All Is Fair in Lust and (Ratings) War

On “Beverly Hills, 90210,” the on-again, off-again Kelly and Brandon are off (again), Donna is dating another in her series of angry young men and wicked Val is still, well, wicked.

Meanwhile, when we last visited Capeside, a.k.a. “Dawson’s Creek,” Dawson and Joey had just kissed, which may or may not lead to you know where, and how’s Jen supposed to cope with all this? And will wisecracking Pacey, who last season went all the way with a teacher, take up with a guidance counselor this time around?

The producers of both prime-time soap operas would urge you to stay tuned, but this season that will require a VCR, because Fox’s “90210” and the WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” are time-slot rivals Wednesday nights at 8.

The matchup, pitting a popular half-year-old teen soap against its glossy, getting-up-there-in-years forebear, is intriguing in a fall season that has critics talking more about the networks’ eroding audience share than about anything they’re actually programming.

But though this particular ratings chase isn’t about to do for prime time what Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did for major league baseball, it does ask some interesting questions:

* Is “90210,” now in season nine and heading toward its 250th episode, on its last legs?

* Will “Dawson’s Creek,” in an attempt to retire “90210,” amp up the sexual tension on a show that last season raised a few parental eyebrows?

* Will “Dawson’s Creek” get a visit from the star of “Felicity,” now that Luke Perry is returning to “90210”?

New episodes of the two shows won’t actually go head-to-head until Oct. 21. “90210” opened the season Sept. 23, but the WB decided to delay “Dawson’s” season premiere until this week, when it will air against the baseball playoffs on Fox. It’s a scheduling strategy that worked last year when the second episode of “Dawson’s” drew 8 million viewers while the other networks were televising President Clinton’s State of the Union address.

But some say this matchup, when it does happen, won’t really be a matchup at all, because the audience mad for “Dawson’s” is teenagers, particularly 12- to 17-year-old girls, and “90210” is strongest among the more-coveted 18- to 49-year-olds.

“Twentysomethings watch [“Dawson’s”], but it’s more of a guilty pleasure for them,” said Sarah Goldsmith, TV editor of Seventeen magazine. “It’s the teens who are going crazy for [“Dawson’s” stars] Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek.”

By contrast, Goldsmith said Seventeen did a story about Perry going back to “90210,” “but it was ho-hum among our readers.”

A recent survey conducted among ninth- through 12th-graders in Julie Clarke’s English classes at Culver City High School certainly reflected “Dawson’s” popularity among teens. Asked which show they would rather watch at 8 p.m., 61 of the students said “Dawson’s Creek” and 38 said “90210” (and 98 responded “Neither”).

That result doesn’t come as a surprise to Fox Entertainment President Peter Roth. “ ‘90210’ was the original teen ritual,” Roth said. “Our series now appeals more to an adult, 18- to 34-year-old audience. They’re the larger and more meaningful audience to us.”

“Their characters are out of college now,” added Paul Stupin, “Dawson’s Creek” executive producer. “Our characters are significantly younger in dealing with issues that teens . . . encounter. The first love. The first kiss. The first sexual encounter.”

To be sure, the characters on “90210” are well beyond their first sexual encounters. Then again, “Dawson’s” is a bit more deflowered in tone than puppy love: Witness last year’s episode in which Pacey (Joshua Jackson) is rebuffed sexually by his teacher and tells her: “You blew it, lady, ‘cause I’m the best sex you never had.”

Sex Is Always in the Air

In fact, despite the age disparity in their respective characters, the two shows share a creative soul, depicting a world in which parents are unreliable and/or stupid, appearance is everything and sex is always in the air.

But “Dawson’s” characters are also capable of improbably savvy, self-referential one-liners, and the show borrows heavily from Top 10 music to create the sense that it’s part of the pop culture zeitgeist. That’s why the show has the potential to be more than simply a teen phenomenon, says Garth Ancier, head of programming at the WB.

“The whole idea of a coming-of-age show where young people in the show speak with adult voices is quite distinctly not just for teenagers,” he said.

Ancier has his own spin on the ratings battle, even though “90210” beat “Dawson’s” by a wide margin among 18- to 49-year-olds last season. To Ancier, “90210” is “vulnerable on the younger edge” of that demographic (Roth’s aforementioned 18- to 34-year-olds, the ones for whom “Dawson’s” is supposedly a guilty pleasure). And besides, Ancier says, “Dawson’s” didn’t debut until midseason and did well by the standards of the WB, a fledgling network that doesn’t reach as many markets as Fox.

By moving the show from Tuesday nights at 9 to Wednesday nights at 8, the WB is trying not only to take a bite out of “90210” but also to bolster its profile each night, spreading out its marquee shows. Taken together, they sound like a new line of perfume--”7th Heaven,” “Hyperion Bay,” “Felicity,” “Dawson’s Creek”--but in fact they’re the WB’s way of claiming younger viewers. Not coincidentally, it’s a strategy Fox used with success when it began as a broadcast network with such shows as “90210.”

At the end of last season, “Dawson’s” viewers were left wondering who would wind up with whom among Dawson (Van Der Beek), Joey (Holmes) and Jen (Michelle Williams). “A key focus last season was the triangle between Dawson, Jen and Joey. This season we blow up the triangle,” said producer Stupin.

Meanwhile, back on the West Coast, the “90210” gang isn’t exactly sitting around the Peach Pit in cardigan sweaters discussing Social Security, but the show’s numbers are down from peak seasons and there’s a sense among its fans that things have gotten a tad stagnant.

A Web site devoted to weekly wrap-ups of the show’s episodes, for instance, posted this synopsis of the season premiere: “Time stands still; Brandon and Kelly are together, no they’re not, yes they are, no they’re not; Steve whatever, David and Val whatever, Noah and Donna whatever.”

But Fox’s Roth is “bullish on the show’s chances” and for good reason: “90210” still pulls in respectable numbers (it finished 49th in total households last season) at a time when the networks, with the inroads made by cable and the Internet, are down to an estimated 47% share of the total viewing audience.

Aaron Spelling, the show’s executive producer, also has high hopes for the casting gimmicks the series has up its sleeve this season. They include former “Melrose Place” resident Laura Leighton, who arrives as a comely schemer, and the return of Perry as Dylan McKay.

Perry joins the show in late November, replacing the exiting Jason Priestly, who will direct future episodes.

Producer of a show that arguably made a successor like “Dawson’s Creek” possible, Spelling marvels at what his rival was able to portray in its debut season, saying he admired the guts the “Dawson’s” people displayed. Coming from Spelling, the man behind everything from “Charlie’s Angels” to “Melrose Place,” that seems like a high compliment.

“It’s amazing how much TV has changed,” he said. “Some of the things that were done the first year on ‘Dawson’s Creek’ we never could have gotten away with. Had we ever had a girl climb up to someone’s bedroom and sleep with him, we would have been kicked off the air.”