Many Doubting ‘Thomas’

When are good ratings not good enough?

“The Jackie Thomas Show” has the kind of ratings that other shows would kill for. It ranks No. 8 among all prime-time series this season--ahead of such established hits as “Cheers,” “Full House” and “Northern Exposure.”

Yet eight weeks after its debut, the ABC comedy’s future is by no means secure.

The reason: It is failing to hold on to a large number of people who watch the show that precedes it on ABC Tuesday night, “Roseanne.” “Roseanne” is the No. 2 show on TV this season, trailing only “60 Minutes” on CBS.

In 1989, ABC canceled the sitcom “Chicken Soup” despite its No. 13 ranking at the time. “Chicken Soup” was losing one-third of the lead-in audience provided by “Roseanne.”

When “The Jackie Thomas Show,” which stars Tom Arnold as a brutish sitcom star, debuted Dec. 1, it ranked as the No. 2 program that week and retained 90% of the audience tuned to Arnold’s wife, Roseanne. The drop-off, however, has been steadily increasing, peaking at 32% last week.

ABC and the show’s producers maintain that there is no cause for alarm, saying that hit shows take years to develop. And unlike “Chicken Soup,” which was popular mainly with older viewers, “Jackie Thomas” draws a much younger, advertiser-friendly crowd.

Other observers in the TV industry are less sure.

“A one-third drop-off is certainly significant. It means a lot of people don’t like the show,” said producer Fred Silverman, who has overseen programming at ABC, CBS and NBC.

“It’s like millions of dollars are falling out of their pockets,” he explained. “There are very few time periods like ‘Roseanne’ on television. And when you have a time period like that, it’s gold, and that time period should beget a half-hour that does almost as well as a ‘Roseanne’ show. So the loss of every rating point represents a loss of revenue, tens of millions of dollars a year.”

ABC would not comment last week, but earlier this month executives had said they were taking a wait-and-see approach regarding the future of “Jackie Thomas.” Fourteen episodes were ordered and six more will air before the series goes into reruns. Then ABC has until May to decide whether to order more for the fall.

Of course, when dealing with the Arnolds, business decisions are never simple. Roseanne Arnold campaigned hard for ABC to give the choice time slot behind her series to “Jackie Thomas,” and in at least one interview Tom Arnold implied that there could be waves if “Jackie Thomas” were canceled too soon.

“The key will be whether ‘Jackie Thomas’ can retain its current share,” said Bill Croasdale, president of the national broadcast division of the advertising firm Western International Media. “Even with the drop-off from ‘Roseanne,’ my gut feeling is (that), to keep peace in the family with its major star, ABC will find a way to make it work and continue on the air.”

In season-to-date ratings, “Roseanne” is averaging a 32% share of the viewing audience. The venerable “Coach,” which was airing behind “Roseanne” the first half of the season, was falling off an average of 4 to 5 share points. “Jackie Thomas” is falling off an average of 7.

“When you have a show as popular as ‘Roseanne,’ it’s not unusual to see that sort of a share drop-off,” Croasdale said. “ ‘Murder, She Wrote’ regularly loses 10 share points from ’60 Minutes.’ ”

Leslie Moonves, president of Lorimar Television, the studio behind “Jackie Thomas,” said that stories of the series’ precarious position are exaggerated. He pointed out that last week’s dramatic drop occurred largely because “Jackie Thomas” was up against the presidential inauguration bash on CBS, the premiere of a new night of original dramas on Fox and a Geraldo Rivera special syndicated throughout much of the country.

“Clearly the jury is still out with ‘Jackie Thomas,’ but we are not concerned with anything that’s happened so far,” Moonves said. “Historically, if you look at a number of shows that followed hits their first year, including ‘Coach,’ they routinely do 75% of their lead-in.”

By that standard, “Jackie Thomas” is right on target. On average, the show is holding about 76% of “Roseanne’s” audience. However, the numbers have been getting worse by the week--and that’s where critics see the problem. The new Diane English sitcom “Love & War,” in comparison, was experiencing a similar tune-out factor behind the CBS hit “Murphy Brown” on Monday nights. But the gap has been narrowing in recent weeks to a 3 or 4 point loss.

“I don’t think they can just write ‘Jackie Thomas’ off,” Silverman said. “They’re dealing with the biggest star on the network. They’re in no rush. But I would say that as each week goes by, the case becomes more and more bleak. If it doesn’t improve, if they continue to lose more than 20% of their audience, they have to replace that show, period. Anything worse than that is cancellation.”

One executive at another network, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that ABC already canceled one series earlier this season that was falling off its hit lead-in at about the same rate as “Jackie Thomas”--the comedy “Laurie Hill,” airing behind “Home Improvement.”

“I get up early in the morning, and I pray that they renew (‘Jackie Thomas’) and leave it right there,” the executive said, “because the trend is downward. That creates more opportunity for us. If ‘Coach’ would have stayed in there, I think you would have started seeing it narrow the gap. Now it’s more difficult for them to get a 10 p.m. show off the ground. They’re having a hard time with ‘Civil Wars’ (now following ‘Jackie Thomas’). If they keep ‘Jackie Thomas’ there next year, other competing networks can gain ground.”

Everything is relative in network television, Moonves countered, and what appears to be a loss may be a gain. Although “Coach” was performing better than “Jackie Thomas” behind “Roseanne,” “Coach” has helped ABC establish a successful new night of programming on Wednesdays behind “Home Improvement.”