More of the fast and the fat? Bingo

At a certain point this summer, it may have looked as if your TV had been kidnapped by cruddy reality shows.

Really, did your family set a date to watch “Fast Cars & Superstars” or “Fat March”? Not many people cared what happened “On the Lot,” and CBS had to give “Pirate Master” an early burial at sea.

Now that summer’s over, the damage can be tallied, and it’s considerable: ABC, CBS and NBC all posted double-digit declines among the young-adult viewers they care about most. (Fox, thanks in large part to “So You Think You Can Dance,” was flat compared with a year ago.)

As befitting the home of “National Bingo Night,” ABC led the losers, shedding 16% of its viewers ages 18 to 49 compared with last summer, according to data from Nielsen Media Research.

So this must mean that chastened network executives have resolved to change course, Ã la basic cable, and throw their resources into developing crowd-pleasing scripted series for the summer, right? Fewer endeavors like “Shaq’s Big Challenge” and more like TNT’s cop hit “The Closer”?

Um . . . nope.

“We’re probably going to rely more on unscripted than scripted in the summer,” Preston Beckman, Fox’s scheduling chief, told me. The networks realize it was a bummer of a summer, but no one seems panicked enough to redraw entire battle plans. A few thoughts about tinkering here and there are all they’ll admit to.

“The erosion is scary,” said Jeff Bader, executive vice president of ABC Entertainment. “Next year, it might be smarter to do fewer shows but maybe market them better.”

So it’s just a marketing problem? On top of years of declines, these people just lost more than a tenth of their audience over the past three months -- and their solution is to have the guys in marketing noodle over the promos some more?

In fact, broadcasters are moving away from scripted programming the rest of the year too. Only 22 comedies are on the networks’ fall schedules, roughly half the number of two seasons ago. There will be 46 one-hour dramas, down from 50 the last couple of seasons.

What will fill the gap this fall? Reality series and game shows, such as NBC’s “The Singing Bee,” which was one of the few unscripted series that debuted to decent numbers this summer.

This approach may sound crazy, but this is the television business we’re talking about. Look a little closer and you begin to understand why network executives are making these kinds of decisions.

For starters, as much as critics love great scripted programming, it’s both expensive and risky, as this summer proved over on the cable networks.

For years, cable has been trumpeting its success at stealing market share from broadcasters. And many TV writers -- this columnist included -- have seen a kind of programming renaissance on basic cable this year.

It’s true that in recent weeks the cable networks have been filled with new, critically acclaimed series, including FX’s legal thriller “Damages,” Lifetime’s home-front soap “Army Wives,” USA’s spy drama “Burn Notice” and TNT’s crime show “Saving Grace.” But no matter how they fared individually, as a group these big-ticket shows didn’t generate any overall growth for cable. Among both young adults and total viewers, ad-supported cable networks were up a measly 1% this summer compared with last year.

Nowhere are the risks more evident than in the strange case of AMC’s “Mad Men,” a costly, meticulously detailed period drama about the advertising industry during the early 1960s. Critics rhapsodized about everything from the writing to the production design. The network gave “Mad Men” a huge PR push as its first major original series.

Yet the show’s ratings have been mediocre at best. Among young adults, “Mad Men” was outperformed by, to cite one also-ran, VH1’s “Scott Baio is 45 & Single.” And overall, AMC’s prime-time numbers slipped 15% this summer, to about 1.1 million total viewers.

AMC executives say the point isn’t the year-to-year comparisons but rather that “Mad Men” has helped the network become a destination for original programming, whereas it used to be just a depot for old movies.

“When it comes to ratings and the critical acclaim of ‘Mad Men,’ the show has met every expectation,” said Matthew Frankel, an AMC spokesman. The network has not yet announced whether it will renew the series.

Other cable outlets saw disappointments too, including TNT, which slipped 4% this summer despite “The Closer,” cable’s No. 1 series, which logged nearly 10 million total viewers for its June season premiere.

Cable executives say none of that matters, because the long-term trend favors their business. Broadcasters, they say, will continue to lose audience share.

“Every once in a while, there will be a year where cable audiences don’t grow,” said Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting. “So? It’ll grow next year.”

That may be true. But broadcast execs have tried to launch scripted programming during the summer many times before, often with disastrous results. Three summers ago, viewers and critics gave the thumbs down to Fox’s ambitious slate of summer scripted series, including the youth soap “North Shore.”

Audiences figure if a show is any good, it’ll run during the regular September-to-May season, execs say.

“Viewers are pretty smart. They look at that stuff and figure it’s burn-off,” Beckman said.

ABC’s Bader said his network would love to do more scripted fare during the summer. Some long-running shows of the past -- including “Northern Exposure” and “Melrose Place” -- actually started in July, he noted. But that’s the exception: “It’s worked in the past, but it’s been a while,” he said.

And then there’s the basic problem of, yes, money. All of the networks are trying to figure out ways to do more with less, and none has the luxury of taking a flier on a costly drama during the summer, when the audience levels are still a bit lower than they are at other times of year.

As Bader put it: “Spending more money isn’t an option.”

So, what does that mean for the future of network TV programming?

Well, hope you and your family like game shows.

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The Channel Island column runs every Monday in Calendar. Contact Scott Collins at scott.collins@latimes.com.