‘Hunter’ Reruns Slay Dan Rather and Sitcoms

When “Hunter” first hit the air in 1984, the initial episodes were so ridiculed by critics and so ignored by viewers that the police series was nearly canceled. Now in syndication, the same episodes are again proving to be lethal--lethal, that is, to all of “Hunter’s” Los Angeles competitors.

In the recently concluded February ratings sweeps, reruns of “Hunter” won the highly competitive 6-7 p.m. time period for KTLA Channel 5, beating local news, national news and high-priced syndicated sitcoms.

On an average night, “Hunter” was seen in about 150,000 more homes than KCAL Channel 9’s “Who’s the Boss?” and in nearly 250,000 more homes than Dan Rather’s national newscast on KCBS Channel 2, according to the Arbitron ratings service.

That is, by all accounts, a remarkable showing, considering the current industry tenet that hourlong programs simply do not work in syndication--and considering that the show cost KTLA less than 10% of what KCAL and KCOP Channel 13 paid for reruns of “Who’s the Boss?” and “The Cosby Show.”

Meanwhile, original episodes of “Hunter” continue to crush the other two networks in the show’s sixth season on NBC. So far this season, “Hunter” is the 25th highest rated prime-time program, attracting 29% of the available audience on Saturdays at 10 p.m.

The show is also a smash abroad. Fred Dryer, a former defensive lineman for the Los Angeles Rams who stars as LAPD Sgt. Rick Hunter, said this week that when he visits France, for example, “people there are literally foaming about the show.” “Hunter” is also enormously popular in China, South America, Scandinavia and Italy.

Not bad for a series that was called “despicable” and “criminally bad” when it premiered.

“It hits a theme that people all seem to understand,” said Dryer, who also is co-executive producer of the series. “The characters Hunter and (his partner) McCall have old-line values--honesty, integrity. They are after the right answers to problems and the way they go about their jobs is very admirable. They are human beings. They aren’t automatons.

“Or maybe it’s just that they think I’m cute. Maybe they think Stepfanie (Kramer, who plays McCall) is beautiful. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly why the show is so strong, but people are rediscovering it in syndication and giving us a whole new life.”

It’s also breathing at least a little life into a genre that, in terms of syndication, had been presumed dead.

“The success of ‘Hunter’ has sparked a whole new interest in the action/adventure genre,” boasted Pat Kenney, president of Televentures, which has syndicated the show in 87 markets across the country.

In recent years, hourlong network programs have found the world of syndication a wasteland. The producers of even hit shows such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “Moonlighting” have been forced to sell their repeats at reduced rates to basic-cable networks because they couldn’t get decent prices from the broadcast stations that traditionally had been their primary buyers.

“Most hour shows are produced for 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. on the network for a different audience than what’s available in early fringe (5-8 p.m.),” said Rick Feldman, station manager of KCOP Channel 13. “Shows like ‘Hill Street Blues’ are designed for you to watch with the lights out; you have to pay attention. Those shows tend to have trouble at the dinner hour with everything that is going on.”

As a result, independent stations have invested heavily in repeats of network sitcoms to fill their early evening schedules. Sources say that Channel 13 paid in excess of $300,000 per half-hour episode for reruns of “The Cosby Show” and that Disney-owned Channel 9 paid even more than that for reruns of “Who’s the Boss?” By contrast, KTLA paid less than $60,000 per hour episode of “Hunter.”

The police show has benefited from this sitcom mania, especially in Los Angeles, where the other three independents all compete from 6 to 7 p.m. with sitcoms. The three network-owned stations all program news.

“When you take a strong action/adventure show with a charismatic star such as Tom Selleck or Fred Dryer and put it up against three sitcoms, inevitably the sameness of the other three will cancel each other out,” said Steve Bell, KTLA’s general manager. “It’s gotten to the point that if a viewer doesn’t want to watch sitcoms and doesn’t want to watch news, their only alternative is ‘Hunter.’ ”

Bell said that once hour programs began to be perceived as “bad buys,” stations began to bid up the cost of sitcoms astronomically. Hourlong action shows, meanwhile, can be had dirt cheap.

“The industry is very funny,” he said. “It’s run by a herd mentality. Monkey see, monkey do. Stations want easy, risk-free answers. So they pay a king’s ransom for those sitcoms and think they will avoid the risk. Sitcoms do work, but not when you have three up against each other. They aren’t foolproof. At least not here.”

“Hunter” is the rare hourlong show, Bell conceded, that could produce such results in syndication. He predicted that such current network dramas as “thirtysomething,” “Midnight Caller” and even the extremely popular “L.A. Law” will find no buyers outside of cable. The only current hourlong prime-time series with a good shot at drawing respectable audiences in syndication, he said, are “21 Jump St.,” which Channel 5 has already bought, and “MacGyver,” which already has been sold to cable’s USA network.

The drawbacks to any hourlong show, both Feldman and Bell pointed out--even one as strong as “Hunter”--is that they do not wear as well as sitcoms. “Magnum, P.I.” also scored big ratings for Channel 5 a few years ago, but after the station had aired each episode a couple of times, ratings plunged. Meanwhile, the sitcom “Three’s Company” is still doing well for KTTV Channel 11, even after eight years of repeats.

“You can keep laughing at episodes of ‘Lucy,’ but when you know the plot of an action/adventure show, you won’t watch,” Bell said. “But the hours are priced so low that if you get two years out of it, you have the equivalent of five years of a sitcom.”

“The important thing is longevity,” countered Feldman, who, like the managers of many stations across the country, has come under fire for paying so much for “Cosby.” “That’s why ‘Three’s Company’ is one of the most successful shows in television history. Whatever they (KTTV) paid, it’s an absolute gold mine.”

Feldman said that no station will again fork over the kind of money paid for “Cosby” or “Who’s the Boss?”, not even for a smash show such as “Roseanne.” During the bidding frenzy over “Cosby,” he explained, station managers hadn’t realized that the audience had been so irreversibly fractionalized that huge ratings are no longer possible for any series.

But Feldman said that while “Hunter” has proven a great buy for KTLA, the sitcoms still outperform it in the 18-49 demographic, the age group that most advertisers prefer to reach. “Hunter” has a slightly older audience.

As for “Hunter” itself, changes are already being plotted for the seventh season next fall. Kramer has decided to leave the show this spring to pursue a career in music, and so, Dryer said, he will cast a new actress in a new role to fill the void. Sgt. Hunter will be transfered from the homicide unit to a beat cop, allowing for more action, he added.

While Dryer is thrilled by the ongoing popularity of his series, it angers him that critics and the industry here in Los Angeles have not seen fit to acknowledge any of the show’s achievements.

“We don’t even get one Emmy nomination. They don’t even call to ask Stepfanie or me to be presenters. I begin to take it personally after awhile. I guess because we come from Stephen J. Cannell’s company, they think of it as an ‘A-Teamish’ type of show aimed at teen-age boys, but our audience is mostly adults--35 and older,” he said. “The strong showing in syndication is satisfying to me because it shows us that we’re appreciated by the people out there, even if we aren’t appreciated by our own industry.”