Viewers’ Urge to Surf Sinks Network Plans

Television programmers have relied for years on the strategy of spacing established programs throughout a night and having people hang around to watch what comes in between them.

In an age in which 97% of TV viewers watch within reach of a remote control, however, the yellowed pages of that playbook may be starting to fray at the edges, with the audience capable of programming its own lineup by flitting from network to network and show to show.

During the first few weeks of the new TV season, some nights have seen the audience pingpong around the dial, with ratings rising and falling sharply for different networks from one half-hour to the next.

An early example this season is ABC’s “Hiller and Diller,” where some viewers can’t seem to get to the remote fast enough. The series, which airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m., last week witnessed a drop of nearly 7 million from the 21.5 million people who had watched “Home Improvement” at 9. ABC’s viewership then surged back to more than 18 million at 10 for “NYPD Blue.”

Although that’s hardly a new phenomenon, some declines this year seem even more pronounced than usual. Last Thursday, 19% of the audience that watched “Friends” didn’t visit the new diner-set show that follows, “Union Square”--the biggest drop in that time slot since February 1996.

By contrast, 9 out of 10 “Seinfeld” viewers checked out “Veronica’s Closet,” starring Kirstie Alley, and a similar percentage of the “Frasier” crowd tuned in “Just Shoot Me,” with Laura San Giacomo.

The jarring nature of some of this season’s ups and downs has spurred questions about audience flowing from one show into another through an evening. For the most part, network executives say there is still the potential to attract viewers to popular programs and keep many of them affixed to a single network.

Yet programmers also acknowledge that they can’t expect people to sit like a lox watching series they don’t like--not in an environment in which viewers, with the press of a button, can change to any one of the 45 channels the average home receives thanks to cable and satellite TV.

“The patience seems much shorter with new shows, especially with those shows on the half-hour,” said Kelly Kahl, CBS’ vice president of scheduling. “People look at them for about five minutes, and boom, they’re gone.”

The networks have tried to combat such defections by adding programming elements between shows, more seamless transitions from one program to the next and--in one of those viral catch phrases that spreads through the industry--”branding” nights. Examples include ABC labeling its Friday comedies “TGIF,” CBS dubbing Saturdays “America’s Night of Television” and, of course, NBC’s “Must-See TV” designation.

Some network executives argue that a certain amount of audience ebb and flow is to be expected, given the heightened demands that our fast-paced society places on leisure time.

“Most people have lives and don’t sit for three hours [straight] and watch television,” said NBC senior vice president of program planning and scheduling Preston Beckman, who has called the dips between hit shows “the ‘walk the dog’ theory”--an alibi NBC used a few years ago regarding “Madman of the People,” before canceling the show for fumbling away too much of “Seinfeld’s” audience.

As for the perceived increase in audiences bouncing from channel to channel, the networks may have themselves to blame, beyond the usual mix of mediocre programs that follow good ones.

Specifically, fierce competition among the networks prompted them to schedule programming blocks directly opposite one another that cater to a similar audience. On Wednesdays, for example, viewers can choose among sitcoms on four networks--ABC, NBC, CBS and WB--from 8 to 9 p.m.

“Especially on nights when you’ve got two or three competing sitcom blocks, people can program their own schedule,” said CBS’ Kahl. “Everyone can be their own network programmer.”

Similarly, NBC scheduled a comedy lineup Mondays directly opposite CBS, while CBS challenged ABC’s “TGIF” shows with its own version of a youth-appeal comedy night on Fridays. Mondays have thus far proven particularly interesting, with both NBC and CBS achieving peaks and valleys as viewers shift between them.

“On Monday and Tuesday, there are actually strong comedy alternatives on two networks. That’s new,” said Jeff Bader, ABC’s vice president of scheduling.

“You do have a sitcom audience that is looking for a sitcom they want to watch, and they do have other choices now. . . . They’re not network-loyal. They’re show-loyal.”

NBC--which has the largest audience to lose with its Thursday hits--also maintains there’s a tendency to proclaim the glass half-empty when it’s actually half-full. Rather than charting how the audience leaves shows, network officials marvel that “hammocked” time periods (where two shows support the one between them) still work as well as they do, given the explosion of options available.

Competitors agree that people still like the convenience of watching back-to-back shows on one channel without having to flip around, such as CBS’ “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” “Early Edition” and “Walker, Texas Ranger” on Saturdays, or Fox’s “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill” and “The X-Files” on Sundays.

The simplest way for networks to keep viewers would appear obvious: Put on better shows; still, programmers point out that some of prime time’s current favorites began slowly, including “The Drew Carey Show,” “The X-Files” and “Touched by an Angel.” That means patience may remain the key to long-term success--assuming, that is, that a remote-happy audience cooperates by finding shows the networks deem worthy of it.