Healthy networks need Saturday night fever

There’s probably not a TV critic around who hasn’t banged out a column bemoaning the lousy state of Saturday night TV.

It’s an evergreen topic, an easy layup, ideal for the dog days of summer or the lull after a “sweeps” month. You can harrumph and harangue with impunity. No viewer will disagree. How dare those networks neglect a perfectly good night of the week? Why can’t they program Saturday night like they did in the 1970s? Archie and Edith. Mary and Rhoda. Those were the days!

I have done this myself, but not to worry: I’m not going to do it again. This is an inquiry into what happened to Saturday night TV and what, if anything, might be done to rejuvenate it.

First off, it bears pointing out that although Saturday night has often been more enticing than it is today, with its grab bag of low-impact dramas (“Touched by an Angel,” “The District”), movies, movies, more movies and “Cops,” it’s not historically TV’s big night. It has a low HUT (homes using television) level because it’s the night people are most likely to go out.

“The viewing level has always been a little lower on Saturday night because of competing activities,” says David Poltrack, CBS Television’s executive vice president for research and planning. “But there were always shows on that night that were extraordinarily well-received.”

Saturday night indeed has been home to some highly successful series over the decades. But the glorious critical mass that prime-time Saturday attained in the mid-1970s, when “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show” book-ended three hours of peerless comedy, was only a fortunate coincidence. As Poltrack points out, CBS eventually moved Archie Bunker and company to Sunday night, when there’s a larger audience available.

For viewers old enough to recall it, that stretch of years when the Bunkers anchored CBS’ Saturday lineup is the yardstick by which great nights of TV are measured, a grail to be regained. The 1973-74 roster in particular -- “All in the Family” followed by “MASH,” followed by the Moore, Bob Newhart and Burnett shows -- is arguably as close to a perfect slate of series a network has ever offered.

Networks use a slightly different scoring system. Popular success counts more than critical effusion. By their measure, the mid-1980s NBC lineup anchored by “The Golden Girls” and “Hunter” was a Saturday triumph, as was the early-’90s CBS schedule that included “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

But even during these debatably “golden” eras, series programming in general on Saturday night was going downhill. There were scattered hits, yes, but also fewer options offered by the broadcast networks. The most popular series currently on Saturday night is CBS’ “The District,” 39th in Nielsen’s season-to-date tally. At least CBS has a full series lineup. Fox contents itself with “Cops” and “America’s Most Wanted,” low-budget shows whose audiences are small but intensely loyal. ABC and NBC are back to running movies on Saturdays for lack of a better plan. UPN and the WB leave Saturday nights to their affiliates.

The culprits, if that’s the right term, are cable, home video and the preference of advertisers, and thus networks, for younger and wealthier viewers. We are not all equal in the eye of CBS or any other network. The young and the acquisitive are more prized. They are also the most likely to go out or watch videos on Saturday nights.

You can see where this is going or, rather, where it’s gone. Fewer young adults watching broadcast TV on Saturday night led to fewer broadcast options, which in turn led to fewer young adults watching, which in turn led to, well, our choosing between “Touched by an Angel” and subscribing to HBO.

Don’t expect this vicious circle to be broken soon. Saturday night doesn’t have the same strategic importance to advertisers as midweek nights, especially Thursday.

“Thursday night is a night when everyone wants to advertise to the young, upper-socioeconomic audience,” CBS’ Poltrack says. “They’re planning their weekends, not just whether they’re going to go to the movies but whether they’re going to go to the mall and buy the high-definition television they’ve been wanting. People who are in the market for automobiles tend to go to the showroom and look around for cars on Saturday, so Thursday and Friday are when you want to get that audience as well.

“Even if the shows on Saturday night were to get the same ratings as the shows that are currently on Thursday night get, just the fact that they’re on Saturday night would make them be less valuable,” Poltrack says.

Saturday night may never regain its 1970s luster, but that’s not to say it won’t ever get interesting again. Laura Caraccioli, vice president and director of Starcom Entertainment, a Chicago ad agency, sees Saturday night as “valuable real estate” the networks can’t afford to neglect.

Caraccioli believes the broadcast networks will get serious about Saturday night as soon as they’ve used up current inventories of theatrical films that are unlikely to be replenished. With few exceptions, theatricals are poor bargains nowadays. Almost any movie of note has been seen on video or cable by most people who would care to see it by the time it gets to broadcast TV.

Among the Saturday night possibilities Caraccioli foresees:

Inexpensive reality-based shows like the Learning Channel’s “Trading Spaces,” which has illuminated a niche audience that a broadcast network might enlarge.

All sorts of “re-purposing”: ABC might mix and match six sitcoms from its midweek lineups on Saturday, or NBC might have its newly acquired Bravo to schedule its Saturday night, much as Nickelodeon programs CBS’ Saturday mornings.

Advertiser-produced programs, a return of sorts to the era of “Philco Playhouse” and “G.E. Theater.”

Resurrected “franchises,” an example of which would be NBC’s recent “Hunter” movie, almost certainly the first of a string.

The key for the networks, Caraccioli says, is to calculate how much advertising revenue they can expect to attract on Saturday night and then develop programs that fit the environment and can turn a profit. She’s not sure what they’ll do, but she’s sure they’ll do something. “Saturday night is too valuable to abdicate to Blockbuster video,” she says.

*

Noel Holston writes about television for Newsday, a Tribune company.