Ratings Cellar Dwellers Cite Bad Time Slots

Kevin Sullivan, executive producer of the new ABC-TV series “Knightwatch,” was thrilled last summer when the network told him that his youth-appeal show about a group of hip, young urban crime fighters had been picked up for fall.

That thrill faded somewhat, Sullivan says, when he discovered that ABC had scheduled “Knightwatch” in prime-time’s deadliest time slot--opposite NBC’s top-rated “Cosby Show” at 8 p.m. Thursdays.

“We made our debut (Nov. 10) against a (one-hour) Cosby special,” Sullivan lamented recently. “We got creamed. I wanted to call up Bill and say, ‘Yo--what are you doing to us?’ ”

“What are you doing to us?” might be an appropriate refrain for a number of this fall’s new TV series, currently foundering in the ratings as they struggle to find an audience in the competitive first weeks of the television season.

Producers of these shows most often blame bad time slots for the poor ratings. Other explanations include competition from cable and videocassettes, production delays caused by last summer’s 154-day Writers Guild of America strike, inadequate promotion, the presidential elections, the Olympic Games, holiday specials and the fickle perversity of the American viewing public.

None has suggested this possibility: The show is bad.

Whatever the reason, some of this year’s new shows are, like “Knightwatch,” getting creamed in the ratings--and may face the ax soon if their numbers don’t improve.

Included on the list: CBS’ family Western “Paradise” (which ranks 55th among the 72 prime-time series that have aired on the three major networks this season); NBC’s “Tattinger’s,” a sophisticated drama about a New York restaurateur created by the producers of “St. Elsewhere” (57); ABC’s reality show “Incredible Sunday” (59); NBC’s “Something Is Out There” (61); CBS’ adaptation of the film “Dirty Dancing” (62); CBS’ Mary Tyler Moore vehicle “Annie McGuire” (64); CBS’ “The Van Dyke Show” (65); ABC’s “Knightwatch” (70) and the CBS comedy “Raising Miranda,” dead-last in 72nd place. (Season-to-date ratings on Fox Broadcasting Co. shows were not immediately available.)

Although all three major networks are represented in the Bottom 10 of the season-to-date Nielsen ratings, a disproportionate number of those shows, not surprisingly, are on No. 3-network CBS. The network doesn’t have enough big hits on the schedule to provide all the new shows with protected time slots. Strike-related delays also hit CBS the hardest, since it had more new shows to get off the ground than its rivals.

Most producers of the low-rated newcomers say there is little they can do except hope viewers find them or that they get moved to a better time slot.

Even with uniformly awful reviews and its last-place standing in the season-to-date ratings, Deborah Aal, executive producer of GTG Entertainment’s “Raising Miranda,” on CBS at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, believes that the show would have a chance if audiences sampled it and accepted what she calls the show’s blend of “strong comedy and strong drama” rather than traditional sitcom silliness.

“I think, first of all, with bias, that we are doing better shows every week,” she said. “I didn’t think we started out badly; unfortunately the critics didn’t agree with us. And unfortunately at the moment, if one believes the ratings, we aren’t succeeding.”

Aal said that CBS is satisfied with the show and plans no immediate surgery.

She added with slight bitterness that the business of calling the hits in television often has no correlation with quality.

“It’s interesting that the first few episodes (of “Miranda”) were being prepared and taped during this last political campaign,” she said. “I found so many parallels in the hypocrisy there and the hypocrisy in TV. There’s a certain hypocrisy in calling something a ‘success,’ of making a success out of something that’s really not. It’s like making somebody a candidate who’s really not (qualified).”

Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark, executive producers of another struggling CBS comedy from GTG, “The Van Dyke Show,” also think their problem has to do with getting the audience to sample the show, rather than poor quality.

But unlike Aal, they believe their 8 p.m. Wednesday time slot--in part chosen to pair the show with “Annie McGuire,” thus bringing former co-stars Van Dyke and Moore back together, sort of--has a lot to do with their low ratings.

“We’re in a very ‘young’ time slot, when the adults have only just gotten home from work,” said Bobrick. “And our show, I guess, is a more mature show. I don’t think we could change it; it’s got a style of its own. We were even hoping to get a Saturday time slot, where even at 8 o’clock the television is controlled more by adults than kids.”

Bobrick does not believe “Van Dyke” and “Annie McGuire” are failing, as some critics have suggested, because they feature stars of a bygone era: “Look at Angela Lansbury (in the CBS hit “Murder, She Wrote”). I think time slot is everything. Give us a time slot that works.”

Steve Tisch, co-executive producer (with Mitchell Cannold) of “Dirty Dancing,” would be willing to trade that show’s 8 p.m. Saturday time slot with “Van Dyke”; while the adults are home on Saturday night, the teens who might watch the youth-appeal show are not (he added that the older, female audience that is sampling the show likes it).

“Even my daughter says, ‘Why is this show on at 8 p.m. on Saturday? I’m not home to watch it,’ ” Tisch said. “We’ve expressed this feeling repeatedly to CBS. It’s not like they (teens) are watching something else. They’re not watching anything.”

Tisch said the network has a plan to resuscitate “Dirty Dancing,” however. In late December, after most holiday specials have aired, the network will air two half-hour episodes back to back at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday night to see if it pulls a young audience, he said. If the experiment works, the series will go on hiatus from January to March to film some hourlong episodes, then will return in an 8 p.m. weekday slot. The format change would allow more time to develop stories and characters as well as lengthy dance sequences.

The producers of two other new shows, “Tattinger’s” and “Paradise,” remain philosophical about their slow starts, partly because they’ve been through it all before. The “Tattinger’s” team can hark back to “St. Elsewhere,” which delivered a small though demographically desirable audience throughout its six-season run--and “Paradise” executive producer David Jacobs is the creator of “Dallas,” which grew from marginal success to TV’s most popular series in the early 1980s. “My shows tend to do that,” he joked.

“Paradise,” at 9 p.m. Thursdays, is up against NBC’s long-running “Cheers” and its new hit “Dear John,” and ABC’s “Dynasty.” Jacobs said he designed “Paradise” as an 8 o’clock family show and hopes the network reschedules it in January.

“I’m kind of pleased with the way ‘Paradise’ is performing. Nobody really expected us to perform at all there,” Jacobs said. “I expected that we were being dumped (into a bad time slot by the network), that there was little confidence in the show. Even people who liked the show expected a very quick demise.

“But I look at some of the other numbers (ratings) for the other new shows, and I think we’re doing pretty well.” Last week, “Dynasty” only beat out “Paradise” for second place in the time slot by one-tenth of a ratings point.

“Knightwatch’s” Sullivan also believes that success is relative.

“I’d better not look at the ratings too much each week or I’ll get depressed,” he said. “We haven’t done badly, if you compare us to other shows that have been in that time slot. And if you look at this year’s schedule, there are some shows that premiered in less deadly time slots that have done worse.”

HOW SOME NEW TV SERIES ARE FARING

Series Average rating to date* Roseanne (ABC) 21.6 Empty Nest (NBC) 19.9 Dear John (NBC) 17.8 Murphy Brown (CBS) 14.5 Baby Boom (NBC) 12.3 Tattinger’s (NBC) 10.3 Annie McGuire (CBS) 8.1 Van Dyke Show (CBS) 7.8 Knightwatch (ABC) 7.0 Raising Miranda (CBS) 6.1

*Each rating point represents 904,000 homes SOURCE: A.C. Nielson Co.