The Picture Is Scrambled : Broadcasters are pondering their options in the face of big viewer defections. Should they aim for fragmented audiences or keep targeting the masses?

While 1998 is probably destined to go down in history as the year one of television’s last monster hits, “Seinfeld,” rode into the sunset, some TV executives found themselves thinking instead about a show canceled three years earlier: “My So-Called Life.”

That ABC drama, starring Claire Danes as an introspective high school student, won considerable critical acclaim and a small but loyal audience--too small, it turned out, to survive in 1995.

Fast-forward to this fall, when the media showered hype on the WB network’s “Felicity,” a similar new series about an equally self-obsessed college freshman. Suddenly, network officials were pondering whether their audience has dwindled to the point a show like “Life” could make a go of it.

For all the pyrotechnics heralding “Seinfeld’s” exit, which drew more than 75 million viewers, 1998 more subtly represented a turning point in the discussion about television’s future and the need for broadcasters to dramatically redefine their business. As one former network executive put it, “I think this was the year we realized that if we continue [along this path], we may not survive.”

How the TV industry should address the growing sea of options available thanks to cable, satellites and other innovations has presented a conundrum for some time. With surprising speed, questions about what to do when the 500-channel universe arrived quickly turned to hand-wringing over what needs to happen now.

Gone also, some suggest, is the broadcasting model established by network patriarchs such as CBS’ William Paley and NBC’s David Sarnoff, although due to the rapid pace of technological changes, no one can say with any certainty what will replace it. By the time the year ended, a chorus of voices emerged wondering if “narrowcasting”--that is, targeting more focused segments of the public--was supplanting broadcasting as television’s future.

Ironically, these issues were summed up best in the strategic debate between the WB and UPN, rivals for the title of broadcasting’s “fifth network.” In July, UPN argued that broadcasters must live up to the “broad” part of their name and keep trying to reach the widest possible audience. WB officials advocated catering to tighter demographic niches, in their case teenagers and young adults.

Less than six months later, the WB closes 1998 trumpeting significant ratings growth, while UPN has begun backpedaling a bit--retreating in its development of new series to a more targeted approach, a response to the network’s substantial viewing declines.

As recently as January, the major networks appeared defiant and in ways bullish about the future, demonstrating in spectacular fashion their commitment (some would say desperation) to retain those rare franchises that can still assemble huge audiences.

ABC, CBS and Fox each agreed to pay more than $4 billion over eight years for broadcast rights to NFL football, an enormous raise that virtually ensured they will lose money on the deals. Deeming that asking price too rich, NBC still ponied up an unprecedented $850 million to retain the top-rated drama “ER” for three more seasons, and has pledged more than $3 billion to lock up the next five Olympic Games, through 2008.

Both the football and “ER” agreements underscored how networks were leaning more heavily than ever on select viewing platforms capable of luring people back in vast numbers, if only temporarily, to a single channel.

Those agreements, however, came at a price. Television executives recognized the massive rise in costs and downward spiral in ratings represented a dangerous combination, spurring layoffs at CBS and NBC. Production companies and some talent agencies have also engaged in belt-tightening measures.

Moreover, even proven ratings draws, such as the World Series and CBS’ February telecast of the Winter Olympics, slumped to record lows. At the same time, the major networks kept inexorably losing ground to the dozens of new cable channels and Internet services that vie for leisure time and attention.

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Cable networks, individually and as a whole, established one ratings milestone after another during 1998, with programs such as the USA network’s “Moby Dick,” starring Patrick Stewart, and Comedy Central’s risque animated hit “South Park” emerging as eye-catching successes.

“This is the first time things have broken through to this extent,” Comedy Central President Doug Herzog said earlier this year--before Fox tapped him to become its next entertainment chief.

Not surprisingly, the major networks have come to resent the constant drumbeat about their viewership declines. As NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer stated before the current TV season began, “To expect that as many people would watch three channels [today] when there are 200 channels . . . is a little bit bizarre.”

Network representatives also point out that cable networks aren’t immune to the sheer weight of new channels available. The proliferation of news and sports services, after all, steals viewers from CNN and ESPN as surely as it does from CBS and ABC.

