|
|
TV's Real Hits: TV Guide and Entertainment
Weekly obviously don't poll TV viewers before choosing their profile subjects
Fresno Bee - January 6, 2000
By DAVID KRONKE, Los Angeles Daily News
Critics tend to dismiss them as old-fashioned, and reporters covering the entertainment industry often shun them in
favor of the "Buffy, the Vampire Slayers" and "Will & Graces" and "Ally McBeals"
of the world, shows considered trendy and edgy. They don't always even get a lot of respect from executives on the
networks that air them.
They may not land the highly sought-after age 18-to-49 demographic advertisers lust for, but they do have impressive
numbers of rabidly loyal viewers, larger even than many of the trendy shows. They're family series like
"Everybody Loves Raymond," "7th Heaven," "Providence" and "Judging Amy," and
dramas considered clean-cut like "JAG," "Diagnosis Murder" and "Touched by an Angel."
"Buffy" is viewed in about 5 million homes a week; six weeks rarely passes without Sarah Michelle Gellar
popping up in Entertainment Weekly, or on the cover of some other magazine. By contrast, "JAG," the legal
drama set against a naval backdrop which airs opposite "Buffy," has more than three times the audience.
However, its attractive stars, David James Elliott and Catherine Bell, rarely generate much media heat.
"Hollywood, the media and most producers in town are very liberal and view the military as a negative,"
declares Don Bellisario, creator and executive producer of "JAG," as well as previous hits "Magnum
P.I." and "Quantum Leap." To them, "JAG" is "just a military show, a shoot-'em-up.
It's not. It's as well written, directed and performed as any show I've ever made, including 'Quantum Leap,' which
was a critical darling.
"We've tackled issues such as gays in the military, segregation issues, animal rights, all the issues that are
popular among the liberals in Hollywood, and because it's a military show, they write it off," he continues.
"It astonishes me."
"7th Heaven," about a minister and his predominantly well-adjusted family, is the most-viewed series on
the youth-oriented WB network, but also its least written-about, though it has its own teen heartthrob in Barry
Watson.
"Maybe the publicity's hurting the other shows," laughs Brenda Hampton, creator and executive producer of
"7th Heaven."
Emmy winner "Ally McBeal" was hailed upon its arrival, yet it's routinely beaten by the Ray Romano family
situation comedy "Everybody Loves Raymond," even though one doesn't find Patricia Heaton, who plays
Romano's wife on the show, gracing any magazine covers in a catsuit.
"We don't have girls in bikinis," concedes Phil Rosenthal, creator and executive producer of
"Everybody Loves Raymond." "It's strange - it's almost like the press picks who they want to talk
about and then puts them on the covers, whether or not the audience is actually watching."
"Once and Again" was the beneficiary of media hype this past fall season, while "Judging Amy,"
which aired opposite it, was virtually ignored. Nonetheless, "Amy," about a single mother leaving New York
to live with her mother in a smaller city, is seen in 5 million more homes weekly that its highly touted competitor.
"Critics like to focus on the 'From the makers of ...' angle, to tell what a show's pedigree is, and everyone
mentioned 'thirtysomething' in reviews of 'Once and Again.' Our credits were summarily ignored," observes
Barbara Hall, "Amy's" executive producer, whose previously worked on such well-respected series as
"Northern Exposure," "Moonlighting" and "I'll Fly Away." Joseph Stern, her partner on
the series, counts the Emmy-winning series "Cagney & Lacey" and "Law & Order" among his
credits.
"We felt a little overlooked," Hall says.
In recent weeks, "JAG," "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Judging Amy" have all charted
in the top 10 in the Nielsen ratings.
No snob appeal:
"They're water-cooler shows, just not the water-cooler shows at The New York Times or Entertainment Weekly or
Rolling Stone," says David Wild, Rolling Stone's TV reporter and author of "The Showrunners," which
examines last year's turbulent TV season from the perspective of series creators. "These shows have no snob
appeal. If you're at the coffeehouse where journalists hang out and tell someone you're working on a story about
'Providence,' you don't score any points with anybody.
"The world view of most TV pundits doesn't extend far beyond their navel," Wild continues. "It shows
a lack of vision not to acknowledge that there are other kinds of TV and that some of it is kind of good. Shows may
have no snob appeal, but they still have appeal. People who write about TV often forget that."
