Where Have All the Viewers Gone?

Pity the programmers at ABC, CBS and NBC.

They launched one of the most critically acclaimed television seasons in history this year-- and had a hard time scaring up a hit.

They developed a whole new genre of programming--the sophisticated half-hour comedy-drama hybrid dubbed the “dramedy”--and were met by viewer confusion.

Having a hard time mustering any sympathy for the folks who gave us “Hello, Larry,” “The New Lucy Show” and “Manimal”? Consider this: Even armed with serious, quality-minded shows like NBC’s “A Year in the Life,” CBS’ “Frank’s Place,” and ABC’s “Hooperman,” shows that didn’t pander to the lowest common denominator, the three networks will see the 1987-88 season go down in the history books as one of the lowest-rated television seasons ever.

By December, A.C. Nielsen Co. ratings indicate, network prime-time viewership was down 9% from the year before--an average loss of 3.5 millions homes per night (although the networks are challenging these latest figures). In the breach, the networks’ competition continued to grow: Basic cable services’ prime-time viewership was up 35%; pay services, up 25%; and independent TV stations, up 7%. By February, nearly 60%, or 52 million U.S. TV households, had videocassette recorders, up 19% from last year.

The statistics are a grim reminder that the future of television is knocking at the networks’ door. This was a season with virtually no new hit shows, with the exception of “The Cosby Show” spin-off, “A Different World,” which rose to No. 2 in the ratings this season with a strong lead-in from “Cosby.” None of the 24 other season newcomers even managed to break into the top 20 shows as measured by Nielsen.

Highly applauded shows, such as ABC’s daring network satire “Max Headroom” and CBS’ praised detective show “Leg Work,” met their doom quickly. Some midseason replacement shows fared a little better, with ABC’s “Wonder Years” shooting to ninth in the Nielsens in a six-week trial run, and NBC’s “Aaron’s Way” and “In the Heat of the Night” turning in respectable numbers. But the mid-season has its own crop of losers--ABC’s pricey “Supercarrier;” CBS’ failed Tuesday night situation comedies, canceled after only three weeks; NBC’s occasionally scheduled designated hitter “Beverly Hills Buntz.”

What’s behind this mean season for the networks?

“There’s a viewer apathy out there,” said Warren Littlefield, executive vice president of prime-time programming for NBC. “You do things that are a little different and the audience doesn’t buy it.”

Among the hardest sells were the dramedies--”The ‘Slap’ Maxwell Story,” “Hooperman,” “Frank’s Place,” “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.” These half-hour shows, which combine comedy and drama and eschew laugh tracks, sent the critics scrambling for superlatives, but viewers have been slow to accept them. CBS’ “Frank’s Place” was put on a temporary hiatus; it ranks 61st for the season. ABC’s “ ‘Slap’ Maxwell” underwent a midseason retooling to take some of the edges off its acerbic hero, but remains in the Nielsen backfield at 54th. “Hooperman” is 34th. “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” which returned to NBC this spring after a successful run last summer, is faring better, ranked 21st.

Why have such shows struggled? A leading theory, promulgated by NBC Entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff, is that the odd mix of comedy and pathos in the dramedies confuses viewers, that the shows need to either be funnier or more dramatic to work with the audience.

“These shows need to figure out a little bit what their direction is,” echoed Ted Harbert, senior vice president of programming at ABC. “You don’t know after you’ve watched one whether you had a good time or not.”

“What people are used to is line, line, punch line,” said Mike Mellon, vice president of research for Disney’s Buena Vista Television, which will syndicate “The Golden Girls.” “These shows are departures. They’re not funny ha-ha. They’re introspective.”

But more defined, quality shows also faltered with the viewers this season. NBC’s “A Year in the Life” ranks 62nd in the ratings. CBS’ gritty Vietnam war drama, “Tour of Duty,” is 71st.

Researchers blame the malaise in these two types of shows on the very audience for whom they’re designed. Young upscale viewers alone don’t make shows hits, they say. They’re too selective as viewers, and too fickle. “One year, they like ‘Miami Vice,’ the next year they don’t,” Littlefield said.

“The problem is they’re the infrequent casual viewer. They know the shows they want to watch and they watch them. They’re not there to see the promos for your other programming,” added ABC’s Harbert.

Mellon said the shows disenfranchise the real viewership that drives hit shows: little old ladies, kids and frequent viewers. “The couch potato drives the sample,” he said, referring to the 2,600 homes whose viewership is measured by A.C. Nielsen Co.’s new people meters.

David Poltrack, CBS vice president of marketing, offered a classical marketing model to explain the woes of the dramedies. Innovations in any area are first accepted by two groups: innovators and early adapters. These courageous types tend to want to be first with everything; but they only account for about 18% of the population, certainly not enough viewers to create hit numbers for a television series, Poltrack said.

Littlefield pointed out that it wasn’t just unusual or high quality dramas that had problems this season. “What happened to ‘The Law and Harry McGraw?’ What happened to ‘Jake and the Fatman?’ ” he said. Both CBS shows were formula hour dramas about private eyes. “Jake,” which marked the return of popular “Cannon” star William Conrad, is rated 59th; “Harry McGraw,” 79th.

The other wild card this season was the people-meter technology itself, phased in by Nielsen last year. Each person in a metered home is required to punch buttons to record his or her TV viewing, a refinement on an old passive meter system, which merely recorded which shows were watched. It was an improvement sought by advertisers who want to better track who watches which commercials.

