WB’s ‘7th Heaven’ a Hush-Hush Hit

The WB’s “Dawson’s Creek” draws attention for its provocative story lines, and the network’s “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” gets magazine covers. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to many, what WB viewers are really opting for is “7th Heaven,” a gentle drama about a minister’s family, which Spin magazine says features “the least-cool teens in a generation.”

The show, now in its third season and by far the WB’s most popular, is so unabashedly corny that some of its youngest fans don’t always admit to watching. “I think it’s kind of, like, dorky to watch it,” says 12-year-old Caroline Carey, of Irvington, N.Y. She tunes in most weeks, however, but tends to talk about it only with other friends who are fans.

Whether viewers admit to it or not, the Nielsen ratings show that plenty of viewers are sneaking a peek at the Monday-night drama about a minister, his wife and seven children: On Feb. 8, in a tear-jerking episode featuring the birth of twins, the program hit its highest ratings ever, drawing 12.5 million viewers. That made it the 35th-most-watched prime-time show of the week, the first time the WB has ever cracked the top 50. What’s more, the show won the 8-9 p.m. time period in total viewers, even though the WB only reaches 90% of the TV households in the U.S.

By turning it into a closet hit, the WB has proven that family programming can survive, and even thrive, in an era when the tube is ruled by dysfunction. And it doesn’t have to be relegated to niche networks such as Pax TV. But it does take some creative marketing, and lots of patience.

Other kinder, gentler shows have made a dent in recent years, including CBS’ “Touched by an Angel.” But the surprise of “7th Heaven” is its appeal to all age groups. Its audience is almost perfectly split: on average, 18% kids ages 2-11; 20% teens 12-17; 19% adults 18-34; 22% adults 35-49; and 21% adults 50 and older. By contrast, the audience for “Angel” is 5.5% children and 56% viewers 50 and up.

“7th Heaven” is the WB’s second-highest-ranked teen show, behind “Dawson’s Creek” (it ranks 12th among all shows on any network in teen viewers). Among WB shows, it’s also ranked second, tied with “Buffy” in adults 18-49, just behind “Charmed.”

Pegging its success is difficult. Fan Carey says “no family is really like that, but I still like to watch it,” particularly stories involving the two oldest daughters, Lucy and Mary. “Usually what’s going on with them is something I can relate to,” she says. Carey’s friend Julia Iodice, who turns 13 on Thursday, says “some things about it bother me. It’s kind of corny. They’re such a perfect family.” Still she watches almost every week for reasons she can’t define. Some of her friends “think it’s pretty lame,” she says; others who watch it “are kind of embarrassed about it.” Both girls also watch the much hipper “Dawson’s Creek.”

‘There’s Some Truth in Each Character’

Creator Brenda Hampton thinks the show works because “there’s some truth in each of these characters. The emotions are real, even if the story is a little bit fantasy. The formula for the show is small story, big subtext. People can get it on a lot of different levels.” Indeed, the show about the birth of the twins managed to work in an object lesson about how girls should aspire to do anything they want. Other shows have dealt with the Holocaust and the burning of African American churches, but the characters’ day-to-day lives always take precedence.

Aaron Spelling, whose Spelling Television produces “7th Heaven,” says it helps that the show doesn’t preach. “The scenes in church talk about social issues, not religion.” His wife, he says, likes the fact that the parents seem sensually in love. “And then those kids are just so adorable,” he adds.

The show had an unusual genesis. Jamie Kellner, the WB’s chief executive officer, called Spelling asking for a family show. “I was stunned,” Spelling says, given the relative lack of family shows since “Family,” a program Spelling did for ABC in the late 1970s.

Talent agency Creative Artists Agency suggested Spelling talk to Hampton, even though she was a sitcom writer, then working on NBC’s “Mad About You,” who had never done a drama. “The first thought in my head was ‘Dear diary, today I met Aaron Spelling,’ ” she says of that meeting. “The man is a legend in the business.”

The Pitch? Do a Show on a Functional Family

Hampton, 47, was unmarried and childless at the time, but had grown up on shows such as “Andy Griffith” and “Father Knows Best,” which she calls “morality plays, but they also were funny.” She pitched a show based on the concept: “What if there were a functional family in America?”

She chose as her role model a friend who was a minister at Riverside Church, an interdenominational church with Baptist and United Church of Christ roots on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Hampton says she doesn’t operate from “any real religious beliefs or political causes,” instead focusing on the morality that is common to all religions.

The largely single, childless staff spun plots “imagining what the best of married life with children could be like,” taking ideas from family members and their own childhood. Hampton has since adopted a teen girl from Vietnam; she also got married in December.

The show barely made a dent in its first season. “I must tell you, I don’t think anyone in this company believed that this show would be a hit, because family shows don’t work,” Spelling says. At the end of the first season, with ratings dragging, Hampton says some network executives pushed to make the older children “bad.”

She resisted, but the show still didn’t take off. Part of the problem was publicity. Spelling says the network at first gave the series short shrift. “We didn’t see buses going around the street saying ‘7th Heaven,’ ” he notes. “That kind of hurt us.”

Kellner sees it differently. Frustrated that the network couldn’t get the mainstream press to write about the show, he called conservative media watchdog L. Brent Bozell, hoping to drum up some interest in those circles. And, in December 1997, the WB hired Creative Response Concepts, a Washington, D.C., public relations firm, to do a campaign targeting media outside the traditional entertainment press, including Christian outlets.

Idea for Series Met With Skepticism

Over six months, CRC pitched the show to places such as the Christian Broadcasting Network, and World Magazine, a Christian publication. It hit up middle America, and some nontraditional writers at mainstream papers, including children’s TV columnists. And it also targeted radio, from the USA Radio Network, which reaches about 1,200 Christian stations in the U.S., to KOKB-AM, a country radio station in Blackwell, Okla., where Kellner was interviewed by Craig Ortwein, a popular morning-drive talk-show host who happens to be a local pastor.

The show was pitched as a program that the entire family could watch together. Lisa Kruska, senior account executive, says she encountered some skepticism. “Some people didn’t really believe there was a family-friendly show out there.”

Well into its second season, the show finally began to grow, and this year, among returning shows, only Fox’s “Ally McBeal” is growing faster. Because so many viewers came so late to the show, the WB also airs reruns from the early years on Sundays at 7 p.m.

“It takes time to find a show, especially a family show,” says Spelling, who notes that “Family” had the same slow start. “You have to give the network credit for sticking with us.” And, both he and Hampton say network executives almost never intervene in plotting, other than to contribute occasional story ideas, a rarity in Hollywood today.

Now that it is a success, local TV stations and foreign broadcasters are buying rerun rights, and Pax TV will air it on its family-oriented network after that. One problem the WB has had, however, is finding a compatible show to air immediately afterward, at 9 p.m. Only “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” succeeded in the time slot, and the two drew completely separate audiences.

So, for next fall, the network is going back to the source: It has asked Hampton to come up with a companion. She’s working on a drama she calls “Andy Griffith” meets “My Three Sons,” about a widowed Florida sheriff raising four boys. It will have more edge than “7th Heaven,” some real police scenes, and a “grandma who reads ‘The Betsy’ over and over as she sits by the pool and drinks Diet Coke.” But, she says, “it will still be a family show with heart.”