Fox to Try a Late Comedy Lineup Again

Is 10 p.m. too late for laughs on TV?

Recent precedent would indicate that it is, at least as regards sitcoms, as viewers have shied away from comedies at a time traditionally reserved for movies, dramas and the occasional news magazine.

The Fox network is unbowed, however, and has scheduled new situation comedies Sundays at 10 (“Flying Blind,” premiering Sunday) and 10:30 p.m. (“Woops!,” debuting Sept. 27).

“People don’t stop laughing when the second hand reaches a particular point,” said Paul Junger Witt, one of the executive producers of “Woops!”

“Television is still young. It grew up with certain preconceptions about what played where from radio. Someone is going to make the 10-11 time slot viable for comedy. It’s a question of who does it first. After that, we’ll see a good bit of it.”

Using the comedy/variety/musical format, “The Carol Burnett Show” was a hit for CBS Saturday nights at 10 p.m. from 1967 to 1978. But since 1988, when all four major networks have tried to program situation comedies at 10 p.m., only two that played there during the regular season--CBS’ “Designing Women” and NBC’s “Dear John”--have returned the next fall, and then in earlier time slots.

Last season, as part of an all-comedy Wednesday night, ABC scheduled “Anything but Love” at 10 p.m. and “Good & Evil” at 10:30 p.m. By the end of October, both series were gone: “Good & Evil” was canceled and “Anything but Love” shifted to 9:30 p.m. ABC filled the 10 p.m. slot with a more conventional choice, the drama “Civil Wars.”

Fox has tried comedies before from 10-11 p.m., including “The Sunday Comics,” “Get a Life” and “Charlie Hoover” last season, all of which are now gone.

There are two key reasons for trying again, according to Sandy Grushow, executive vice president of the Fox Entertainment Group. One is to try to maintain an audience flow by completing an all-comedy evening. The other is to counter-program the made-for-TV movies on ABC, CBS and NBC.

Grushow said that Fox also was encouraged by the showing that “Down the Shore” made at 10 p.m. Sundays during the summer. The series recently received an order for 13 additional episodes but is not in the fall lineup.

“Flying Blind” stars Corey Parker as a straight-laced, recent college graduate who begins a relationship with an uninhibited habitue of New York City’s arts and party subculture (Tea Leoni).

“Woops!,” developed for and rejected by NBC, is a look at the last six people on Earth who attempt to start a new society following an accidental nuclear war.

“This is a high-risk concept and it really pushes the envelope,” said Witt, who was also one of the producers of “Good & Evil.” “We’re going to be dealing with subject matter that we’re more comfortable dealing with after 10. We’d be fools not to take advantage of the fact that our audience will include fewer children and that it is an opportunity to play the edge more.”

With Fox corporate policy eschewing total ratings in favor of reaching targeted demographic groups coveted by advertisers, Grushow said that his network would consider itself “very successful” if it retained about 70-80% of men from their teens to 49 who were watching “Herman’s Head,” which precedes “Flying Blind.”

“With all four networks firing at all cylinders in the coming weeks, it’s going to take a while for ‘Flying Blind’ and ‘Woops!’ to find their audiences,” Grushow said. “We’re going to be fairly patient.”