Networks’ Salvation May Mean Losing Labels

Comic George Carlin once observed that words carry with them certain expectations. As proof, he suggested that if Janitor in the Drum or Raid marketed feminine hygiene products, no one would buy them.

In a way, the words used to describe television can create a thorny marketing problem as well, fostering confusion about comedies that really aren’t or dramas that can be pretty funny.

Dozens of channels now turn out countless hours of original fare weekly, but the terminology hasn’t kept pace. Four words--”drama,” “sitcom,” “reality” and “variety”--are still employed to define virtually everything in prime time.

The catchall “reality” category especially raises the question of just whose reality this is, anyway. In the reality commonly shown on Fox, only felons, freaks and those willing to pound a nail up their nose need apply. Regular folks must combine bad luck (being mauled by a bear) with good luck (a friend is nearby with a video camera) to achieve their 15 minutes of fame, assuming they live that long.

Clearly, the time has come for some new labels. “Reality” doesn’t quite work to characterize anything that doesn’t involve actors. Even lumping shows like “Frasier” and “Unhappily Ever After” under the broad heading “situation comedy” seems deficient, about as descriptive as saying Halle Berry and George Wendt resemble each other because both are bipeds.

In short, producers and executives need to start thinking outside the conventional boxes. Everything, including the length of programs--why not a 15-minute sketch comedy next to a 45-minute talk-variety show?--ought to be in play.

Broadcasters obviously need to appeal to the widest possible audience, but major networks don’t draw the crowds they once did, which should give them license to take such chances. Why shouldn’t ABC throw some wild, provocative program on Thursday or Saturday nights where the network’s ratings couldn’t be much worse running a test pattern?

Series with different sensibilities have found their way onto the networks, but the effort to shoehorn such programs into existing categories often does them a disservice and creates strange bedfellows during the televised award shows that now seem to air without fail every Sunday and Wednesday.

Take “Ally McBeal,” which competes among half-hour comedies in the Emmy and Golden Globe awards, even though the one-hour show--for all its quirks--frequently ends on a note of depression-inducing poignancy.

More recently, the half-hour series “Sports Night” has evoked debate over the necessity of the laugh track pushed for by ABC against the producer’s wishes. The network recently relented on one point, no longer insisting the program film in front of a studio audience. Yet ABC’s promotion still struggles to convey the essence of a smart, fast-paced, at times very serious show that goes behind the scenes of a fictitious “SportsCenter”-type program.

“I can’t believe that there’s really a necessity to say it has to be one or the other,” executive producer Aaron Sorkin said regarding the program’s mix of comedy and drama, citing “MASH” as a show that deftly wove both into episodes.

Then again, television is new to Sorkin, a playwright and screenwriter who marvels that “Sports Night” is deemed a marginal ratings performer with more than 11 million people tuning in during an average week--about 2.7 million less than its more traditional lead-in, “Spin City.”

“Where I’m from, if you get 75 people in a church basement in SoHo, that’s sold out,” he noted.

A Decade Ago, They Were Dramedies

“Sports Night” and “Ally McBeal” are hardly the first programs to bend the distinction between comedy and drama. The issue of blurring those lines swirled with equal fury more than a decade ago, when hybrids such as “The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” “Frank’s Place,” “The Wonder Years” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.” gave rise to the term “dramedy.”

The late Brandon Tartikoff, at that time NBC’s entertainment chief, dismissed such programs as being neither funny nor dramatic enough to please an audience. His counterpart, ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard (in the 1980s, all TV executives were by decree named “Brandon”), was more bullish, saying the programs were great but viewers needed to learn how to watch them. Unfortunately, history has shown the first thing TV viewers usually learn, when pressed to do so, is how fast they can change the channel.

Nevertheless, those programs helped propel comedy in a different direction, breaking the accepted sitcom rhythm and trusting viewers to get the jokes. Something can be clever and engaging, those series said, without being punctuated by the howls of a studio audience.

Some felt shooting comedies without an audience actually generated better work. As Larry Gelbart, who developed “MASH” for television, pointed out at the time, “It creates a different goal for writers when they know they are writing for two or three hundred people with shopping bags sitting between their legs.”

Because most dramedies fizzled ratings-wise, so did the debate. The sitcom remained king, and most new series--hewing closely to what has worked before--can still be boiled down to synopses like “ ‘Cheers’ in a [insert alternate workplace setting here],” “ ‘Friends,’ but with [fill in the blank]” or “ ‘Seinfeld’ meets [“The Flintstones,” “Twin Peaks,” “Dawson’s Creek,” etc.].”

Granted, there’s a comfort level in simplicity and familiarity. As programs ranging from “Home Improvement” to “Touched by an Angel” demonstrate, a show that’s funny or touching enough doesn’t need a shaky single camera racing down a hallway to captivate an audience.

Still, a percentage of the public has shown they will watch a series like Home Box Office’s “The Sopranos,” about a Prozac-popping Mafia don, chuckling as people get rubbed out. Programs that make some people fidget, in fact, are precisely the sort that galvanize a segment of the audience, raising the question whether networks would rather have an adoring crowd of 8 million tune in, or 9.2 million viewers who can take or leave a show--and will as soon as something else comes along.

As programmers work to decipher that riddle, Sorkin, whose credits include “A Few Good Men,” said he’ll continue using every trick in his creative arsenal to help “Sports Night” be all that it can be--hoping to distinguish the show through its quality until someone comes up with a better name for the genre.

“In my view, there are musicals or nonmusicals,” he said. “ ‘Sports Night’ is a nonmusical. That, I’m very comfortable with.”