Holy Cow! NBC Elbows In on Bart : How ‘Mad About You’ Found Success in Rough Time Slot vs. Fox’s ‘The Simpsons’

When NBC programming chief Warren Littlefield called the producers of “Mad About You” last year to tell them he’d scheduled the quick-witted adult comedy at 8 p.m. Thursdays against “The Simpsons,” one of TV’s hottest shows, “a lot of people hung up on me,” he recalled.

But now, after five months going head-to-head with Fox’s cartoon darling, no one is mad--in either sense of the word.

“Everybody is thrilled. I’m tickled that we’re doing so terrifically,” said Paul Reiser, who created the series with Danny Jacobson and stars in it with Helen Hunt. “The surprise is that we’re growing and growing and doing better than even NBC had hoped to do.”

Indeed, after a lackluster first year jumping around the schedule, “Mad About You” has flourished in its second season at 8 p.m., even though its creators have always maintained that the comedy about a young married couple was designed for 9 p.m. or later. So far this season, the comedy has outperformed “The Simpsons” 13 out of 20 weeks, including the last eight in a row.

“We believed at NBC that there was an appetite for a smart adult comedy in this time period,” said Littlefield, president of NBC Entertainment. “We really felt that ‘The Simpsons,’ as strong as it’s been in the past, really is a younger show and a little bit more male.”

He added that it has been a dash of sweet revenge doing to Fox what the fourth network once did to NBC. In 1990, Fox shocked the television world by moving “The Simpsons” to Thursdays against NBC’s “The Cosby Show”--the longtime top-rated series that had spearheaded the network’s prime-time dominance in the 1980s. “The Simpsons” never beat “Cosby,” but it cut a big chunk out of its audience. And when “Cosby” retired, “The Simpsons” took over the lead in the time period and NBC’s Thursday night ratings juggernaut slipped badly.

But up against “Mad About You” this season, “The Simpsons” has seen its audience share decline by 3 points from last year. “Mad About You”--which aired on Wednesdays and Saturdays last season--meanwhile has climbed from attracting 16% of the available audience to 23% in recent weeks. And NBC’s Thursday lineup--which includes “Wings,” “Seinfeld” and “Frazier”--has been a blockbuster for the network, up 40% over last season in the advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-old demographic, Littlefield said.

“There is a special sweetness and a smile on my lips each Friday,” Littlefield said of his success in beating Fox. “I can’t deny that there’s a great satisfaction to what we’ve accomplished, especially because if we would have stood up at the beginning of the year and said Thursday nights are back and are going to be stronger than ever, they would have locked us up and thrown away the key.”

Sandy Grushow, president of Fox Entertainment Group, acknowledged NBC has made a strong recovery from last season when it aired the poorly rated “A Different World” and “Rhythm and Blues” in the 8 p.m. hour.But in terms of grabbing Fox’s target 18-49 demographic, “The Simpsons” is still doing big business, he said, and its overall rating is almost the same as what it was when Bart and Co. were on the cover of Newsweek in April, 1990.

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Grushow points up two obstacles that might have hampered both the show and Fox’s overall performance on Thursday nights this season. Following “The Simpsons,” ratings on Fox plummet.

First, he said, “The Simpsons” has a new set of writers this season, and it may have taken a while for them “to get their sea legs.” Second, Fox’s expansion to seven nights of programming a week forced it to spread out its hit shows, diluting the power of the 8-9 Thursday hour from last season, when “The Simpsons” was paired with “Martin.”

But he expressed confidence in the staying power of “The Simpsons.”

“Every network executive has a lot of problems with television series, but this is one of those fortunate situations where we don’t,” Grushow said. “The show has been sharp and terrific this season and I’m confident that it will continue to perform in the time period for years to come. We just renewed it for three more years.”

Jacobson, the executive producer and co-creator of “Mad About You,” said one reason the series may be doing better this season is because it is better, creatively. The emotionally loaded banter over little things--”the things that are said while brushing the teeth or ordering food in a restaurant”--is still the heart of the show, he said, but it is more skillfully dropped into larger stories this year, rather than being the primary focus itself.

“I don’t know if we are hurting ‘The Simpsons,’ because I always thought that the people who like our show are a different audience,” Jacobson said. “But ‘The Simpsons’ has been on for five years and people might be ready to try something new. Especially for teen-agers who want to watch something with their parents, this is a good, very sexy, very loving show for them. It’s an adult show, but there is a lot about what it’s like to be in a good, supportive relationship that younger people can hang onto as well.”

There’s a lesson for Littlefield to hang onto too. The TV dictum that the 8 p.m. hour must feature shows that will appeal to kids and the whole family is probably outdated, he said.

“The success of this show has absolutely changed that idea,” Littlefield said. “And you can look at a night like Tuesday, where we are really struggling (with such youth-oriented shows as “Saved by the Bell”), and it might not be a bad idea to use this smart, wonderful adult lineup as a model for success on other nights.”