TV’s Blackboard Bungle : Fall Shows About Kids, for Kids and Starring Kids Haven’t Necessarily Attracted Kids

Network programmers had high hopes for high ratings for high school programming when the TV season began last month. So far, however, the four new campus entries are all receiving failing marks from viewers--and not much better from some educators.

Indeed, one of them--NBC’s musical “Hull High”--was canceled this week after drawing paltry ratings that left it ranked 86th among 90 prime-time series that have aired on the four networks this season. Two others--Fox’s drama “Beverly Hills, 90210” and its comedy “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose”--are only a couple of notches higher. “Ferris Bueller,” NBC’s version of the film comedy about a high school boy who knows all the angles, ranks 50th in the Nielsen season averages, a passing grade only when based on a curve.

Call it Remedial Programming 101.

“Awful” is the way Carole Rosen-Kaplan, an English teacher at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, sums up the shows.

“It’s just sex-ploitation for kids, and that’s wrong,” she said. “They do it in films and that’s bad, but these are TV shows. It’s hard enough being a high school kid today, and to present shows like these is inexcusable.”

“They make students all look like bubble heads,” said Mike Morrill, who teaches English and Humanities at Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights. “I teach remedial and I teach gifted kids, and (they have) more values than reflected here. Overall, I don’t think there were people in touch with education involved in these shows.”

Network executives thought they had stumbled upon the first great programming trend of the decade when they developed these shows, hoping they could attract a demographically desirable young audience while at the same time not alienating older viewers.

The continuing success of ABC’s “Head of the Class,” now in its fifth season, and the more recent ratings rise enjoyed by “The Wonder Years,” though about the junior high years, were no doubt motivating factors for the onslaught of school-oriented shows.

Another impetus, executives say, was the belief that to lure the video generation back to the networks, TV must appeal to them on their level.

“Youth is an important audience to cultivate, and high school is a great arena in which to appeal to that audience,” said Paul Stupin, the Fox network’s executive vice president of series programming. “There is something universal about the high school experience, and no matter how old you are, you can still appreciate what it’s like to go through it, and where you were at the time.”

And although the evidence seems clear that shows about kids, for kids and starring kids don’t necessarily attract kids, the networks haven’t given up on the concept. Fox already has picked up “Parker Lewis” for the full season, and even NBC, in canceling “Hull High,” blamed its failure on the musical elements.

“We felt that the music and production numbers in ‘Hull High’ were beautifully executed under Kenny Ortega,” said Perry Simon, executive vice president for prime-time programs at NBC, “but apparently the experiences of both ‘Hull High’ and ‘Cop Rock’ (which is getting low ratings on ABC) indicate there’s not much of an appetite for large-scale music production numbers in the context of a one-hour show. In the future, we will be less inclined to do big, full-blown musical production numbers, but will find ways to integrate music in a more organic fashion.”

If the networks are learning that shows about kids, for kids and starring kids don’t necessarily attract kids, they probably should have known it already, given the track record of high school shows during the last decade. There’s only been one success, ABC’s “Head of the Class,” since the days of “The White Shadow” and “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and a notable list of failures including “Square Pegs,” “Bronx Zoo,” “TV 101” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

But, armed with loads of research, executives thought that by presenting shows in a fresh manner, they could attract the MTV generation. Lose the soap box that characterized many of those past efforts, research said, and the networks could find the alienated youth.

“Kids don’t like to be told lessons on TV,” “Hull High” executive producer Gil Grant had said before his show got the ax this week. “Kids today are used to seeing the real deal with MTV, and they’re not going to settle for a television version or a middle-aged adult version of what high school used to be.”

That’s why most of the high school shows are decidedly lighthearted.

“It’s a comedy--a teen-age fantasy with adult sensibilities--and not to be taken as anything more than that,” said John Masius, executive producer of “Ferris Bueller.” “The show is not mean-spirited; Ferris cares about his friends, his family, and I think there are different ways to have role models. He is a good person and he’s honest--he doesn’t take life that seriously.”

Clyde Philips, executive producer of “Parker Lewis,” sees his show the same way. “We acknowledge and embrace the opportunity to inform them (young viewers), but you can’t moralize or preach because that’s not entertainment,” he said. “We will deal with more serious issues, but first we have to win the trust of our audience--we want people to laugh and be entertained.”

Only “Beverly Hills, 90210” has taken a more serious approach, attempting to deal with what executive producer Charles Rosin calls “issues of the heart,” such as rejection, betrayal, substance abuse of a parent, race relations. “That is what kids are facing today,” he said.

But “Head of the Class” producers Richard Eustis and Michael Elias think programmers are “misinterpreting” the reason for the success of their show and that of “The Wonder Years.”

“These new shows are aimed at senior high school audiences, and the only people who identify with lives and problems and lingo of contemporary high school students are contemporary high school kids,” Eustis said. “The trouble is that high school kids are out doing other things--renting videos, going to the movies--and just are not home watching television.”

“Our whole idea is to show teaching and learning and knowing stuff in a positive manner, and we get parents and younger kids who want to see education shown in a positive light,” Elias said. “We show kids enjoying themselves and getting great fulfillment from academic enterprises and competitions rather than sports competition. They enjoy doing research, debating, but they’re still funny.”

Teachers Morrill and Rosen-Kaplan simply think the producers and programmers involved with the four new shows are out of touch.

“In most of the shows, the kids have fast cars, lots of money and no jobs, and that’s not the way it is, at least here,” said Morrill, who has taught for 25 years at Roosevelt. “And yes, male students do think about sex, but it’s not a preoccupation; the kids I deal with have a preoccupation with survival skills, getting into college and working, and none of that was dealt with (in the episodes of the four new shows that he has seen).”

Rosen-Kaplan, who has taught at suburban Birmingham since 1964, said that she’s a fan of “Wonder Years” and “Head of the Class.” “The principal (on the latter show) is an idiot, but a fun idiot, and all the other adults are good,” she said. “The kids are just outlandish enough where you can still believe it, and it deals with realistic problems in realistic ways.”

But she is angry when the new shows take a cavalier attitude toward tardiness and truancy, as happens regularly on “Ferris Bueller” and “Parker Lewis.” And she is incensed by the portrayal of authority figures.

“To have the principal blackmailed because they have a sex tape on her is not tolerable,” she said about the debut episode of “Parker Lewis.” “If only they had some decent adults around.”

Fox’s Stupin sees nothing wrong. “What we want to do is have fun with and satirize things everyone has been through,” he said. He pointed to “Beverly Hills” as a show intended to have a more realistic base.

Morrill conceded that it has. “I liked the way they picked up a newspaper and at least had some values, and it was good the way they picked up on someone using a fake address at the school--people do that.”

But Morrill feels NBC had a better mix with “Hull High.” “I think it’s the best of the lot, more what the kids are like,” he said. “Even though it was a fantasy with music, kids are into rap, and at least it had some minority kids in it.”