Fox Shook Up Dodgers; Now About Its Network...

Cruel Hollywood joke: Fox has already put out a sequel to “Titanic.” It’s called the Fox Broadcasting Co.

While a bit of an overstatement, there’s no denying the Fox network is undergoing a turbulent voyage this fall. New shows have failed to catch on, seasoned veterans were kept out of the lineup too long and a slew of scheduling moves have landed with a dull thud.

The most recent TV comparison would be CBS in 1995, when the network put on 11 new prime-time series--among them “Central Park West” and “Dweebs”--and canceled them all.

Yet Fox’s struggles also mirror those experienced by another News Corp.-controlled entity, the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose seemingly endless summer prompted the studio to enlist new management in a deal announced Thursday. The new chief executive, former Warner Bros. Chairman Bob Daly, counts among his key credentials having grown up a Dodgers fan and regularly attending games.

If that’s all it takes, then Fox is in luck, since yours truly has watched the network since it signed on in 1986. Based on that logic, solutions to its problems are just a few short paragraphs away.

Moreover, sports and entertainment have become so conjoined, the strategies to pull Fox out of its funk aren’t all that different from what Daly might do as he tries to put some life back in L.A.’s storied baseball franchise.

Like the Dodgers, Fox will undoubtedly begin looking for free agents and other deals to quickly prop up an under-performing roster. After that, they will do what comes naturally to Fox and losing sports teams: fire the coach, promise things will get better and distance oneself from the regime given a wholehearted endorsement a year or two earlier.

Fox may lack the immediate luxury of an off-season to get its act together, but there are still several moves a savvy management team can make if it has access to deep pockets. That shouldn’t be a problem for a network shelling out $550 million a year for TV rights to NFL football, making the $15 million paid annually to Dodgers pitcher Kevin Brown look relatively paltry.

For starters, there’s no substitute for popular veterans when it comes to filling seats. This means any talk about allowing “The X-Files,” Fox’s version of Mike Piazza, to fade away after this season should be put to rest, and representatives for the stars should rent minivans in which to haul away their loot.

If that doesn’t work, no one says it has to be Mulder and Scully investigating these cases of the paranormal. While it’s too late for the old Darrin switcheroo, a la “Bewitched,” let’s not forget “Chicago Hope” fired everyone this year except the orderlies, and no one blinked when NBC brought in a new “Profiler.”

The network also needs to improve its farm system, develop more rookie talent and bring newer players along slowly. In other words, you don’t throw the new drama “Harsh Realm” against playoff baseball or “Family Guy”--a 6-month-old animated comedy--up against five-time Emmy winner “Frasier,” as the network did before yanking the show in a strategic retreat.

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Another promising young talent, “That ‘70s Show,” has shown signs of life despite being bounced all over prime time. As the Dodgers learned, it’s hard to get the chemistry right if you make too many lineup changes too fast. Fox opened the season with 13 of its 19 prime-time programs either new or in different time slots. With that much change, a casual viewer couldn’t find shows with a map.

A network must also take into account its chief rivals, in the same way the Dodgers need pitching to counter the Giants or Braves. Fox forged ahead as if the five other broadcast networks didn’t exist, throwing a lineup aimed at youthful males, for example, against “WWF Smackdown!”

Despite having sought to rid its lineup of reality programs such as “World’s Wildest Police Videos,” at present Fox is in no position to turn its nose up at a genre that will attract an audience. Advertisers are reluctant to buy time in these shows, and TV critics hate them. Nevertheless, there is a large population of viewers out there who enjoy watching them, even if they don’t hold down jobs as media buyers and, one suspects, very few of them read.

Leaning on reality fare may be equivalent to signing ill-tempered athletes such as Dennis Rodman or Albert Belle, but it can be necessary, if only as a stop-gap measure; still, there are some limits, which means please, no blowing up airplanes or immolating people on live TV in pursuit of a quick fix.

As in sports, assembling an effective TV lineup takes time. Fox has a superstar to build around in “Ally McBeal” but will have to painfully shed a few big-salaried veterans who overstayed their welcome (Willie Mays, meet “Beverly Hills, 90210”) before moving forward. While it may be too late, the expressions “Don’t panic,” “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and “Hey, this isn’t brain surgery” also come to mind.

That’s all for now, although if those responsible for UCLA’s football team are looking for free advice, I’ve been watching those games since the 1960s, and the number’s listed.