Rawitt: "There's a real Wild West
feeling at Fox, and they sensed the same thing in Keenen."

    Fox's success could create new problems. Some observers
contend that the network, having expanded to five nights of
programming, is spreading itself too thin; Fox reportedly has
few backup shows ready to replace any fast failures. What's
more, as it grows, Fox risks acquiring more of the trappings
of a traditional network -- bureaucracy, caution, arrogance --
and losing what made it distinctive.

    A more tangible roadblock could come from the Federal
Government. Until now, Fox has been free of restrictions that
limit networks from having a financial stake in the lucrative
syndication market. But this fall Fox will surpass the minimum
amount of programming -- 15 hours a week -- that triggers those
restrictions. Last May, Fox was given a one-year exemption from
the rules. If the waiver is not extended or the rules are not
changed, Fox will have to make a tough choice: either separate
the network from 20th Century Fox's production and syndication
arm, or scale back the network to keep it under the 15-hour
minimum. "We could fully program prime time," says Diller, "but
we couldn't do children's programming. We couldn't offer
national news programs. We couldn't expand in all the areas
that give the network fiber and depth."

    For now, expansion is proceeding full steam. A sixth night
of prime-time programming will be launched next fall, and a
seventh in 1992. "I could see Fox becoming the third network,
not just the fourth," says Paul Isacsson, executive vice
president of Young & Rubicam. The Big Three, of course, are
still dominant in the important areas of news, sports and
daytime programming, and they have the resources to fight back
fiercely against the new challenger. But Fox has proved it can
handle the heat. Now it's up to Bart Simpson to handle Mr.
Cosby.