Even so, erosion and cannibalization of audience pose a greater threat to broadcasters, which don’t benefit from the subscriber fees paid to cable outlets, instead relying on a single stream of revenue via advertising sales. As a result, NBC was the only broadcast network to make money this year. At the same time, cable channels such as ESPN and Nickelodeon represent enormous profit centers for Disney and Viacom, who aren’t doing nearly so well with their broadcast networks ABC and UPN, respectively.

Facing that dynamic, some began to say that TV has fundamentally changed. John Wells, from his lofty perch as the producer of “ER,” observed that hits of “ER’s” magnitude may never be witnessed again, and that the industry has been “dancing around” the issue because it’s “not in anybody’s best business interests to yet pronounce it dead.”

Even taking into account the frenetic pace of technological advancement and seemingly daily announcement of some new cable channel as competition, there are those who contend the networks have been slow to respond to this reality--frozen in part by the very real concern that the wrong changes can easily make a bad situation worse.

“There probably is some fear associated with losing audience,” WB Entertainment President Garth Ancier noted this summer. “It makes you more conservative in what you put on the air . . . as opposed to saying, ‘Let’s give this a shot.’ ”

To be fair, a degree of insecurity appears justified based on the flurry of changes in executive suites, which have appeared jarring even within a turnover-prone industry. Less than two months into the TV season that officially began in September, NBC and Fox replaced their entertainment chiefs, while Ancier--presumably bound for NBC--chose to leave the WB a few weeks later.

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For all the discouraging signs, the networks enjoyed a few happier days this year, supporting the premise viewers will return for big events. Blockbuster ratings for last January’s Super Bowl, ABC’s remake of “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” featuring Brandy and Whitney Houston, and NBC’s miniseries “Merlin” point the way toward a possible, albeit expensive, future for the networks, mixing series, sports and big events.

Citing such examples, Tom Werner--a principal in Carsey-Werner, one of the last major independent production companies--thinks doom-and-gloom forecasts are premature. People had written off the sitcom in 1984, he noted, before “The Cosby Show” exploded on the scene.

“Broadcast television continues to have a huge place in people’s lives and a huge opportunity if they choose to serve the audience,” Werner says, adding that doing so will require innovation--not just churning out the fifth variation on a medical drama, or another comedy about a single woman living in New York.

The four traditional networks still attract nearly 50 million viewers on an average night, more than any other entertainment medium. That reach remains unique, and network hits draw more than 20 million people each week. Such programs continue to drive the entire TV industry, with network reruns providing vital fodder for cable channels.

Still, the sort of shared experience routinely enjoyed when everyone watched “Roots” and wondered “Who Shot J.R.?” has grown increasingly elusive. In that context, deciphering the cultural aspect of network TV’s decline can prove as confounding as tracking the business implications.

The United States has become what New York University professor Todd Gitlin has called “a culture of dispersion.” People still connect through television programs, but in narrower groups that often break along age, gender and racial lines.

The debate lingers as to what, if anything, is lost when the traditional idea of a “water cooler show” linking diverse groups of people is so greatly diminished. Writer Larry Gelbart, who developed “MASH” for television, said last spring in regard to “Seinfeld’s” demise, “Anything that brings us together--God knows there are enough things that keep us apart--is good for the family that we are as a nation.”

By contrast, Wells maintains that fretting about fragmentation of the audience is akin to lamenting the absence of the horse and buggy. In fact, producers like Wells and executives such as Ancier say narrowcasting will ultimately be creatively liberating, allowing them to craft better series that will be more satisfying to their core audiences--as seen in the way teens have embraced the WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” and “7th Heaven.”

Everyone would agree better shows are part of the answer to TV’s problems--that in some respects, to amend a famous line from Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, “It’s the programming, stupid.” Yet looking ahead, there’s also room for skepticism whether good programs alone, in this new era of television, are enough to offer the networks a winning ticket.

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Bill by the Hour

* There was the Story of the Year--the Clinton scandal and how it was presented--and, yes, many other highs and lows in TV, as Howard Rosenberg recalls. Page 73