In the first thousand homes wired with people meters last spring, viewers appeared to “skew toward” young men. A whole crop of shows were developed to appeal to them, including NBC’s “Private Eye,” (76th in the ratings), CBS’ “Tour of Duty” (71st), and “Wiseguy” (66th). Even “ ‘Slap’ Maxwell,” “Hooperman,” and ABC’s yuppie angst drama “thirtysomething” fall into that category, according to Poltrack.

A later addition to the people-meter sample corrected the skew, an industry source said, and left programmers with lopsided schedules designed to appeal to an audience that no longer dominated the sample. Did network programmers get caught trying to beat the people meter?

Maybe, said Poltrack. “There may have been that orientation.” Absolutely not, said Harbert. “For us to sit here and play Kreskin and try to decipher where the people meter is going is silly,” he said.

But it was the people meters that recorded this year’s dismal numbers, and the programmers aren’t above blaming at least part of this season’s failures on the new devices. Network researchers say that after a while people don’t push the buttons on the people meters that record viewership, that the devices miserably underestimate viewing by children, and that the people-meter results have overstated the networks’ viewership losses this season by as much as 6%.

A.C. Nielsen Co. says viewers cooperate with the people meters at about the same rate they cooperated with Nielsen’s previous system, which used the passive meters and diaries kept by viewers to determined ratings. Nielsen also says the new people-meter sample more accurately reflects the makeup of the U.S. television audience than the old sample. “We often shrug our shoulders around here and say, ‘Don’t shoot the messengers,’ ” said Nielsen spokesperson Kathryn Creech.

Another theory about the 1987-88 season attributes the failure of this year’s new shows to another phenomenon: People are simply watching less television. Ratings indicate the percentage of homes in the total number of U.S. television homes watching a given program. But what ratings don’t show is the number of homes using television (HUTS, as they’re known in the business). HUT levels were down this season, especially in the crucial fall months, when the new network season was launched. HUT levels in prime time for all U.S. TV homes were down 3% in September, and 4% in November. And while the networks have blamed some of this season’s losses on the cable networks, which did improve their own ratings this season, HUTS declined in cable homes, where viewers have 20 or more channels, and in non-cable homes, where viewers’ choices are limited to off-air network and independent stations, according to research by the highest-rated basic cable network, USA Network.

“It may just be that people are watching less television,” said Dave Bender, vice president of research for USA.

“It’s harder to get a hit show now because people are viewing less in general,” CBS’ Poltrack agreed.

Where does that leave the programmers, now at the tail end of the annual development season, when next year’s shows are picked from a host of pilot projects?

All over the map, apparently. CBS has said it plans to return to the basics that made the network No. 1 until it was toppled by NBC three years ago. It’s developing shows for two past CBS stars, Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke.

Does that mean the networks are preparing to beat a quick retreat to formula programming?

The networks look at the success of a formula court show like NBC’s “Matlock” and more innovative, riskier programming doesn’t seem so appealing, CBS’ Poltrack admitted. “You don’t have to do what ‘Frank’s Place’ has to do. You don’t have to start from scratch. If they know the star of the show or what kind of show it is, people are going to be there.”

But NBC’s Littlefield said it’s “dangerous to make the conclusions that ‘tried and true’ works.” Though NBC is planning a remake of “The Incredible Hulk” and spinning off a show from “Facts of Life,” Littlefield said the network is banking on personalities, not formulas. It will bring “Taxi” star Judd Hirsch back in a comedy, “Dear John,” and Kate Jackson back in “Baby Boom,” spun off from the Diane Keaton movie.

ABC’s Harbert said about 5% to 10% of the shows in development at ABC might be considered experimental, but added, “If we put on seven new hours of TV next year, there may be zero to one hour of experimentation.”

“All three of the networks are a little gun-shy about (having another) ‘Frank’s Place’ or ‘Slap Maxwell,’ ” said Harbert. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t stick with what they’ve got.”

Or what somebody else has got. After a strong start, a fall-off and a recovery buoyed by a wave of publicity, ABC’s “thirtysomething” is winning its Tuesday night time period, with or without help from new “Moonlighting” episodes. Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, executive producers of “thirtysomething” are doing a working-class family drama, “Dream Street,” for NBC. “Call it ‘dirtysomething,’ ” Littlefield quipped. And Harbert dubbed Universal Television’s drama, “Men,” an ABC project about a group of young men in Baltimore, “men-something.”

But levity isn’t the prevailing mood in the executive suites where next season’s programming decisions are being made. The failure of this year’s crop of new shows “puts a lot of pressure on everybody,” said CBS’ Poltrack.

But while NBC’s programming team has a three-year record of success to fall back on, the heat will be on at ABC, where ABC Entertainment president Brandon Stoddard will try to capitalize on the slim lead ABC’s Olympics coverage gave the network this year. At CBS, new programming head Kim LeMasters is in the unenviable position of trying to rescue the once invincible network from third place.

And everyone has to figure out how to make network television back into a hits business. The buzzword is appointment television, industry shorthand for the kind of “can’t miss” shows that people make sure they’re home to watch--or they tape. Appointment television translates to hit shows: “Cosby” was appointment TV, so was “Moonlighting” and “L.A. Law.” Appointment television brings more viewers to the set; “The Cosby Show” single-handedly boosted Thursday night HUT levels when it debuted in 1984.

People didn’t make many appointments this season. “I think anyone in broadcasting has to look at the job they do and say ‘We’ve got to do better,’ ” said Littlefield. “(This year) we didn’t ignite the public.”