‘X’ Marks a Sunday Spot

The old adage that, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” doesn’t always apply in television. Sometimes a network must move a successful series to a different time slot to try to conquer new territory before the show’s popularity inevitably fades.

So it is that Fridays at 9 p.m. will no longer mark the spot for “The X-Files.” This week--unless the World Series requires a Game 7--Fox’s top-rated series moves to Sundays at 9 p.m., its Friday slot now taken over by “Millennium,” a new crime drama.

The gamble is that moving a show out of the time period where it is a proven winner may instigate the very audience decline that the network wants to forestall. So it’s no surprise that Chris Carter, the creator and executive producer of “The X-Files,” was not initially thrilled about FBI agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) carrying out their paranormal investigations from a different address.

“I thought it was home,” Carter says of the Friday spot that “X-Files” had occupied since premiering in 1993, “so my resistance was based on pretty much a feeling. Everyone has said that there is a great viewing audience on Sunday night. I’ve always felt we do the same good cult show, and if it finds a mainstream audience, great. I don’t want to go looking for one necessarily.

“But I know why they made the move. Sunday night was a troubled night for them as far as programming. Programming is a chess game, and they took a strong piece and moved it to a weaker place to shore up the strength there.”

Peter Roth, president of the Fox Entertainment Group, says it’s the network’s fervent hope that “not only will we retain a core audience who have been watching the show, but we will add a whole new element of audience that hasn’t had the opportunity to be exposed because it was on Friday nights. Sunday night is television night in America. We think we are going to broaden the base.”

Roth notes that ABC, CBS and NBC have filled the 9 p.m. Sunday slot for years with movies. “Arguably, this is the most distinctive alternative of them all,” he says.

Carter acknowledges that he’s worried that the kids who watched the series on Fridays won’t be allowed to stay up that late on a school night. Still, he says drolly, “if you go to bed at 10 and wake up at 6, that is a solid eight hours of sleep. But I am not suggesting we corrupt the youth of America to watch ‘The X-Files.’ ”

Carter says he won’t alter the series for the new time slot. It’s difficult enough simply trying to keep it original.

“It’s the danger of any TV series that it gets stale,” he says. “I would be lying to you if I said it’s getting easier. We have to find ways to keep it fresh. I know the first 12 stories we are telling this year, they are all fresh and new and nothing seems repetitive. We are also building on this mythology we have created in terms of the sort of overreaching conspiracy that provides Mulder and Scully with their reason and impediment to the truth.”

If there is a silver lining for Carter in the “X-Files’ move, it’s the fact that he is also the creator and executive producer of “Millennium,” which inherited its Friday slot. He says there is “plenty of pressure” on him for the dramatic thriller to succeed, especially since Fox’s three other new fall series have already left the airwaves. (“Party Girl,” though, is due to return early next year.)

“Millennium,” which is much darker and more unnerving than the intense “X-Files,” stars Lance Henriksen as Frank Black, an ex-FBI agent who specializes in tracking serial killers with his uncanny ability to enter their minds.

Black, his social worker wife Catherine (Megan Gallagher) and their young daughter have relocated to Seattle, where Black has become a member of the Millennium Group--underground law enforcement experts fighting the growing forces of darkness in the world.

The first episode featured such gruesome scenes as a man buried alive with his eyes sewn shut. Nevertheless, Carter maintains that there is a bright message in the center of the series: “He’s a heroic character, and he and his wife are very noble people whom we should all emulate.”

“Millennium” will carry a parental advisory each week, “which I think is a good thing, because I think it’s too intense for some kids,” Carter says.

“It’s not a series designed for children necessarily,” Roth echoes. Still, he says, “it’s a show that will find a very broad base of an audience. I believe, in the case of ‘Millennium,’ the violence is far less graphic than implied.”

Carter also believes women will be as attracted to “Millennium” as they are to “X-Files.” “Lance Henriksen is a very noble man and his wife, as a female role model, is a very strong, independent, smart and no-nonsense character. Not like Dana Scully, but not dissimilar in her approach to her work and life.”

Carter promises “Millennium” will not be a “serial killer of the week” series.

“The show will grow toward Catherine as well,” he says. “She is a clinical social worker, and I often say they deal at two different ends of the same spectrum. He deals with the effects of violent criminals and she deals with the affects.”

Carter says that Fox already has approached him about doing a third series. “I looked at them a little cross-eyed, to be honest,” he reports. “I have plenty of ideas, but it’s a matter of time, because I don’t work like a lot of producers--the sort of arsonist approach, where I light a fire and run. I work very hard on my shows, and there’s just so many hours in a day.”

“The X-Files” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. and “Millennium” airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on Fox.