Hey, Dude, Have You Checked Out These New Shows?

Howard Stern. “South Park.” Beer commercials. “Family Guy.” Wrestling. “The Waterboy.” Maxim magazine. Jerry Springer.

They’re all “extreme”--loud, brash, misbehaving, parent-irking, in-your-face attractions that flirt with danger, defiance, indecency.

Nasty? You bet. Subversive? They hope. Irreverent? Try insolent. Maybe insulting. And proud of it.

That’s the point. The audience they’re after is young males. Guys just out of school, or wishing they were. Fearlessly rebellious, or wishing they were. Too cool and clever for you, or desperately wishing they were.

And there’s money in them thar pockets. Lots of it. Disposable income they’re quick to dispose of--what, them worry?--but you gotta give ‘em what they want.

What do they want? Check out today’s trends in TV. The tube is coming around to these spendthrift guys in a major way, taking its cue from the movies that learned long ago that the fastest way to big bucks was bad behavior expressed gleefully--from “National Lampoon’s Animal House” to Adam Sandler’s “The Waterboy”--or copious fighting, explosions, screeching cars and special effects.

TV was always a commercial medium skewed toward females, but now it finds itself increasingly under pressure to find new audiences for its expanding offerings as well as fresh demographics for advertisers who’ve maxed out the old ones.

Hey! How ‘bout those young, male free-spenders?

Now we’re seeing unruly mischief and rompin’ stompin’ action everywhere: Stern’s radio and E! channel babes ‘n’ baseness movin’ on up to CBS stations, the bad-boy tykes of cable’s “South Park” aging into the bad-boy dad of Fox’s “Family Guy,” wrestling on cable leading to wrestling on UPN, anti-Oprah “regular guy” hosts on FX and Comedy Central--even the Game Show Network creating video game formats designed to draw in dudes.

“They are in many ways the Holy Grail for the advertising community,” says Peter Ligouri, president of the FX cable channel, which recently debuted the manly lifestyle magazine “The X Show” (weeknights), joining its male-luring “X-Files” repeats, “Macho Macho Movie Saturday” and sports programming. Ligouri says young adult guys are valuable to grab because “they are the group that is leaving television and are much more selective in what they watch.”

Besides, evolving gender roles put men in charge of more household buying, says Tim Brooks, USA Network’s senior vice president of research and co-author of “The Complete Directory to Prime Time TV Shows.” But the networks “continued to program primarily for women 18 to 49, with shows like ‘Friends’ and ‘ER.’ ”

Now even big, bad broadcasting is getting into the act: UPN, the sixth-ranked network, is shifting gears once again, this time into the overdrive of “being guy-friendly,” says UPN Entertainment President Tom Nunan. Exhibit No. 1: Last month’s UPN World Wrestling Federation special becomes two weekly hours every Thursday this fall. No. 2: The behind-the-scenes hockey drama “Power Play” on UPN. No. 3: Fall titles such as “Shasta McNasty” (three hip-hop dudes in Venice Beach) and midseason entries such as “The Strip,” a Vegas-set hour from vroom-vroom producer Joel Silver (“Lethal Weapon”).

Those looking to lure men once looked mostly to the ESPN approach. As Ligouri puts it, “Put on sports, get men--with monster levels of success.” But today, video games, computers and other flashy interests compete for young men’s time. “With the lure of the Internet and remotes, their viewing habits are quite different from what they were years ago,” the FX president says. “There’s so much less patience for long-form programming. They channel-surf, they’re multitasking. . . . It’s become much more difficult to put on programming that says: ‘Stop, look, listen.’ ”

That’s why so many new programs seem to reach right out of the box with testosterone-fueled dynamism. Wrestling literally screams, spits and struts, flaunting busty babes and brutal behavior.

Wait a minute. Does this really reflect guys’ interests? Or is TV stereotyping men? So all you have to do to get guys is be crude and rude and lewd?

Well . . . does Howard Stern have long hair?

Advertisers who sponsor male-oriented programs don’t seem to think they’re selling to rocket scientists. Beer ads feature disheveled losers deceiving women to get dates or choosing brews over toilet paper. While there’s clearly a sense of humor in these ads, and a renegade mentality, they can also collectively leave the impression that guys are not too bright, ethical or caring, that they’re shallow and sex-obsessed--and that that’s OK, if not downright cool.

UPN is seeking escapism, and Comedy Central is looking strictly for laughs, smart or dumb. “People always associate comedy with stupidity,” says Jimmy Kimmel, who came to fame as the sidekick on one of TV’s smarter series, the quiz show “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” and now stars in Comedy Central’s “The Man Show” with MTV’s Adam Carolla (“Loveline”).

“The X Show” plays things a tad straight with its four “regular guy” hosts (and, yes, a baby bulldog), offering tips on guy stuff such as gadgets, sports wagering, money management and care of a very personal organ. “We want regular guys being guys,” says programmer Ligouri. “We do not want guys being pigs.”

His example is an “X Show” segment about strip-club etiquette, featuring demonstrations by an ex-stripper who now manages clubs. “She was very articulate and confident, and immediately what you see is, guys are tremendously uncomfortable in that situation. It’s not what you see on sitcoms.”

Both women and men watch USA’s Sunday night “La Femme Nikita,” in which a gorgeous blond spy kicks butt, Brooks says. “Women like that because Nikita is her own woman, while men like it because she’s got a gun. Women also like the fact that there’s a real romantic story between Nikita and Michael, this smoldering tension. Men don’t watch the show for that, but they put up with it because there are things blowing up by the end.”

But dollars and ratings don’t always do all the talking, especially now that “extreme” media are being accused by some of undue influence on troubled kids such as the Littleton, Colo., shooters. The rampant raunchiness of Stern’s weekend CBS late-night show prompted some appalled station managers to drop it. Daytime ringmaster Jerry Springer faced the Chicago City Council this month to defend the violent confrontations in his talk-show studio, and his Studios USA syndicator has told him to tone it down. (Again.) Even an obvious fantasy such as the WB’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” recently felt this backlash, with its May season finale postponed because of its school-violence scenario.

And yet . . . the babes-and-beer sensibility of Maxim magazine has just spawned the spinoff Stuff. FX is adding the amateur slugfest “Toughman Championship Series” (which is not the no-holds-barred “Ultimate Fighting” event) to its weekly schedule July 23. Fox is relying on the twisted and tasteless “Family Guy” to make a Thursday night kill for it this fall.

“This psychographic has a thirst for individualism, for moving away from the tried and true,” says Ligouri of those young rebel males--whom industry experts now expect to flock in lock-step to the nearest “extreme” offering designed to pluck big bucks from their “dissident” pockets.