TV’s ‘You Like Me, You Really Like Me’ Factor

The biggest new hit on television, “ER,” does not have a single major household name in its regular cast.

TV’s Tim Allen was a relative unknown before “Home Improvement,” except on the comedy circuit. Same for Roseanne. Same for Jerry Seinfeld. Same for Brett Butler.

Television has a history of creating its own stars, and coming from motion pictures is rarely a qualification. The few onetime film headliners succeeding in television today include Candice Bergen of “Murphy Brown,” Angela Lansbury of “Murder, She Wrote,” Chuck Norris of “Walker, Texas Ranger” and Sam Waterston of “Law & Order.”

Veteran executives and producers Aaron Spelling, Grant Tinker and Fred Silverman, say performer likability and comfort are all-important requirements for television stardom.

But several younger executives, ABC Entertainment President Ted Harbert and his NBC counterpart, Warren Littlefield, think other significant factors have come into play.

Roseanne, for instance, may not be all that likable or a comfortable refuge to many viewers, but her outstanding series, Harbert notes, has “relatability. There’s a ton of people out there she really talks to.”

It’s an edgier era, from sensational newscasts to tougher entertainment series. Even commercials, such as the slashing rivalry between AT&T; and MCI, have that edge; and “Roseanne” fittingly broke ground in depicting blue-collar worries over money and other social matters.

While Harbert thinks “relatability” is critical for such current stars as Roseanne and Butler, Littlefield adds that the proliferation of TV alternatives also makes it important “to look for a uniqueness” in performers.

“The best way to describe it,” he says, “is a signature style, a presence, that makes performers stand out. Jerry Seinfeld brings that. So does Tim Allen.

“Once upon a time, TV was thought of as a baby-sitter, and comfort was a key ingredient. Today, I think it’s distinctiveness and originality (that make the difference) because of the many choices.”

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The difficulty of succeeding in today’s TV competition, even if you’re a top movie figure, was made apparent again Sunday when Woody Allen, whose new film “Bullets Over Broadway,” is getting raves, appeared in an ABC remake of his play, “Don’t Drink the Water,” and it finished 85th among 96 network shows last week.

While reality TV series and a loss of innocence--this is hardly the age of “Father Knows Best” or even “The Cosby Show”--have sharply changed the tone of TV, there are certain constants in the creation of television stars.

And those constants, which include likability perhaps above all, become obvious when you scan the ratings and network lineups and see all the home-grown headliners. Many, of course, including Robin Williams, Danny DeVito and Bruce Willis, have gone on to films, but the TV factory keeps churning out what it hopes are hot new faces with its special chemistry.

“What we are aware of,” says Littlefield, “is that an unknown is your biggest upside. You can fail, but I don’t think there’s anything as powerful for a TV audience as discovering an unknown and making him or her into a star. It’s a very personal discovery, and you can’t get that with established stars.”

Spelling, whose company produces the “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Melrose Place” series, says, “A TV star has to come into your bedroom, your kitchen. . . . Is the audience comfortable with that person in your bedroom? You’re divorced when you go to a movie--you see the stars and you like them or you don’t. But seeing somebody in two movies a year is different from seeing somebody 26 or 34 weeks a year.

“In all the research we do, we don’t ask: ‘Tell us if you liked him in the show.’ We ask: ‘Do you like him or her?’ ”

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Says Tinker, former head of NBC and MTM Enterprises: “I think likability is very high up there. I remember when it came down to two finalists to host ‘The Hollywood Squares.’ Dan Rowan was one and Peter Marshall was the other. Rowan did it perfectly. Marshall made more mistakes, but he was just so likable and human making the mistakes that we gave him the job.”

Tinker and Silverman--who ran programming at ABC, CBS and NBC--say that the number of movie stars who succeeded big in a television series is comparatively small.

“I think the crossover is easier for TV stars than movie stars,” says Spelling.

Among the latest to try are David Caruso, formerly of “NYPD Blue,” and Rob Morrow of “Northern Exposure.” However, Caruso’s replacement in “NYPD Blue,” Jimmy Smits, was a star in television’s “L.A. Law” but didn’t break through in a major way in his film attempts.

Movie stars, Silverman maintains, are usually popular with an audience that is smaller than “what we think of (as large) in television. That’s why a lot of movie stars don’t draw flies (on TV).

“I think it’s much easier for a broad-based TV star like Tim Allen (whose film ‘The Santa Clause’ is a smash) to score in a movie than for a movie star to score in television. There are some exceptions. Clint Eastwood would probably draw a very large television audience. And probably Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks. But I don’t know whether Charlie Sheen and his brother (Emilio Estevez) would draw.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger could be in the Top 10 (TV series) tomorrow in an action show. Danny DeVito (formerly of ‘Taxi’) could come back.”

Silverman adds that “Candice Bergen surprised a lot of people, but it was just the perfect marriage of performer and character.” And he predicts that “Tim Allen in four or five years would never consider doing another television show,” what with top movie stars getting astonishing multimillion-dollar salaries.

No matter. There’s always someone waiting in the wings. Says Steve Warner, senior vice president of program planning for CBS: “What does attract people to television is the freshness of the faces.”

True. That’s certainly the case with shows like the freshly minted “ER.” But, alas, there are those other fine TV attractions as well, like the creepy daytime talk shows where the human race seems to sink to its deepest depths, and where likability and comfort seem like words from a distant, civilized planet.