Fox Seeks Balance to Unscripted Fare

After years of being critics’ favorite whipping boys for their reliance on unscripted programs such as “Temptation Island” and “When Animals Attack,” Fox officials expressed no satisfaction over criticism leveled at other networks for their forays into the genre.

“No network can compete in today’s marketplace without [unscripted shows],” Sandy Grushow, Fox Television Entertainment Group chairman, told reporters during a question-and-answer session in Pasadena on Tuesday, adding that networks that grow too dependent on such fare “to mask their inability to create new scripted hits [are going] to fail.”

Fox executives say they have finally struck a proper balance between such shows--on which the network may have gone overboard in the past, they concede--and sitcoms and dramas.

As for concerns about the depths to which unscripted programs may plunge as each new format seeks to top the preceding one, Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman insisted that it isn’t mandatory that new shows escalate the danger level--as some have accused NBC and CBS of doing with their summer series “Fear Factor” and “Big Brother 2,” respectively--to keep enticing viewers.

“I don’t necessarily think exploring the form means pushing the envelope in an insane direction,” she said.

Fox has experienced its share of trouble with the genre, from embarrassing revelations regarding its would-be groom on “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” to the lawsuit filed by a couple on “Temptation Island” alleging that the producers knew about the couple’s child and then disqualified the two because it violated the show’s rules.

The network has also gone through several rounds of editing, sources say, to tone down the content of “Love Cruise,” a series involving cabin-hopping singles on a cruise ship that will premiere in mid-September.

One reason networks have emphasized cheaper, unscripted shows involves the economic challenge they face with prime-time dramas, Grushow noted, including a sharp decline in ratings for reruns of even popular dramatic series.

“You look at the way dramas are repeating today in the summer, it’s absolutely frightening,” Grushow said.

For that reason, Grushow expects more deals like those that allow the Lifetime and USA cable networks to repeat episodes of “Once and Again” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” respectively, a few days after their initial telecasts on ABC and NBC. Fox is contemplating a similar arrangement with the FX network on its new drama “24,” starring Kiefer Sutherland, which Grushow said can bring in roughly $150,000 per episode and help defray the cost of producing expensive one-hour shows.

Fox also announced that Chris Carter, creator of “The X-Files,” has agreed to continue in a hands-on capacity as executive producer of the series, a negotiation that has dragged on several months. During the sci-fi show’s eight-year run, Carter has launched three series on Fox--”Millennium,” “Harsh Realm” and, most recently, “The Lone Gunmen”--which all drew disappointing ratings and were canceled.

As expected, Fox will stagger the premieres of its prime-time series in the fall because it is carrying baseball playoffs and the World Series. Season premieres of “24,” “Temptation Island 2,” “The Simpsons,” “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The X-Files” will thus be held until late October or November.