‘Frasier’ Claims Its Mirth Right

“Frasier” is beginning a period filled with major rites of passage, as if the NBC sitcom were about to experience its bar mitzvah and college graduation in one two-week span.

Sunday night, the show will have a chance at making history by winning its fifth straight Emmy Award as best comedy series--a feat no program has achieved, consecutively or otherwise. Then, 11 days later, “Frasier” starts its sixth season, returning to the place where everybody knows its name: the Thursday slot that forebear “Cheers” occupied for a decade before passing the baton to “Seinfeld” in 1993.

The pressure, stakes and expectations are high. Media buyers clearly embraced the decision, with NBC selling $2.2 billion in prime-time advertising this season, a slight increase from last year.

Other networks also tacitly offered their endorsement by opting not to aggressively challenge NBC on Thursday night with one of their own well-established shows. The WB network made the only significant move, countering with comedies principally featuring African American casts--a strategy Fox employed with moderate success earlier this decade, without fazing NBC.

“Frasier” thus has the opportunity to become not only the most-honored program of its era but also the most-watched--a combination of commercial and artistic success rarely attained in any medium.

As the scheduling process played out, series star Kelsey Grammer made clear he wanted to inherit the Thursday mantle and doesn’t fear comparisons to “Seinfeld” (which won the Emmy before “Frasier” began its streak) or “Cheers,” a four-time Emmy winner.

“We do arguably have the best show on television, and since the Thursday night 9 o’clock slot has basically been preserved as the place for that show, I thought we deserved it,” he said this week at his production office on the Paramount lot.

“I think the night has had a real patina of quality to it,” said NBC Entertainment President Warren Littlefield. With “Frasier” becoming the network’s Thursday centerpiece, and “Friends” and “ER” still opening and closing the night, NBC could “send a message to competitors that we’re going to be pretty tough to take on.”

Ad agency Zenith Media suggested that “Frasier’s” appeal is somewhat different than “Seinfeld”--which drew more men and younger viewers--and will alter the network’s Thursday profile. The agency’s preseason report predicted NBC’s lineup will be “weakened, although still dominant.”

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“Frasier’s” new season opens where the show left off in May, with Frasier having lost his radio station job, and brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) being forced to move into a more modest apartment as the result of his divorce from always-unseen wife Maris.

That story line will continue for at least eight episodes. While recognizing that the program will be under a microscope this year, Grammer stressed that outside considerations won’t influence its creative direction.

“The time slot move is obviously loaded with all kinds of pressures and its own intrinsic demands, but they’re not necessarily demands that affect the show,” he said. “We’ve always tried to do the best show we can do, and I don’t think that’s changed.”

“It’s always been a challenge for us to keep the show good--to not go to the safe kind of storytelling or safe joke areas that we know have worked before, because then people will say, ‘Oh, they’re repeating themselves.’ We could do that, but the show [would] start to get a little formulaic,” added executive producer Christopher Lloyd.

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After spending its first year nestled behind “Seinfeld,” NBC made “Frasier” the linchpin of its Tuesday lineup, where the show at first trailed ABC’s “Home Improvement” by a wide margin. Over the years that gap narrowed, with “Frasier” averaging 16.8 million viewers last season and frequently surpassing the Tim Allen comedy.

Facing substantially weaker competition, “Seinfeld” drew an audience of more than 30 million viewers, and it’s expected that “Frasier” ratings will rise considerably. The question remains how much, but the “Frasier” team says any creative changes represent a natural progression, not an effort to broaden the show’s appeal.

“Our real job here is to resist doing anything different,” said “Frasier” co-creator David Lee. “People forget ‘Frasier’ was on Thursday night before, and it did quite well. It’s not like it’s entering foreign territory, where there are strange natives.”

NBC’s Littlefield said there has been discussion of “tweaking” the show, “but all within their comfort zone. No one within this organization has said, ‘How can we make “Frasier” more like “Seinfeld”?’ It is what it is: a family comedy--a wonderfully dysfunctional family comedy.”

Grammer, meanwhile, anticipates many more comfortable years in “Frasier’s” shoes. Despite starring in projects such as the movie “Down Periscope,” and continuing to develop films and TV series through his company, Grammnet (which produced NBC’s “Fired Up”), the actor has negotiated a new contract extending through a ninth season of “Frasier” and said he has always thought the show would match the longevity of “Cheers’ ” 11-year run.

“I don’t think anybody in the cast can even imagine a better job than this job. I know I can’t,” he said.

Series creators David Angell, Peter Casey and Lee will have their attention somewhat diverted this fall by launching a new program, NBC’s Nathan Lane comedy “Encore! Encore!,” but no one expects “Frasier” to experience any ill effects.

“After 150 episodes, we have it pretty well under control,” Lloyd said.

With another 100 episodes or more potentially in the show’s future, “Frasier,” for all its Emmys and critical adulation, may someday face the slings and arrows that eventually assailed “Seinfeld”--accused during the final years, in essence, of losing its comedy fastball.

“When a show wins a lot of awards, when a show is popular, people take shots,” Lloyd said. “When a show has both, as we will this year, there’s a lot of people ready to be the first one to say, ‘What is so great really about this show “Frasier”?’ ”

Yet unlike “Seinfeld’s” namesake, who some maintain was partly swayed by critics in deciding to call it quits, “Frasier’s” alter ego--after well-chronicled off-screen travails that included a stint in the Betty Ford Center, which briefly disrupted production two years ago--claims he doesn’t suffer from a thin skin.

“I’ve been wearing a bull’s-eye a long time,” a smiling Grammer said. “I’m comfortable with it. . . . The great thing about having detractors is proving them wrong.”

* The Emmy Awards air Sunday at 7 p.m. on NBC (Channel 4). “Frasier” begins its sixth season Sept. 24 at 9 p.m on NBC.