‘Seinfeld’ Farewell: The Death of Nothing

When the concluding chapter of “Roots” aired on ABC on Jan. 30, 1977, the United States seemed to come to a standstill.

More than half of all homes tuned in, and the historical TV miniseries provided a common experience for almost 77 million viewers, spurring discussion of slavery and race in schools and offices.

“They changed the times of the shows in Vegas because they were afraid nobody would show up,” executive producer David L. Wolper recalled of the last night.

The final episode of “Seinfeld,” which NBC will broadcast tonight to an expected audience of more than 75 million people, promises to be a similar kind of event--a shared American cultural milestone sure to be gabbed about over water coolers and Starbucks counters Friday morning.

In that sense, saying a fond farewell to a situation comedy renowned for being about nothing has broader implications, for “Seinfeld” may be the last hurrah of the huge broadcast event that knits us as a nation.

In an age in which the average viewer receives dozens of channels and people tote water around in individual bottles, television’s ability to forge such communal bonds is fast diminishing. Few TV shows on the air now seem destined to approach the cultural impact of “Seinfeld.”

During its nine-year run, “Seinfeld” has provided fodder for conversation, introducing phrases like “Yada, yada” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with that” (Jerry and George’s disclaimer after saying they’re not gay) into the national lexicon. The series even prompted a much-publicized lawsuit after Miller Brewing fired an employee for discussing a racy episode with a co-worker. The executive, Jerold Mackenzie, sued Miller and won a $26.6-million judgment from the company last year.

“Seinfeld” has helped bring people together, serving as “a provender of words and images that became a kind of cultural shorthand between people, providing a sense of community,” said cultural critic Neal Gabler.

But “Seinfeld” is also one of the few weekly programs still reaching such a vast audience, as viewers turn to cable channels and upstart TV networks. The three major networks, which still accounted for 90% of prime-time viewing in the 1970s, have seen their audience share dip to 47% this season, the lowest-rated year in their history.

Even “Seinfeld” and NBC’s medical drama “ER”--the two most-watched series, each averaging in excess of 30 million viewers per week--attract less than 12% of the U.S. population, according to ratings service Nielsen Media Research.

And for all the hoopla about the end of “Seinfeld,” the show has held scant appeal for large segments of the population. Based on Nielsen figures, the comedy fails to register among the top shows in African American households or among people over 55, many of whom prefer CBS’ time-period competitor, “Diagnosis Murder,” starring Dick Van Dyke.

“This is a culture of dispersion, and it’s dispersed in television as in other forms,” said Todd Gitlin, a New York University professor and author of “The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Cultural Wars.” “ ‘Bonanza’ belonged to a time when culture was more conglomerated and focused--there were three networks and three car companies. In a larger sense, the significance is that the culture no longer has a common story.”

In the Old Days, ‘Everything Stopped’

Twenty years ago, mass viewing experiences were still relatively common. ABC, CBS and NBC monopolized the TV audience, the Fox and WB networks didn’t exist, and cable remained in its infancy. As recently as 1987, people could watch “The Cosby Show” with a sense of certainty that many co-workers also were watching. More than a third of U.S. homes tuned in weekly, as they did to “All in the Family” through the early 1970s.

“Television in the old days made it a smaller community. There was something wonderful and small town-ish about that,” said “All in the Family” producer Norman Lear, who remembers how “everything stopped” Sunday nights for “The Colgate Comedy Hour” in the 1950s, and people talked Monday about what Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis had done the night before.

Today, almost three-quarters of U.S. households receive a plethora of channels via cable or satellite dishes. Roughly as many homes contain more than one television set, allowing family members to scatter and watch programs that engage them in separate rooms.

The audience anticipated for tonight’s “Seinfeld” now assembles for only a few rarefied events. Yet while the Super Bowl and such major news stories as Princess Diana’s funeral or the O.J. Simpson trial verdict still draw huge ratings, regular programming seldom approaches those levels.

The challenge facing the networks will become more difficult as the spectrum of options expands. An explosion of choices promises to follow once the industry solves the technological and marketing puzzle of how best to wed digital television, computers and the telephone to disseminate information and entertainment.

In a society increasingly connected through the media, cultural common ground could be one of the casualties as the number of widely seen programs declines.

“This is the new ersatz community,” said Vicki Abt, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University. “We’re desperate for community, [but] it’s virtual reality. We feel like a community because we watch television.”

NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer maintains that, despite all the channels available, it would be “a terrible thing for our culture” not to have programs that vast numbers of people can share.

“Clearly, the public wants that,” he said. “As a society, if we wake up one morning and everyone has watched their own channel, the water cooler is going to be a much more boring place.”