John Masius, creator and executive producer of "Providence," about a doctor who returns to her Rhode
Island hometown after her mother's death, and previously a writer on "St. Elsewhere," offers this: "
'St. Elsewhere' was never on the cover of TV Guide in the six years it was on the air," he points out,
"but they released this list recently and picked it as the best drama of all time."
Earl Marsh, co-author of "The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows," says that
family shows of this nature traditionally are the Rodney Dangerfields of network programming.
" 'The Waltons' was originally scheduled as a throw-away opposite 'The Flip Wilson Show,' which at the time was
the No. 2 show on television," Marsh says. "CBS figured, 'This little show can't possible compete with
Flip; we'll lose. In its first year, 'The Waltons' knocked 'Flip Wilson' out of the top 10, buried it in its second
season and went on to run seven more years."
As opposed to shows that seek to appeal to the lowest common denominator or the series' creator's friends, the
people behind these shows think in terms both personal and with an eye on viewers throughout the country.
"My philosophy is always to entertain," Bellisario says. "I've been in Hollywood 20-some years, but
still have the same values and judgments as when I was a kid in a small town in Pennsylvania. The shows I write
reflect that. I don't do urban angst shows."
Urban angst this ain't:
"JAG" aired its first season on NBC, where Bellisario endured much network interference. "NBC wanted
an all-action show," he recalls. "They basically said, 'If this is a cross between 'Top Gun' and 'A Few
Good Men,' we want 'Top Gun.' They pressed for that a lot." The network also insisted on a blonde actress,
Tracey Needham, who Bellisario says "didn't fit the style of the show." Once NBC canceled the series, CBS
quickly picked it up. "Les Moonves [CBS president] said, 'Do the show you want to make,' " and Needham was
quickly replaced by Bell.
Rosenthal was just trying to make "Everybody Loves Raymond" a winsome depiction of the lives of his and
Romano's families. "The early comparisons to 'Seinfeld' were weird - we purposefully tried not to imitate 'Seinfeld,'
" he says. "If our show is hip at all, we stumbled onto it just trying to be truthful."
Says "Amy's" Hall, who was brought in to retool a concept based on star Amy Brenneman's mother, "I
think of myself as the audience. What I changed when I came in was the tone of the story. It was a woman's story; I
told it from a woman's point of view. This particular one really spoke to me - it's a personal story about single
motherhood. It's so much like my own life: single motherhood, being in a male-dominated profession. I don't get into
these issues in big ways, we get into them in subtle ways."
"7th Heaven's" Hampton's motivation was simple: "When I dream of watching TV with my daughter -
that's the show I wanted to pitch." It happened to come at a time when The WB was aiming for a family audience,
which quickly evolved into the teen-heavy demographic of today. "By the end of the first year, they were asking
if I could make Matt and Mary bad teens," she recalls with a laugh. "At that point, I couldn't. If someone
hires you to do a job, you want to do what they hired you to do. At that point, the character development had been
established - we couldn't just make them the bad teens."
When devising "Providence," Masius says that "given the nature of the emotional issues, we knew our
core audience would be women, but we weren't going to be so heavy-handed as to alienate anyone."
It's probably no accident that most of these programs feature tight-knit families - three of them feature multiple
generations living under the same roof or in very close proximity, and another is about a close, large nuclear
family.
"On our show, the thing that's not real is that no one's family is this good," Hampton says.
" '7th Heaven' struck a chord in a time when schools have armed guards and metal detectors," author Marsh
points out. "In the real world, families are scattered to the four winds - nobody knows from relatives. There's
a need to look at things as not as confrontational as they've become, even on sitcoms."
"The most important element on 'Judging Amy' is the family - the extended family is not seen on TV," Hall
adds. "It's significant that people are interested in that again. We show different kinds of families - not all
look alike. It's a hopeful show, showing a single mother doing well in a supportive environment. It shows that a
broken home doesn't have to be broken."
"The reality is, 'Providence' is entertainment and a fantasy," Masius says. "It's obviously an
attractive one. If people had their druthers, they'd get along great with their siblings and their parents and their
kids. Instead, they're thousands of miles away and not having support systems that are traditional.
" 'Providence' evokes a kind of a simpler time. The bottom line - friends and family are all you're left with,
and people like the opportunity to revisit that. It's strikes a chord in basic human nature. You want to get back to
the people most important to you, to re-examine and re-evaluate those relationships."
Copyright © 2000 Fresno Bee. All rights reserved.
|
