Pushing an Already Torn Envelope

Exactly one year and many failed TV shows ago, “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” futilely set forth to find laughs and instead met with debate and protests.

Some African American activists picketed outside Paramount, where the show was produced, and charged the UPN network with racism for putting on the Civil War-era sitcom that “denigrates the bones of our ancestors.” The Los Angeles City Council even joined the chorus, weighing in with its concern about the program. Talk-radio hosts and TV critics generally provided a contrary view, fretting about whether political correctness had climbed to absurd new heights.

Cultural implications notwithstanding, it was, quite simply, one of the biggest free promotions in television history--an “Is the show offensive? Judge for yourself!” come-on that fledging UPN would have been hard-pressed to match with any amount of paid advertising.

Nevertheless, by prime-time standards, almost nobody showed up to see.

History, like a bad TV plot, appears to be repeating itself, at least if early ratings for Fox’s “Action” are any indication.

Both “Action” and its Thursday companion, “Family Guy,” have clearly sought to be provocative. In fact, Fox has seemingly made generating controversy in these oh-so-sensitive times an integral element of its programming and marketing strategy in attempting to seize the attention of viewers.

Initially developed for pay channel Home Box Office, “Action” features a self-absorbed movie producer whose expletive-laden tirades are simply bleeped out--an unprecedented ongoing device on a prime-time network series.

Not surprisingly, politicians and cultural critics only too willingly rose to take the bait. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and William Bennett obliged by holding a press conference shortly before “Action’s” premiere, naming Fox the recipient of their Silver Sewer Award, due in part to the show’s content. While trying to act chagrined, network officials had a hard time concealing their glee.

The “Action” hubbub follows “Family Guy,” which made news by milking its own sacred cows, joking about Jews, blacks and even including a gag that involved a JFK Pez dispenser getting the head shot off. Fox’s clay-animated Eddie Murphy series “The PJs” also drew the wrath of interest groups with its tongue-in-cheek depiction of life in a housing project.

Scheduling programs that cause such a fuss sounds risky but really isn’t if you subscribe to the theory most people don’t take television’s excesses (especially those found in sitcoms) all that seriously. By this logic, the free-publicity envelope-pushing shows yield in a crowded marketplace offsets whatever ill will the content may engender with a small number of viewers and advertisers.

Based on recent trends, however, it seems equally true the public has grown somewhat inured to this particular ploy. As in the case of “Desmond Pfeiffer,” “Action” didn’t spur much initial curiosity despite a flood of news coverage and reviews promoting its bad-boy image, and ratings have dropped in subsequent airings. Nor did a brutal opening shootout sequence in CBS’ cop drama “Brooklyn South” two years ago prompt the kind of tune-in anticipated, given its high media profile.

These results mark a departure from the big ratings “NYPD Blue” garnered with its premiere in 1993--despite the decision by dozens of ABC affiliates not to air the show--or even the “Ellen” “coming out” episode in 1997. Today, translating turmoil into TV viewing tends to be a very hit-or-miss proposition, and as Fox has discovered, those misses can be as good as a mile.

The declining value of controversy probably stems in part from a shift in the television landscape. With the average home receiving nearly 60 channels, shocking people with what’s on the tube has become difficult. In addition, viewers don’t always make a sharp distinction between the networks and cable, so hearing naughty words bleeped out on Fox isn’t necessarily all that titillating when subscribers to HBO or Showtime can hear them minus the bleeps just a few channels over.

There is some irony in Fox’s failure to arouse anyone beyond TV critics and self-appointed watchdogs with “Action,” since no network has done more to help dull our collective nerve endings--lowering the bar with such video-based spectacles as “When Animals Attack” and “Shocking Moments: Caught on Tape.” Trying to tantalize that audience with a promised peek behind Hollywood’s veneer of civility might work only if flavored with a hint of real-life danger--perhaps “The Secret Diary of Michelle Pfeiffer: Live!”

On the flip side, lobbying groups have created such a din by virtue of their constant nagging, it’s no wonder they have a hard time awakening the public. Just as many viewed “Desmond Pfeiffer” protests as an overreaction, grumbling by an Italian American group about “The Sopranos”--or a few Latino advocates over use of the word “tamale” by a “Will & Grace” character clearly presented as a nincompoop--have fed the sense it’s no longer acceptable to joke about anything.

Both the networks and such organizations spend too much time talking to one another and not enough listening to the great unwashed audience at home. To folks who approach TV as entertainment--not a vocation or fodder for a fund-raising pitch--inane utterances by sitcom characters seldom merit a cultural jihad, meaning the furor over something like “Action” barely registers.

Pundits who flagged “Action” as one of this season’s likely hits were similarly myopic, overlooking history that indicates movies and TV shows about Hollywood rarely succeed commercially. Though such shows no doubt play fabulously in network screening rooms, it didn’t figure that “Action” would reverse this trend on a major network if “The Larry Sanders Show” couldn’t in the more pristine environs of HBO.

If there are wider lessons here, the most encouraging may be that people won’t be so readily manipulated or fooled into watching fare they wouldn’t otherwise. Activists, meanwhile, need to consider whether they have cried wolf a few times too many, transforming response to their headline-grabbing assaults from outrage into ennui.

The next “On TV” column, by the way, will employ words and phrases almost certain to offend you. The language will be coarse, and the newsprint will rub off on your hands.

Anyone out there salivating to read it? Didn’t think so.

Brian Lowry’s column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached by e-mail at brian.lowry@latimes.com.