Many television shows still create that sense of community, just among narrower segments of the audience. Programs such as Fox’s “The X-Files” or the syndicated “Xena: Warrior Princess” have developed rabid followings, including on the Internet.

During the last year, WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” rapidly became must-see fare for teenagers, Fox’s “Ally McBeal” struck a chord with working women while spurring debate about the length of their skirts, and “South Park”--running on the little-seen cable network Comedy Central--caused a furor that landed the risque animated series on the cover of Newsweek.

Bowling’s Decline Is Tied to Television

The trend toward programs catering to smaller niches could fuel the perception that television does more to divide society than unify it.

Harvard University political scientist Robert Putnam came to that conclusion in his 1995 article “Bowling Alone,” which suggested that television bears some blame for a decrease in bowling leagues and other civic organizations.

“I do believe the net effect of television has been to pull us into our homes . . . into darkened rooms by ourselves, where we’re not interacting with other human beings,” Putnam said. “The characteristic of modern technology--this is partly television and partly the Internet--is to privatize our leisure time.”

Bringing people together to watch television represents a bottom-line concern for the major networks, which need hit programs such as “Seinfeld” to survive. Splintering of the audience has manifested itself in heightened desperation to acquire programming with clear mass appeal.

As a consequence, programming costs have soared. NBC, for example, will pay more than $850 million for the next three seasons of “ER” and nearly $3.6 billion for broadcast rights to the next five Olympic Games. Earlier this year, four networks (including cable channel ESPN) committed $17.6 billion to televise National Football League games through 2005.

Grant Tinker, the chairman of NBC from 1981 to 1986, called such prices “obscene,” while expressing relief that he no longer serves in his former capacity.

“I’m just happy that I’m not facing what these people are today,” Tinker said of current network management. “It’s a much tougher row to hoe now, and [his tenure at NBC] wasn’t that long ago.”

The networks paid so much because of those franchises’ proven ability to attract viewers, but some say declining ratings have diminished the willingness to gamble on new ventures.

Wolper, who also produced the blockbuster miniseries “The Thorn Birds” and “North and South,” thinks fear at the networks could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“You can’t get the audience, so you can’t spend the money,” he said. “They don’t take chances anymore. You’ve got to take a chance in order to have a smasheroo.”

The challenge of attracting viewers has also influenced programming content, according to Pier Massimo Forni, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who established the university’s “civility project.”

“You need more and more abrasive behavior--or so the producers and the writers believe--in order to grab the attention of an audience that is becoming inured to breaches of civility,” he said, citing the “happy rudeness” displayed in situation comedies, including “Seinfeld,” and the gritty realism of dramas like “NYPD Blue” and “Homicide: Life on the Street.”

“Every new show wants to establish a shock level for itself in order to put itself on the map. It’s a way of besting the previous show.”

An unavoidable aspect of the “Seinfeld” finale is also the enormous media attention showered on the program since December, when Jerry Seinfeld announced his intention to end the series.

Gabler, whose upcoming book “Life: The Movie” explores the way entertainment values permeate American life, described the months leading up to tonight’s finale as “a national Irish wake.”

Public Send-Off Is Applauded

To writer Larry Gelbart, who developed “M*A*S*H” as a TV series for CBS and skewered the media in the Home Box Office movie “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” the outpouring of “Seinfeld” coverage says as much about the Information Age as the program itself.

“It is a case of another kind of media frenzy that is self-perpetuating, [naming] a winner of the moment,” Gelbart said. “I think virtues are being attributed to the show [that] the people involved don’t even claim for themselves. It’s a show about a bunch of spiteful, mean-spirited people. It’s fun, but it’s hardly statue material.”

Gelbart nevertheless sees value in the public send-off “Seinfeld” is receiving. “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.”

Not everyone would agree.

“Everybody likes ice cream. They just have different flavors,” said NYU’s Gitlin. “I’m not nostalgic for the days when we all talked about a common show. It didn’t make us a better or a happier society.”

Television officials concede it may be a long wait for another program to rival “Seinfeld.” “Cheers” prompted prime time’s last major public funeral in 1993, preceded by “M*A*S*H” (whose finale remains the highest-rated program ever) a decade earlier.

Even so, within the industry, hope continues to spring eternal, with producers and executives stressing that one can never predict when and where the next hit program will arise.

According to Chuck Lorre, executive producer of the ABC comedy “Dharma & Greg,” which paid homage to “Seinfeld” in this week’s episode, the water-cooler show will merely lie dormant “till somebody does something remarkable. The medium fools you. It still has the capacity to bring people together.”

* THE FINAL PITCH: A Carpinteria energy bar firm is going up against the big guys with an ad during the show. D1

* BIG FINISH: How huge will last “Seinfeld” ratings be? Calendar Weekend