Cable TV shows strength

Every summer, as the dog days of August dwindle, one thing can be counted on as reliably as hurricanes delivering a wet lashing to the Gulf Coast. The nation's TV writers, fresh from three weeks of flirting with starlets over fruity frozen confections and schmoozing poolside in Pasadena, Calif., at the annual critics conference, return to deliver a wet smooch to the fall's prime-time schedule.

It's the time of year when critics suspend skepticism to gush. Last year, hyperbole was lavished upon Nathan Lane's "can't miss" sitcom "Encore, Encore" and CBS' bold "Brian Benben Show." Both bombed. This year, it's time to offer the requisite hopeful profiles of NBC's "The Mike O'Malley Show" or find something cute, nostalgic and ironic about Urkel and Punky Brewster joining forces on UPN's twentysomething comedy "Grown Ups."

The conventional wisdom this season is betting on retread Rob Lowe in NBC's "The West Wing," as if graduating from "St. Elmo's Fire" to the White House equals ratings gold. "Pleasingly brisk!" offers Entertainment Weekly, as if the show's a new iced tea. Then there's "Ally," a half-hour of Calista Flockhart's regurgitated gags, as if Dick Clark and Ed McMahon didn't drain the bloopers shtick a decade ago.

"Ally" isn't the only show being shamelessly repackaged. There are spinoffs galore, from "Party of Five," "Moesha," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Law & Order." Then come the knockoffs, as "Felicity" begets "Wasteland" and "Dawson's Creek" becomes "Manchester Prep." Alas, "Manchester" is just another show about white-bread adolescent angst among rich New Yorkers.

So how about this as a fall preview? Don't get too excited about the overheated prose from the critics in Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide or the newspapers, most of whom don't fully comprehend the changes roiling through the business of television. This fall season will likely prove to be just as inconsequential as last year's. Maybe three of these shows will last the year. The rest will disappear, buried under an avalanche of hype and hope for midseason replacements.

The real story this fall is that the broadcast networks' annual cotillion of new shows is as passe as '80s nostalgia.

Call it the blowing up of television. Cable television has the traditional networks locked in a death dance. They're trapped in an outdated economic model that requires large audiences during an age of fragmentation. They're hemmed in by their inability to deal as candidly as cable with edgy issues such as sex, violence and race. And - as the very existence of the fall-season hoopla attests - they're trapped in yesterday's system of broadcasting shows once a week. Cable, and the new age of digital television, is obliterating the very idea of a viewing schedule.

That, really, is the essence of television this fall. With their audiences disappearing and their programming agenda in shreds, the networks are lashed to an old-fashioned system as hapless as a passenger railroad in an age of jumbo jets. Technologically and culturally, the networks have been left behind at the very moment that cable is pioneering a brave new world of programming.

This year, HBO completely abandoned the traditional concept of waiting until autumn to roll out a show. In January, HBO launched one of the smartest and most talked about dramas on television today, the brilliant mobster-in-suburbia series "The Sopranos." The gritty prison drama "Oz" arrived on HBO in July 1997, and new episodes have been introduced every summer since then. The cable network had the sense to wrap with cliffhangers and begin working on new episodes that will be shown starting in January - completely dodging the need to "counterprogram" against the nets.

Meanwhile, the most-talked-about network show is a Regis Philbin game show. And the networks are so confused about how to attract a mass audience that they seem frozen in place with the same tired cop shows and newsmagazines.

The networks - while growing from three to six with the birth of Fox, The WB and UPN - have seen their collective share of the audience dwindle to its lowest level ever, with less than 70 percent of the total viewers. In 1985, the average American family received 18 channels on their TV. That number has grown to more than 60.

The networks have also lagged behind cable creatively, failing to launch a big "water-cooler" hit since "Ally McBeal." HBO alone has launched three, with "The Sopranos," "Oz" and "Sex and the City." That doesn't even include Todd McFarland's first-rate animated series "Spawn," or the acclaimed sports-agent comedy "Arliss." That HBO has the edgiest, best-acted shows on TV was recognized by this year's Emmy nominations.

HBO's shows might be the best-written, but they're hardly the only programming on cable that is more daring and original than the network offerings. Showtime has the addictive "Rude Awakenings," with Sherilyn Fenn as a bad-girl-gone-worse. MTV's "Tom Green Show" turns adolescent practical jokes into an art form. MTV also attracted "Killing Fields" director Roland Joffe to create the addictive "Undressed," which follows friendships and relationships through all varieties of pillow talk and late-night confessions and confusions.

Another issue is attracting the best, young demographics. The networks continue to flail about trying to clone "Dawson's Creek" in an attempt to attract the coveted 18-to-34 age group. The lengths they go to are pathetic - of the 32 new shows this fall, five revolve around high school life, and six track twentysomething angst. Meanwhile, the teen and post-teen set continues to deliver record ratings to MTV's "Real World," in the midst of a banner eighth season, and Comedy Central's "South Park." Once more, cable effortlessly triumphs.

The traditional networks, each about to become just one of several hundred viewing options, are going to have to adapt or die. Judging by their programming choices this fall, the network execs in New York and Hollywood are either in deep denial about what kind of trouble they're in, or they're rolling out the same-old (to all the attendant hype) because they haven't a clue or the daring to try anything new.

09-10-99