TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119250.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.6 KB | 202 lines

                                                                                VIDEO, Page 122

Goodbye to the Mass Audience


In a fall of failure, the networks struggle to learn a new,
more competitive game

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- With reporting by Georgia Harbison/New York


    Bored with the fall TV season? Tired of matching wits with
Jeopardy contestants? Take a crack at these brainteasers:

    ABC's Twin Peaks, in its new Saturday-night time slot, is
languishing in 75th place in the ratings for the season to date,
averaging a paltry 16% share of the viewing audience. Yet ABC's
chief of programming hails the show as "a great ratings
success." Why?

    Fox's hit The Simpsons is battling NBC's The Cosby Show in a
head-to-head match up on Thursday nights. But no one can quite
agree on who is winning. The Cos trounces Bart's clan each week
in the Nielsens, but Simpsons boosters claim their show is the
real winner. Who's right?

    Cop Rock, the fall's most ballyhooed experiment, has sunk to
near the bottom of the ratings pack. ABC has considered trying
it in a new time period, perhaps switching it with Gabriel's
Fire, another new series doing poorly. But both shows have been
left in place for now. How come?

    The answers go to the heart of the tidal change that is
transforming network television. Old verities, like the Nielsen
ratings, are no longer holy writ. Shows that a few years ago
would have been canceled are today being acclaimed as hits.
Programmers who once juggled schedules at the drop of a Nielsen
decimal point are now making those moves warily. And everybody
is wondering whether television's mass audience -- those huge
blocs of viewers who used to assemble in front of the set for
shows like I Love Lucy and All in the Family and Roots -- has
dispersed for good.

    Sure, cable, independent stations and VCRs have been eating
away at the network audience for much of the past decade. The
remote-control device too has made viewers pickier: shows that
don't grab their attention are zapped away in an instant. But
the networks' woes have accelerated alarmingly this fall. Of the
22 shows introduced by ABC, CBS and NBC, not a single one is a
bona fide hit. (The only new show that ranks in the Nielsen Top
30, America's Funniest People, is merely an appendage of an
already established hit, America's Funniest Home Videos.) The
three networks' combined share of the viewing audience -- more
than 90% just a dozen years ago -- hit another air pocket this
fall, dropping 4 percentage points from a year ago, to 66%. On
Saturday nights, when TV viewership is at a low ebb, nearly half
the audience is tuned in to something other than the Big Three.

    The economic slump is making matters worse. The ad market
this fall has plummeted, with commercial time selling for an
estimated 30% less than it fetched in the "upfront" buying last
spring. As a result, the networks are making schedule changes
only reluctantly. Reason: switching a show's time period forces
the network to resell the commercial time -- and in the current
depressed market, that could mean a substantial money loss, even
if the ratings go up.

    The Big Three are not the only ones tasting failure this
fall. Fox, the scrappy fourth network that introduced nine shows
this season, has come up with no new winners either. The fall's
new syndicated programs -- game shows like The Challengers and
Trump Card, magazine shows like Personalities -- are foundering
as well. A malaise seems to have gripped the TV audience;
viewers are clinging to old favorites, reruns and their trusty
remote-control buttons. The No. 1 network show this season is
Cheers, now in its ninth season. The top show in syndication is
still Wheel of Fortune, which has been around for 16 years.

    Explanations for the frustrating fall vary. The Civil War, a
surprise ratings hit on PBS, took a big chunk out of the
audience for one week. Sunday-night football and other
programming on cable have taken another bite. The World Series,
one of the few events that can still draw blockbuster audiences
to the networks, ended in a disastrous (for CBS as well as the
Oakland A's) four-game sweep. Some network executives,
meanwhile, contend that a host of scheduling gimmicks and
promotional ploys created too much confusion for the viewers.
NBC, for example, ran several premier episodes twice, in a
gimmick it called double pumping.

