‘Day by Day’ Creators Make Day Care Issues Their Baby

“Day by Day,” which debuted last spring and launched its second season on NBC last Sunday, is the first television sitcom ever set in a day care center. It’s timing couldn’t be better:

--A record 167 day care bills were introduced during the last session of Congress.

--A Gallup poll this year found that more than 54% of the people surveyed “are concerned about securing adequate care for their children when they go to work.”

--A report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week said that the need for licensed child care in the United States is nearly double what is currently available.

--Both George Bush and Michael Dukakis have offered specific child care plans as part of their presidential campaigns.

Gary David Goldberg, the co-creator of “Day by Day,” is clearly committed to day care. He once ran a day care center in his home, was the driving force behind the creation of a day care center for Paramount employees on the studio’s lot two years ago, and stumped five primary states last February with Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), in hopes of thrusting child care and family issues to the forefront of the presidential campaign.

Yet how much of the politics of day care his television writers can put into their sitcom is tempered by the pressing television realities of making the audience laugh and staying on the air.

“I don’t have any grandiose delusions that Strom Thurmond is going to get up on the floor of the Senate and say, ‘I saw ‘Day by Day’ last night and you know what, instead of paying for the MX Missile, why don’t we put a day care center on every block?,’ ” quipped Andy Borowitz, executive producer and co-creator of the show with Goldberg.

“I have a problem with getting up on a soap box and preaching, about day care issues, anyway,” Borowitz continued. “I don’t think we’re here to do anything but portray this day care center in as positive a light as possible. (We’re trying to) welcome people into this day care center every week--let them feel a part of this family, a part of this center. The political power of that is much greater than doing a show that says corporations should put up this much money for day care. People won’t watch that. It’s better to do a good, entertaining show about day care than to do a position paper.”

Borowitz believes that simply airing a show about an attractive, competent couple (played by Linda Kelsey and Doug Sheehan) who are dedicated to their jobs as day care providers can’t help but advance the cause of day care in neighborhoods around the country and on Capitol Hill. (The show is seen by an estimated 20 million people each Sunday at 8:30 p.m.)

“Day care is an essential part of our society today now that both parents need to work to get by and with the increase in the number of single mothers,” said Janis Hirsch, the show’s supervising producer. “Just like we had our neighborhood growing up in the suburbs, this is the neighborhood for kids today.”

Though the show does regularly tackle what could be called serious issues of parenting within the day care context--handling the emotional trauma a 4-year-old experiences when his mother has a new baby, the pitfalls of pushing preschoolers academically, a parent’s anger that his child was punched by another kid in the day care center--the series is just as likely to focus on the couple’s love life, the zany antics of their 15-year-old son, or the comic-relief one-liners of their yuppie neighbor who slams the children and the day care center whenever she can.

Borowitz, 30, admitted that the world of network television, even when dealing with a show from a proven winner such as Goldberg, is fraught with compromise. (Goldberg declined to be interviewed because he is preparing to direct his first feature film.)

“I’d be lying to you if I said, ‘I never think about what the audience wants to see and what the ratings are,’ because frankly, if we get canceled, then television has no shows about day care,” Borowitz said. “We don’t want to be just another family sitcom, but I don’t think that doing a day care issue-of-the-week would be entertaining.”

“Day by Day” survived its first 13 episodes last spring to secure a spot in NBC’s starting lineup this fall, though its ratings were not spectacular. In its season premiere last Sunday, it was a distant second in its time slot behind CBS’ “Murder, She Wrote.”

Pragmatism, Borowitz said, dictates that the show establish itself first and try to win its time period. He said that kind of success automatically breeds the creative freedom to pursue more complicated political issues.

But Borowitz insisted that he will not shy away from politics altogether. He said it is possible that his staff will write episodes about a couple who pull their child out of the center because they can’t afford it and about a friend’s corporation setting up a day care scholarship fund.

Borowitz had intended, he said, to do a show timed with the presidential election about how politicians latch onto the day care centers for the sake of phony photo opportunities and then neglect the issue once they get elected. But the writers’ strike, which delayed the season premiere by more than a month, made it impossible to get it on the air before Tuesday’s election, Borowitz said.

“Maybe next fall during a mayoral election,” he added.

Such an episode might open with a scene Borowitz wrote when he was thinking about the presidential election show. Kate is opening mail with the children and comes upon a political flyer.

“Oh, look, this is from a political candidate,” she says. “And it says that he’s in favor of day care and he believes that working mothers should have it paid for them and that he’s a friend of families. Isn’t that good?” The kids agree that it’s good. “Go put it with the rest of them,” she says, handing the flyer to one of the children.

The camera would then follow the child to a wall covered with a slew of identical political promises.