Networks’ Fall Series Lineup Clings to the Tried and True

The first crop of prime-time programs harvested in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks indicates that television is pretty well back to business as usual, with only vague echoes of those events in the fall schedules assembled by the six broadcast networks.

A quick survey of new series being added to the weekly prime-time menu previewed this week for advertisers in New York finds there will be plenty of cop shows, crime-fighters and crusading doctors; a certain nostalgic flavor, including three revivals of 1960s series and a pair of coming-of-age projects set in that decade, as well as remarkably similar projects with a “Back to the Future”-type premise; and a decline in alternative fare, which proliferated last year as networks scrambled to mimic “Survivor” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

That said, the year’s most identifiable trend has more to do with commerce than content. Of the 35 new programs scheduled by NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, the WB and UPN, 27 are being produced by or in conjunction with an arm of the host network--a stark departure from a mere decade ago, before the government phased out rules limiting network ownership of the programs they broadcast.

Executives insist that they put on the best programs available. Still, many producers, writers and talent representatives say ruefully that with each network except NBC controlled by a major studio--and everyone mindful of the profits that can flow from owning “Friends” or “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns in perpetuity--business considerations increasingly trump creative concerns.

“It’s going to be interesting to see whether this is an atypical year or if this is going to be a trend for the future,” said Stephen McPherson, president of Disney’s Touchstone Television, which is providing sister network ABC six of its seven new fall shows--no surprise, really, given that Touchstone supplied 26 of its 30 new-series candidates, or pilots.

Yet whatever cultural or financial forces might be at work, the real impetus behind this year’s lineups appears fixed, as always, on imitating success, to the point of cloning or franchising it.

NBC is running three successful versions of “Law & Order,” which could become a quartet if a reality-based edition featuring actual district attorneys, “Crime & Punishment,” performs well in a tryout this summer. Small wonder, then, that next season’s most eagerly anticipated new drama will likely be “CSI: Miami,” a brand extension of CBS’ most-watched show, “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

Despite talk about the public’s hunger for “comfort” programming post-Sept. 11, this strategy is more pragmatic than sociological. In essence, it represents the networks’ way of combating an ever more competitive television landscape, where cable channels have exhibited the ability to introduce series that vie for the attention of viewers and especially the media, among them HBO’s “The Sopranos” and MTV’s “The Osbournes.”

Revivals of ‘Family Affair,’ ‘Twilight Zone,’ ‘Dragnet’

In that respect, updates of “Family Affair” and “The Twilight Zone” scheduled by the WB and UPN, respectively, along with ABC’s planned revival of “Dragnet” in January post-”Monday Night Football,” speak less to nostalgia than a desire to capitalize on recognizable formats, hoping viewers will be more inclined to give them at least a cursory look.

Beyond the “CSI” spinoff, that show’s popularity has helped spawn a small regiment of procedural cop shows, including CBS’ “Without a Trace,” starring Anthony LaPaglia as head of the FBI missing-persons unit; and “RHD/LA,” focusing on the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division. In addition, four upcoming crime series are set in Los Angeles, with “RHD/LA” and “Dragnet” joining NBC’s “Boomtown” and Fox’s “Fastlane.”

Doctors remain another prime-time staple, so much so that two new medical dramas, ABC’s “Meds” and CBS’ “Presidio Med” (the latter from “ER” producer John Wells), have been scheduled opposite each other Wednesday nights. Of course, this isn’t an entirely new scenario, as anyone who remembers the 1994 face-off between “ER” and “Chicago Hope” will recall.

Several other head-to-head showdowns are destined to be closely watched, among them Fox’s move of “The Bernie Mac Show” versus ABC’s “My Wife and Kids,” starring Damon Wayans, placing popular family comedies featuring African American comics in the same half-hour.

Fox Entertainment President Gail Berman stressed that there is “remarkably little duplication between the shows,” citing research showing that more than 80% of the “Bernie Mac” audience doesn’t currently watch “My Wife and Kids.” Indeed, with four in five homes subscribing to cable or owning a satellite dish, programmers can argue with some justification that confining such analysis to the major networks belies the 90 channels at the average viewer’s disposal.

The fall also offers another example of what might be called convergent evolution, or twin shows born to different networks. Specifically, both ABC’s “That Was Then” and the WB’s “Do Over” focus on an adult man who travels back to his high school years, knowing now what he didn’t then.

Two New Series Set in the Cold War Era

These concepts tie in with what might be the one programming drift most attributable to Sept. 11, which is an interest in the past. Although the aforementioned series revivals are all being contemporized, NBC’s “American Dreams” follows teenagers through the 1960s using “American Bandstand” as a backdrop (Dick Clark is among the producers), while Fox’s “Oliver Beene” is set in 1962, its 11-year-old protagonist growing up amid an eccentric family during the Cold War.

At the same time, the quiz show--virtually absent from prime time since the 1950s, until “Millionaire” burst on the scene--has been sidelined, though both “Millionaire” and NBC’s “Weakest Link” will live on in syndication, with an early-evening version of “Millionaire” premiering in mid-September.

Top-rated NBC approaches the coming TV season touting its stability, but the network faces the daunting prospect of “Friends” hanging up its gloves next spring with no clear replacement in its bullpen. ABC and Fox, by contrast, will make more expansive changes after a year in which each network struggled, as the former recovers from its overreliance on “Millionaire” while the latter seeks to replace “The X-Files” and “Ally McBeal.”

Jon Nesvig, Fox’s president of sales, sought to put the best face on things this week, telling media buyers that quality programs such as “Bernie Mac” and the serialized drama “24” create “a better environment for your commercials.”

And that, in the final analysis, remains what TV is all about.