    And there are those who blame the programming. "The
networks have lost audiences because they've lost touch with
the American viewer," says Gene DeWitt, who heads a New York
media-consulting firm. "They haven't delivered programs that
viewers want to watch." To be sure, nothing the networks tried
this fall seemed to work: not the "innovative" shows, like Cop
Rock and Hull High; not the blatant attempts to court young
viewers, like Ferris Bueller and Parker Lewis Can't Lose; not
even the slick and usually reliable formula sitcoms, like Lenny
and The Fanelli Boys.

    Network executives, not surprisingly, dispute these gloomy
analyses. Each can point to a series or two that is doing
passably in the ratings or a night that has experienced an
uptick. CBS entertainment chief Jeff Sagansky insists that it is
too soon to write off the fall shows; most network hits, he
points out, take a season or two to find their audience. "I
don't know of any quality adult shows that exploded out of the
gate," he says.

    But the fact remains that the audience is fragmenting,
network shares are shrinking, and programmers are scrambling to
learn the rules of a new, more competitive game. It was probably
inevitable. "The norm in any business is competition," says ABC
research chief Alan Wurtzel, "so we shouldn't be surprised that
as people have more choices, they will use them. People used to
watch shows they didn't really like because they had no
alternatives. They don't have to do that anymore."

    The networks have already made one major adjustment in
their strategy. If huge audiences can no longer be expected, the
goal is to reach the right audience -- that is, the one that
will attract the most ad dollars. The demographic group most in
demand among advertisers is adults between 18 and 49. That is
why Twin Peaks (which does well among those viewers) is not in
danger of cancellation and why the Cosby-Simpsons face-off has
produced a split decision. (Cosby is watched by more women 18 to
49; The Simpsons wins among men 18 to 49.)

    Some industry observers feel the networks have gone too far
in their pursuit of the young and restless. A broadcast network
cannot survive, they argue, by aiming shows at small segments of
the audience. "If the networks continue to program 15-share
shows, they'll be out of business," says Fred Silverman, the
former network programmer who now produces such old-fashioned
(and old-skewing) hits as Matlock and  Jake and the Fatman.

    To avert such a disaster, the networks are looking for ways
to reduce programming costs. Reality shows like NBC's Unsolved
Mysteries and CBS's Top Cops are becoming more common, partly
because they are cheaper to produce. Other cost-saving measures
may be on the way: co-productions with overseas broadcasters,
more live programming, and series that air more than once a week
(an idea NBC flirted with for its new sitcom Parenthood).
Meanwhile, the multipart mini-series, once a staple of the
"sweeps" periods, has been virtually abandoned because of its
exorbitant cost.

    The main challenge for the networks, however, is to find
ways of wooing back viewers who seem bored by the sameness of
network programming. The success of such offbeat shows as The
Simpsons and Twin Peaks early this year demonstrated that these
viewers will perk up for formula-breaking fare. The result, say
many TV producers, has been a rather confused quest for unusual
shows. "The question is always, `Why is this show different?'"
says David Gerber, president of MGM/UA Television. "[Network
programmers] are worried that they might get a well-executed
show but that it won't be different enough to grab the
audience." Says another producer: "The networks seem to have
lost their compass. They're crying out for new stuff. But
they're not sure what `new' is or what to do with it when they
find it."

    In the search for innovation, the networks this fall tried
musical shows, with little success. In development for next year
are several prime-time animated series (if nothing else, they
will look different). Another attention-getting ploy: big stars.
Burt Reynolds is back this fall in Evening Shade, and Farrah
Fawcett, Ryan O'Neal and Jonathan Winters are among the stars
who have shows being readied for mid-season. Most of all, say
network programmers, they are looking for high-quality shows
that audiences will tune in on no matter how stiff the
competition. "We still have a Field of Dreams mentality," says
NBC entertainment president Warren Littlefield. "If you build
it, they will come."

    But will they still come in as great numbers as they once
did? Almost certainly not. The era of the mass TV audience may
be ending, just as the mass moviegoing audience began to
dissipate (lured away by TV) in the years after World War II,
and the popular-music audience became fragmented with the
arrival of rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Network TV, of course, is
still capable of linking the nation as no other medium can, and
the next Dallas or All in the Family might be just around the
corner. But more likely, before that new Field of Dreams
appears, the networks will face a lot more sleepless nights.